Windows 7 or XP for best Sketchup Performance?

clarko74 · 25 Oct 2012, 08:41

Hello all,
Is there a simple answer as to which operating system gives the best performance for Sketchup?

I am asking as I am about to install a new SSD into my laptop and am going to start from a clean install anyway and have the choice of XP Pro or Windows 7 32bit. I currently have XP Pro and Sketchup works very well indeed (It's a Lenovo z61p with a core 2 duo/3GB ram/ATI mobility FireGL V5200) and I have noticed that Sketchup runs considerably better on this laptop than on the desktop machine I have in the office which is much newer (Core i7 920/6GB ram/Nvidia Quadro FX 580/SSD/Win7 64bit).

I put this down to Sketchup being a 32bit application which is not optimised for running with 64bit Windows 7, is this likely to be the reason? Or does Sketchup run better in XP than any version of Win7 (32 or 64bit)? Or is it due to the graphics card?

I would like to install Windows 7 32bit but am quite happy to stick with XP Pro if windows 7 is likely to slow Sketchup down considerably.

Any advice would be appreciated.

ArCAD-UK · 25 Oct 2012, 13:14

I made the mistake of moving to Vista worst thing I ever did. I was a big fan of XP but I couldn't get back there so when Win7 arrived with favourable reviews I grabbed it. Suddenly everything worked again. But to get back ontrack and answer your question I'm running SU8 Pro on Win7 (32bit) with 2Gb of ram quite happily.

I believe some of the admin overheads are less with XP but in terms of staying within the realms of supported platforms moving to Win7 wouldn't be a bad move as I would imagine with Win8 coming over the horizon quickly XP may be served notice of dropped support quite soon.

ArCAD-UK · 27 Oct 2012, 16:29

Just noticed on http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/windows XP support will be dropped from 8 April 2014

clarko74 · 29 Oct 2012, 09:20

Thanks for the reply. I think it may be time that I move over to Win7.

Cheers.