[Win7/8] What's the most suitable version of Windows for Intel Atom N45

[Radium]

Hi!

My mother has a Sony VAIO which has an Intel Atom N450 (paired with the NM10 chipset) and 1 GB of RAM.

The machine is really slow and it came delivered with 32-bit Windows 7.

My question is:

Will Windows 8 make it a bit more responsive?

I'm planning on changing the memory module and put a 2 GB stick into the machine and possibly even put a Intel 335 SSD inside.

If I do this, will 64-bit Windows 8 be more responsive than 64-bit Windows 7?

Currently, the machine is VERY slow and everything takes ages to load. The current HDD is very slow and 1 GB of RAM doesn't help.

The 64-bit version is better since 64-bit software benefits from the double amount of CPU registers plus a few extra instruction sets as well as the ability to enable the enchanced protected mode in IE10.

So, 64-bit is pretty much a no-brainer. Many Believe that 64-bit software needs twice the amount of RAM but that's complete humbug.

The question is the performance that I would gain from going from Windows 7 to 8 on a really slow machine.

The machine came preloaded with the usual trash that only slows it down the already slow machine.

Should I just stick with Windows 7 (just reinstall it from scratch) or would installing Windows 8 give it a few more years worth using?

My girlfriend had a Windows 7 (32-bit) laptop with 3 GB of RAM (1+2, asymmetric dual-channel) and a slow HDD.

I changed the memory and put a total of 8 GB of RAM into it plus an Intel 335 SSD and installed 64-bit Windows 8 and the laptop was like a completetly different machine and it was MUCH faster.

That latop had an ultra-low power Core 2 Duo and not an Atom.

The question is if I can get good results with doing something similar with an Intel Atom N450 latop where I only increase the RAM from 1 to 2 GB. (that's the maximum supported by N450) but put an Intel 335 SSD inside.

While I upgraded that laptop, I booted it and installed it throught the UEFI system which only made it boot even faster.

Does anyone have any experience with Windows 7 & 8 running on Intel Atoms?

[spaceelf]

8 is definately better on lower power machines. Never used an Atom but I have installed it on a Turion 2 with a 4250 vid chip and it was impressive.

[IntegralDerivative]

Try

Xp Pro

Vista Home basic

7 Starter/Home basic

[Arceles]

increase the ram if possible to at least 2gb, that pretty much will improve any version of windows on it.

[Growled Member]

My question is:

Will Windows 8 make it a bit more responsive?

Yes. If your machine will run 7 it will run 8 even faster and better.

[Raa]

I'd upgrade the ram, and leave Win7 on it.

[r4ym0nf]

Oh, I'd go for XP. But 8 is fine.

I would stay away from anything x64 on 1GB RAM.

[zhangm Supervisor]

First, run the built-in Performance Information program and note what component is giving you the lowest score. Next, keep Task manager open and get an idea of CPU usage over the course of a few hours' normal use. If the CPU is always pegging at 100% and is your weakest subscore in WEI, then you'll know that upgrading the RAM and hard drive probably won't have a huge effect. If the disk is constantly thrashing or your RAM is giving you the weakest subscore, then you'll notice a difference after upgrading those no matter what OS you're running.

I would tend towards moving to 8, because it continues the trend of performance enhancements that we saw with the Vista to 7 transition. In your case, you may gain more battery efficiency as well (assuming your Atom is in a laptop), since 8 is far more aggressive at power consumption management.

[Radium]

Try

Xp Pro

Vista Home basic

7 Starter/Home basic

Your advices are really strange.

XP is pretty much from the stone age. It is not in any way targeted for low power laptops.

Vista is known for being heavier than 7.

7 starter has some basic features disabled which can only be added back in by installing even more background software, which is the whole reason the machine needs to be cleaned up.

Thank you to all the others!

I've opened the laptop and I will buy a 2 GB stick and insert it.

I've reached the conclusion that 64-bit Windows 8 plus a nice SSD and doubled RAM will make the CPU wait less and be more effective.

My previous experiences only point in that direction.

The drive that I took out is a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 and it's really slow. Booting takes ages. Everything takes ages.

The hard drive LED flashes a lot when you sit and wait.

[TheGreek]

put win8 on it! and more gigs if you can.

[testman]

My opinion is that putting Windows 8 on it isn't going to make it noticeably faster than Windows 7. The bottleneck is simply the RAM - you need to address that before anything else. The Atom isn't exactly a powerful chip either, so don't expect it to be amazingly quick in any case, but definitely replace the RAM with as much as you can stuff into it.

[Dutchie64]

First of all, these two laptops are not comparable. The Atom is way slower than even the oldest Core2Duo.

Also, being slow to load/start is hard to diagnose.

A lot of these laptops came with slower spinning harddrives, to save battery power. For performance this is not really a good thing. The reason why your girlfriends laptop got a lot faster after the SSD, is the SSD.....

Also, when you're not able to upgrade the RAM to more than 4Gb, the 64bit Windows has no effect, and might even decrease performance. And be sure that the Atom supports a 64bit Windows, it might be 32bit only. Check that, not sure on this.

Is the laptop 'equipped' with additional software from Sony? I would start with wiping the drive, and install the clean version of W7 and see if it is any faster. And one note of installing W8, be absolutely sure that this laptop is supported by Sony. If not, try to find W8 drivers for all components, or you will end up with a laptop that doesn't perform better than W7. Drivers are important here for a good experience.

Atoms have always been low performance CPU's, and no upgrade will get a significant better performance out of it. Hardware wise or OS. The only thing that would make it 'feel faster' is some more RAM and a SSD. But running apps will be still the same as the CPU cannot go any faster.

Hope that helps.

