Windows 7 vs XP in gaming performance on older laptops?

I've been trying to find a good setup recently for a friends' laptop, but wasn't quite able to find the information I was looking for. Upon researching, I've been finding benchmarks of 7 besting XP in most gaming situations, though those benchmarks are using core-i7 processors. My question is if I were to choose between the two operating systems, which would yield the best performance for the current setup, and if XP would be the optimal choice, would the difference be that significant to warrant using a 9 year old OS?

Dell 1520 Inspiron
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2Ghz T7500
GPU: Nvidia 8600M GT
RAM: 4GB
Display: 1680x1050


Sidenote: Do I need to run 64-bit to utilize the 4GB RAM on the system? and if so would it have better performance to do so, vs. 32-bit?

 

Windows xp seems to be slightly more optimized for older hardware, but windows 7 seems to make better use of cpu's. Since you would need 64bit to use all 4gb windows 7 64 bit is just better with drivers than xp 64bit.

 

I'd go with Windows 7-64 because newer games will be designed to run better on it. I always look at the future whenever I put something on any pc.
Regarding compatibility issues... So far I had no problems running old 32-bit games on my pc like kotor II or starcraft 1/C&C.

 

Thanks for the advice, I've begun installing Windows 7 64-bit. I was a bit afraid to do so thinking windows xp 32-bit(or 64) would've provided better gaming performance.

 

Win 7 all the way. I've found no games so far that would run on XP that wouldn't on 7. Best OS MS has ever made IMHO.

 

Oh no, the question wasn't if or not theyd be compatible, but more so on which platform would provide better FPS for the current setup.

 

I'd say for 99% of the cases, Windows 7 will perform just as good as if not better than XP. I say this moving from XP on both my gaming desktop and laptop since Win 7 was released and never looked back. I tried with Vista but reverted back to XP in a heartbeat.

 

There's zero reason for gamers to avoid Windows 7 64-bit.

 

Win7/64-bit will make full use of your 4GB. Consider too running a dualIDA overclock using Throttlestop on your T7500-2.2 to get 2.4Ghz. It works on a Inspiron 1520 as shown here.

 

Oh that looks like a fantastic suggestion, I'll give it a shot the next chance I get. What of the 8600M GT? does that overclock well? (without the use of any extra cooling/ventilation that is)

 

I had an 8600m GT in my Dell Vostro 1500. It overclocked fairly well, even was able to flash the video BIOS with higher clocks so it would always run faster in 3D gaming.

The Vostro has remarkable cooling though. The 8000 series is known to have failures from solder cracking rendering the GPU dead. But Vostro's seemed to be impervious to that maybe because the cooling was so good, maybe the 1520 has a similar build, I don't recall.