Folding Forum

A speedy and accurate reply is appreciated.

If I use Win XP in preference to Win 7 for a F@H machine (i3-3220 CPU, dual channel 4GB DDR3-1333 RAM), will the TPF of SMP workunits increase? Or is folding faster with Win XP for some (or most?) workunits?

I know Win XP is an ageing OS will be limited to around ~3 GB RAM, but I won't be able to install Win 7 on a particular folding machine for quite a while.

I don't think there's any noticeable difference between the two.. I have never really done a comparison between XP and 7.. If you want higher points, try Ubuntu instead

iceman1992 wrote:I don't think there's any noticeable difference between the two.. I have never really done a comparison between XP and 7.. If you want higher points, try Ubuntu instead

I'd agree with this assessment. On your hardware the difference between XP and W7 is likely to be indistinguishable. Nothing that machine would be assigned will need more than 3G of memory.

Thanks for the first two replies.

I would like to get more replies from folders who have experience in Win XP vs Win 7.

No speed difference in folding.

For the 2 minutes a day the client spends uploading completed work, the Win 7 IP protocol is faster, and would help the completed WU upload a few seconds faster.

Still not worth the cost of the upgrade. As long as you avoid folding with AMD GPUs, you're okay to stay on XP a long time.

I use both (plus Vista and Ubuntu) and I find that there is no measurable difference between the various flavors of Windows -- other than the hardware I have them running on.