Here are my current system stats:
WIN XP Pro SP3;
AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core 4400;
2.0 MB Memory;
I assume you meant 2 GB memory, not MB.
MSI Radeon R4830 T2D512.
The motherboard is ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe and
I have 2 Maxtor Dual HD in Nvidea nForce RAID Stripe 298GB.
So ... if I purchase the WIN7 Home Premium Upgrade (e.g.
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-...s=win+7+upgrade), will this "system" accommodate the upgrade and be able to play games like Tomb Raider Survival and the upcoming Batman and possible upcoming Half Life games?
According to
***this***, you currently meet the minimum specs for Tomb Raider Survival, but not the recommended specs. I don't know the exact names of the Batman and Half Life games so I can't see if any specs have been posted.
1) If not, what if I get more Memory and a new bucks-up Video Card? Will that AMD Processor be able to keep up?
Right now you're low end, but playable on TR Survival (according to the specs I found). But I don't know about the other games you're interested in. They might be higher. If you got a new video card, you might also have to get a new power supply.
2) Does WIN7 plug-and-play the dual hard drives, or is that a post load hassle?
If your "Nvidia nForce RAID striping" is hardware RAID, Win7 would automatically see the disks as a single drive, just as XP would. If it's software RAID, it's probably easier to set up in Win7 than in XP.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/36504/how-to-create-a-software-raid-array-in-windows-7/3) ASUS has an "Update" on my XP Programs. I have been afraid to click and upgrade. Should I?
It's up to you. If your computer is running well, and no problems with the programs, then I wouldn't bother unless they were security updates.
And do I do that "upgrade" before or after loading the new WIN7?
Well, if you're going to install Win7, there wouldn't be any point in upgrading any programs in XP. They'll all be gone anyway. Win7 saves some of your personal files and settings in a folder called Windows.old, but it wipes everything else. XP is too different to just update all its innards to be Win7 innards.
4) I do not really understand BIOS. Is the current version on my system OK with the WIN7?
Probably. A bigger question would be how much memory your motherboard can take. If you want Win7 and want to play games on this computer, you should get more than 2GB of memory.
You'll notice that I am trying to do this on the cheap. But I still want it to be functional. If this just is not worth the effort to get say 2 more years from my computer on gaming, I guess I will just get Digital Storm to build me a new one (ohhh the pain of $$$$).
See if you can find the specs of the Batman and Half Life games you're interested in posted anywhere. If they're similar to TR Survival, and these are the kind of games you want to play, it may be getting to be time. See how well TR Survival plays on your computer. If it's too slow and chuggy for you, there's your answer.