Lubuntu, 32 or 64 bit for old PC?

Hi! I recently re-built a PC I had laying around, it has a Core 2 quad Q8200, a really old 7200RPM HDD, and only 3Gb of DDR2 RAM. The thing is, Windows 7 64bit is very slow. I was wondering, should I go for a light Ubuntu version like Lubuntu, or maybe Xubuntu?

I notice the RAM is always full with Windwos 7, so I figured Lubuntu should be better. But I don't know if I should use the 64bit version. I mean, it already can't use more than 4Gb of RAM, what other disadvantage does the 32bit OS have?

Thanks.

The problem could be the old HDD as well. 2 mb cache? With the Q8200 and 3gb of ram, shoudn't be too bad. Should have at least 4-8gb of ram though. Fresh install of windows 7?

johnb35 said:

The problem could be the old HDD as well. 2 mb cache? With the Q8200 and 3gb of ram, shoudn't be too bad. Should have at least 4-8gb of ram though. Fresh install of windows 7?

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I installed fresh. It's either 8Mb or 16Mb. Can't remember now. I do remember it was a pain to use. But still, the RAM is always full. Do you think The 32bit version of W7 would be a better option?

If you aren't gonna have more then 4gb then 32bit is fine. Same key will activate both 32 and 64bit. In your case, it really doesn't matter which one.

johnb35 said:

If you aren't gonna have more then 4gb then 32bit is fine. Same key will activate both 32 and 64bit. In your case, it really doesn't matter which one.

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All right. Sounds great. Thanks.

A q8200 should still be reasonable in Windows. 3 gb isn't ungodly horrendous unless you have five billion startup programs and background processes.

32 bit Windows will use a bit less ram operating the same 32 bit apps than in a wow64 environment like 64 bit Windows.

beers said:

A q8200 should still be reasonable in Windows. 3 gb isn't ungodly horrendous unless you have five billion startup programs and background processes.

32 bit Windows will use a bit less ram operating the same 32 bit apps than in a wow64 environment like 64 bit Windows.

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Seriously, it's a fresh install. And the RAM is always capped. I realize it should take a long time to boot, because of the HDD, and also launch apps, but I believe the RAM is also slowing down the process even more. If I understand correctly, once the RAM fills up, it has to write it's contents to the HDD and then it can be filled with new stuff. The RAM is slow, and the HDD is worse, so the fact that the RAM gets filled up so quickly makes it painfully slow.

Also the Q8200 doesn't perform as it should. Benchmarks are way below average. I gues I'll try W7 32bit and if that fails move on to Lubuntu. Thank you.