[Dutchie64]

In addition to the 32/64 bit OS stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Atom

This list shows not all Atoms will support a 64bit W7/8.

[Radium]

N450 supports 64-bit instructions.

(N2xx and Z5xx do not)

I've just put a new memory module into the machine. One 2 GB stick, DDR2 667 MHz, which is the absolute maximum supported by the N450.

A new problem has risen. I want to install a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium.

I have the license but no physical disc because I used Anytime Upgrade some time before Windows 8 was released to upgrade from Starter to Home Premium.

I am now unable to obtain a disc (Windows 7 Home Premium, Swedish) so I guess I will have to buy Windows 8 to install anything fresh on that machine.

The restoration partition contains the bloated Starter edition and I want to avoid that. :-(

[medhunter]

Xubuntu 32 bit version.Just my 2 cents

[Radium]

Xubuntu 32 bit version.Just my 2 cents

I am sceptical to that since my mom and dad will use the laptop which belongs to my mom and neither of them are computer savvy.. My mom has used Windows every day since NT 3.5 and my dad since Windows 3.1.

I don't want want them to call me several times per day for support and I haven't used Ubuntu or Xubuntu myself before.

So I don't see them using Linux any time what so ever.

Are you willing to support them for free if I install Xubuntu on that machine?

They can handle Windows for sure, but Xfce and GNU/Linux.... never.

[NinjaGinger]

If they use the desktop apps most, Win7 with more ram is best but if they only use it for chat and email etc, Win 8 with more ram is best. Win 8 is terrible for real computimg, by real, I mean desktop work.

[Dutchie64]

NO, it's not. The desktop is still there and have been enhanced wioth some little extra stuff.

The only thing I can think of, is the new start screen that is a bit too jarring when needing something.

But like most people, you would have your most run apps as a shortcut on the dsktop, or pinned to the taskbar.

So the parents wouldn't see much difference, besides the one press on the desktop tile. Takes an half hour to instruct, including the charmsbar and the hotspots on the screen.

[Radium]

I've tried Windows 8, both 32-bit and 64-bit and the built in Qualcomm Gobi 2000 is not supported by Microsoft and all the drivers found online have vendor specific drivers and the one supplied by Sony only work for 32-bit Windows 7. The driver can't load in Windows 8.

So I'm back to square one and Sony's crappy support with the complete lack if drivers (the latest drivers shipped with the laptop back 2010).

The only installation method available is using the recovery partition which has a bloated version of Windows 7 Starter.

No disc available. I need a Windows 7 Home Premium disc. I've talked with Microsoft and they can't help me.

*sigh*

[ToneKnee]

I've tried Windows 8, both 32-bit and 64-bit and the built in Qualcomm Gobi 2000 is not supported by Microsoft and all the drivers found online have vendor specific drivers and the one supplied by Sony only work for 32-bit Windows 7. The driver can't load in Windows 8.

So I'm back to square one and Sony's crappy support with the complete lack if drivers (the latest drivers shipped with the laptop back 2010).

The only installation method available is using the recovery partition which has a bloated version of Windows 7 Starter.

No disc available. I need a Windows 7 Home Premium disc. I've talked with Microsoft and they can't help me.

*sigh*

Try using other vendors like this one: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=DS001302

The best way for it to try and work would be to pull the drivers out of any installer and put them in a directory on your hard drive.

Go into the device manager and 'install' the drivers. Hit 'Browse my computer for driver software', then go to 'Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer'. Leave the show compatible hardware box ticked. And hit 'Have Disk'. Look for the 32bit/64bit (depending on what version you've installed) drivers on the hard drive where you extracted the drivers earlier and see if Windows will install the drivers.

When we get into vendor specific drivers, sometimes it can be just their installers that block the installation and not the drivers themselves.

I hope this works. :)

[Dutchie64]

That's why I suggested to find all drivers before starting any W8 install.

Google is your best friend atm for drivers outside Sony. I found updated drivers for my HP laptop outside the HP support webpage, as I was able to figure out the hardware involved. An evening of driver hunting payed off, and even found recent NVidia drivers for the old graphic card.

You're halfway there now, the last hurdle will take some Googling and tricks like Tony is suggesting.

[Crisp]

Vista on 8 VMs.

[Radium]

I tried to extract the drivers from a Thinkpad installer but I was unable to do that. I used WinRAR.

I find it very strange that Qualcomm do not supply us with the latest drivers in simple ZIP files.

I was able to extract the drivers for the Ricoh memory card reader. I used VEN and DEV IDs to search for the drivers.

But I've given up now. I spent a whole day trying to find drivers that would install. I even tried the 32-bit drivers made for Windows 7 and manually install it on Windows 8 32-bit. It didn't recognize the device.

I'm very disappointed in Sony, Qualcomm and Microsoft regarding this. And Intel, they have completely dumped the 3150 graphics. The drivers shipped by Microsoft are not good. The graphics in the browser was very slow. Certain effects were clogging everything, while IE10 works much better on Windows 7.

[spaceelf]

Agh I forgot about that, sorry. Win8s graphics driver support on laptop kit is its biggest issue right now...I traded 7 for someones $40 copy because of that.

Related to why I'd never buy an Atom when there are E1-1200/E2-1800 machines about, but that's beside the point.

[Dutchie64]

Proper driverssupprt is a case for the OEM's, not MS. MS is only delevering base drivers, optimized drivers have to come from the OEM.

That's why only say, NVIDIA drivers will give you proper resolution and accelaration. Same with your Qualcomm and Intel drivers.

It's odd though that Win7 drivers will not install. I did this for my mobo drivers, and they installed just fine. Your Sony mobo must have some custom stuff built-in to refuse the drivers.

Sorry to hear your problems, but sometimes it's better to stick with the original OS, or move on to some other hardware.....