A few questions before installing windows 7 public beta...

Microsoft did not change the driver model at all - The intention for 7 is/was that anything that runs on Vista would/should run on 7.

Yes, the 64 bit version will be available. I know this for sure, since it shows up on my Technet account. Once the links become active tomorrow, I will be downloading it myself.

For gaming - Punkbuster checks OS versions, and my understanding is they do not recognize Windows 7 as a valid OS and will refuse your attempt to connect. This may change soon, or may not.

Here's a listing of games that some of the pre-beta guys have played with:
http://www.sevenforums.com/gaming/ [...] s-7-a.html

Area 51
Call of Duty 4
Call of Duty 5
Call of Duty 5 Beta
Company of Heroes
Counter Strike Source
Crysis
Crysis Warhead
Fallout 3
Far Cry 2
F.E.A.R.
F.E.A.R. - Combat Evolved
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Grand Theft Auto: 3
Grand Theft Auto: IV (6956)
Grid
Halo: Combat Evolved
Half-Life:2
Left 4 Dead
Mercenaries 2
Need for Speed: Undercover
Portal
Quake 3
Red Alert 3
Star Trek: Starfleet Command III
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Timeshift
Team Fortress 2
World Of Warcraft

Regarding SLI support - It's the same in 7 as Vista. Though I have seen a couple individuals having issues getting SLI to work. It may be a Mobo/Card combination, or supported on one card but not another - I don't know, since I don't run SLI.
http://www.sevenforums.com/graphic [...] ivers.html

Regarding Performance - 7 is slimmed down a bit from Vista, and the UI was reworked, and by most accounts is faster than Vista - and even XP...

Please understand, though, that it is BETA software, and therefore likely has some bugs and idiosyncracies that will need to be dealt with. Recall at vista's launch, nVidia's drivers were horrible. ATI's were better, though (speaking an an ATI user) of late they seem to have dropped the ball somewhat. Creative... <grrrr>


Towards that end, I do not recommend using Windows 7 as your primary OS. I plan on installing it on a spare HDD I set aside for the purpose.

+1
Create a virtual machine for Win7

i would say go for it, ive been using the win7 7000 32bit as my main since it was leaked and ive yet to have single bsod or compatibility issue.

I want to give it a tried too but i´m worried that my system can´t perform well. I play mostly NFS undercover, battlefront, far cry 2, silent hill and GTA IV.

C2D E6550
4 gb Ram 800mhz
9600 gt

I'm an old ET player and 7 seems not to fully support PB every time i start playing "Wrong API System Version" error accurs same for CoD4 and CoD5
but..
RedAlert 3,CoD4,CoD5,Crysis,Warhead,Stalker,F.E.AR,Fallout3,FarCry2 didn't experience any problem with the single player version of this games.


4gigs in more then enouph for 7 i have similar system to you tomasf 4gigs Corsair slightly overclocked to 900 mhz CL5,Q6600 2.4 Ghz no OC and GT8800 and all works just realy good for me i'm realy impressed by 7.
On log it takes only around 500 Mg but you can still disable alot of servces and it will use less ofc

no i didnt ^^ was unable to run any PB Based online game on it sooo...

Just installed it and it is more responsive than vista looks better too BUT very bad for gaming for the moment. I spent 2 hours just to make crysis launch then when I finnaly enterd the game, BANG FREEZE after 2 seconds. I had to restart computer.
I found a ton of other bugs. I could not install the mp3 corruption fix,daemon tools doesn't work,can't install mods for crysis.
I'm going back to vista . But still I'm very confident about 7.I'm shure it will beat vista in every way when it's released.

I think i'm gonna wait for the full version. Maybe it was just a SLI issue.
Im on vista now and it's ALLOT slower than 7 with the usual descktop activity(copy,install, delete....)

Scotteq:

"I plan on installing it on a spare HDD I set aside for the purpose."

I haven't done any beta testing before and would like to try with Windows 7 Beta. I was thinking about doing exactly what you said; i e, use a spare HDD. Question is: will I need to swap out my current Vista HDD then swap it back in when I want to revert back to Vista?

I am not really sure what to do.

Exactly what i did. Same machine 2 HDs. I am not dual booting. I just unplug the HD i dont want to boot.

I used a 4 year old Seagate SATA i had from an old HP. Worked perfectly. Installed quick, boots quick, etc. I cant wait to see it boot on the much faster SATA II, 7200.11 i have.

you dont even need to uplug existing harddrive. if you add a second ( or third, etc) then select custom install you can install i ton the second drive and it will add your current OS as a boot option. i currently have 5 hard drives and have a XP64, vista 64, win7-64 tri boot and it works fine booting into either without having to deal with changing bios settings.