I am finally going to take the plunge from XP.  I am considering Win 7 Home Premium w/SP1 System builder 64 bit and also Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit.  or perhaps windows 8.  I have that on my laptop and don't care for it.  Please forgive my ignorance. I will be installing as a new installation or as dual boot.  (not upgrade) 
   I plan on running Sonar X2 (eventually X3) and also want to do some video editing etc.
                                  thanks

I too am about to take that plunge. My DAW of 10 years has served me well, and been upgraded many times, currently XP SP3 w/Sonar 8.3, so I will be watching this thread.
 
My abject worries are that all of my plugs are 32 bit, Windoze XP? I'm wondering why I shouldn't just buy a bigger stronger faster host and load it up w/8.3 Pro and all of my 32 bit plugs? It's worked so well for so long.

Hi, well here's the thing Win 7 is a great product the best probably that Windows has ever produced but its always onwards and upwards and we are now at Windows 8.1 and if the rumour mill is correct Windows 9 should be with us sometime next year.  So you can see where I am going with that point.
 
I've just recently upgraded my laptop and it comes pre installed with 8, I've now updated it to 8.1.  Now here's the rub, 8.1 is as smooth as 7 in regards to operation all though I haven't taken Sonar X2 for a run as of yet but I have fired it up and everything seems to be fine, mind you I haven't any real problems with Sonar in a long time, its probably because I use a HP laptop and as you know HP and Sonar seem to be a match made in heaven.  The problem is METRO, what the **** was Microsoft thinking?? Windows 8 is really two operating systems in 1.  They have tacked on their Metro operating systems with bits of their Xbox system and forced you navigate to get back to good old Windows.
 
Now the good news, 8.1 is in there...somewhere and its basically the same as 7, so its smooth in regards to operation and with 8.1 you can boot to the familiar desktop and with a few tweaks you can more or less ignore metro.  Which is what I do.  I also use a 64 bit system so memory and all that jazz isn't really an issue.
 
I think if you have drivers for all your stuff, I use a Motu audio interface so I am lucky, it has a driver.  Then stick with 8.1.  Just do the tweaks.  There is no point sticking with the old because eventually you will have to change and get use to whatever changes Microsoft will force upon you anyway.
 
Ben
 

I think in this next year as XP is totally abandoned is a good time to move on and I'm glad Ben has made the point about 8.1 over 7 I was wondering about that too. My DAW is fine with W7 64 ultimate so I'll leave it be,  I also have my office desktop on W7 now.  But I have some older P4 generation stuff,  a movie/ music computer and an older laptop and I'll have to decide if I ditch XP on them. I think I'll just leave them on XP and it will be a back up for some things I have that run only in 32 bit like photoshop and Wave Lab 5. 
 
I also have this ASUS  netbook that is pretty important to me for travel and is my back up band at gigs. That's the one I'm not sure about... for the money I'll pay for a new OS I might as well go buy a new one but I hate that kind of wasted technology thinking. 
It's not just the OS that costs money , it all your other software now. Last year cost me a lot in software upgrades. Stuff that just won't run on W7 64 bit. 
 
Band 19 why don't you just leave the old machine running and start all over with a fresh computer and system. Then you'd have the best of both worlds. In the long run the computer is the cheaper part of a system. 

The main reason for 64-bit is memory. A 32-bit OS is limited to a bit over 3 GB of usable memory. 64-bit OS memory is limited by your motherboard. Some synths stream data from memory so many people want as much memory as possible. As more tracks are added to the project and more plugins to each track, the memory requirement goes up.
 
If your library of 32-bit plugins has worked for you so far and you do not create projects where this has been an issue for you so far, then there is no real reason for 64-bit other than future expansion.
 
It is largely a matter of what you use sonar for. If primarily for recording audio with simple mixing with a few effects, you could get by with a couple of GB of RAM and a 32-bit OS would do the job.
If you constantly produce loads of synth tracks with lots of plugins I would want 8-16GB and you need a 64-bit OS for that.
 
It is sort of like, if you have not run into a situation where you have needed more than 3GB of RAM or noticed it, then you probably don't.
 
As far as you plugin library, Sonar x64 will run most of the stock 32-bit plugins and many 3rd party 32-bit plugins without issues. Some 32-bit plugs do have problems in Sonar x64.
 
You can also run BOTH Sonar 32-bit and Sonar 64-bit on a 64-bit OS. If you have plugins that MUST have sonar -32 then you are still good to go. I run both.
 
I would probably advise you to get a 64-bit OS, install 4GB to start with  and install both Sonars.  If you need more mem, then simply install it, if not continue to use Sonar 32.
 
Michael
 
 
 
 
 
 

I recently purchased a new PC but stayed with Windows 7. I've heard good and bad things about Windows 8. Win7 has been excellent for me so I felt it was best to stay with what I know.

Device drivers - this may have come up earlier in the thread.  The availability of device drivers for your chosen OS should be a consideration.  You'll want to ensure that your control surfaces, audio interfaces, etc. have device drivers available that can run on your chosen OS.

The home version of either Win 7 or 8 will run your DAW software well. The ultimate is designed for specialized work in business networks or with amounts of memory that are wasted on Sonar, and has very little to offer over the home versions. Do you need to lock down your DAW from spying eyes in case of theft or use it on a domain server network? Win 8 is ugly and stupid to appeal to people who think the highest level of human achievement is the smart phone, but has some performance enhancements over Win 7 and will probably be supported for a couple of years more than Win 7. If the people who are selling interfaces are willing to write Win 8 drivers for their stuff it should work fine, but more than a few of them have decided to let their old products die in your basement and try to sell you new stuff, for which they will presumably write Win 8 drivers.

I went from X1 on a Vista machine to X3 on a Windows 8.1 machine.  Aside from getting used to the layout of Windows 8.1, I'm absolutely seeing some big-time performance improvements with 8.1!  Now, a lot of that is the computer itself- it's a beast!  i7 4770K processor and 16 gigs of RAM on a 64bit OS.  I miss the Lexicon Reverb but otherwise I'm happy about the transistion.  I see eight processors in Sonar and I've yet to come close to a third of use- and that's with using substantial amounts of plugins and softsynths!  I will say I purposely waited to upgrade the computer and OS at the same time.  The Vista box was over 5 years old. 

Whether it's true or not, I read somewhere (can't find it now, of course) that Steve Ballmer was urged to leave Microsoft because of the redesign of Windows that culminated in W8. Notice 8.1 is a step back toward what Windows used to be.
 
So, take that as you will, but my money is Windows 7 for now, perhaps W9 when it arrives.