PC question

hotpot

A question for the PC savvy. I've been offered an older HP XW 4600 workstation with the hard drive erased, Is there a way of telling whether it's a 32 or 64 bit PC! The guy I'm getting it off doesn't know. Thanks.

Sporky

Googling the model name suggests it had Core 2 Duo processors which are 64-bit.

Danny1969

If you put the product number in HP s support site it will bring up the exact drivers for your machine .... Important as some parts are not  generic hardware in these machines but tailored to HP,s requirements 

hotpot

Thanks guys, I didn't know about those duo core processors being 64 bit. 'm picking it up this afternoon.

Myranda

Pretty sure that all modern PCs are 64 bit now. Certainly anything supporting more than 4 GB of RAM will want to be, as addressing that much memory needs a 64 bit operating system (or a 32 bit one with some clever shenanigans going on - some clunky workarounds exist) 

According to the Ark site for Intel you have to go back to the Pentium 4 to find a CPU listed with a 32 bit instruction set, even the ultra-low voltage Atom processors started life as 64 bit

crunchman

Some of the very early 64 bit processors don't have all the instruction sets that come with the later ones and aren't meant to be compatible with 64 bit Win 10.  I think the Core 2 Duos are ok though.

Depending on what you want to use it for I'd seriously look at a motherboard/processor/memory combo on Feebay rather than go through all the hassle of installing Windows on something that old.  I picked up an i3 2120 on a motherboard with 4GB of RAM for £56.  According to the Passmark benchmark it's more than twice the speed of the Core 2 Duo I had previously.  It's actually faster than a brand new Skylake based G4400 processor.

mudslide73

Windows 10 should find the drivers you need on its own. WDS/System Center imaging has never been so easy! I'd try it and see if it meets your needs before you start spending cash on newer bits.

crunchman

mudslide73 said:

Windows 10 should find the drivers you need on its own. WDS/System Center imaging has never been so easy! I'd try it and see if it meets your needs before you start spending cash on newer bits.

Win 10 might not like the graphics card on something that old though.  You might find that it only boots in some safe VGA type mode.  There are ways to get older cards working but it's unlikely that a graphics card in something that old will be officially supported.

Without upgrading hardware I'd rather go Win 7 with stuff that age.

hotpot

Thank you for all the advice. It's just for browsing etc for my brother. I installed Win 7 on it successfully but I couldn't get anything to update! I left it updating for over an hour but no browser update or anything! In the end I gave up & installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and it was up & running within half an hour. everything works fine (audio/video) and runs quiet & smoothly.