Vista 32 vs 64

[Barney T. Administrators]

You can get firefox-3.0a6pre.en-US.win64 (2007-06-12):

http://www.mozilla-x86-64.com/download.html

Hmmmm... tried that Fred, it wouldn't install.... But I also have 32-bit Firefox , so there may be a side-by-side compatibility issue.

[Fred Derf Veteran]

Hmmmm... tried that Fred, it wouldn't install.... But I also have 32-bit Firefox , so there may be a side-by-side compatibility issue.

You can run it side-by-side with Firefox Portable (as long as only one is open at a time).

[MtnDewCodeRedFreak]

32-bit is soooo yesterday (or make that 5 years+ old technology). :)

Actually, 32-bit have been around since the days of Win 3.1, when it was a hybrid 16-/32-bit OS.

The first true 32-bit OS is Windows 95 OSR2, released in 1997 (that has support for FAT32).

So, 32-bit has been around for 15 years, to be exact.

[Barney T. Administrators]

You can run it side-by-side with Firefox Portable (as long as only one is open at a time).

Nice... I'll keep that in mind. :woot:

[veegun]

@MtDewCodeRedFreak: Hey, you're right. A decade and a half old. One could argue that makes 32-bit apps more stable since they've been around longer than x64 apps (which according to wiki x64 windows xp/2003 server has been around since 2005; so only 2 years old). But if you do any sort of dabbling in x64 programming, it's surprisingly easy to create a 64-bit application.

A lot of the open source projects are becoming more 64-bit friendly. So, I'll say by the end of this year, we'll have a bunch of open source projects that'll have 64-bit releases to accompany their 32-bit siblings. Most of the projects that I mess around with are already 64-bit compliant today. If I release anything, it'll be in 64-bit only.

[Jelly2003]

Actually, 32-bit have been around since the days of Win 3.1, when it was a hybrid 16-/32-bit OS.

The first true 32-bit OS is Windows 95 OSR2, released in 1997 (that has support for FAT32).

So, 32-bit has been around for 15 years, to be exact.

I don't think that any of the Windows 9x family was ever completely 32-bit, it was always a mix of some legacy 16-bit and 32-bit which is the reason why Windows 9x was so unstable. The reason that it has 16 bit components is because Win 9x always relied on loading 16-bit DOS first, then Windows was loaded AFTER DOS booted. So some of the code at the OS core was always 16 bit no matter how much MS tried to hide the DOS roots of 9x.

Windows NT 3.1 (not Windows 3.1) was the first fully 32-bit version of Windows I believe, it had a fully 32-bit kernel, and that then evolved to Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 (NT 5), Windows XP (NT 5.1), Windows Server 2003 (NT 5.2) then Windows Vista (NT 6).

Unlike the Win 9x transition from 16-bit to 32-bit, the 64-bit version of Vista is 100% 64 bit, but it has an virtualisation mode which allows it to run almost all 32-bit applications and some 32-bit drivers as long as you are running it an x64 CPU, because the nature of the x64 CPU allows the execution of both 64 bit and 32 bit code.

If you were running Windows on a 64-bit CPU that isn't based on the x64 architecture, it is not capable of running 32-bit applications because the CPU itself doesn't have the instruction sets necessary to execute 32-bit code.

[johnbennet]

Hi guys, my first post (under this name, cant remember old one)

Ive tried both versions of vista now and can honestly say i cant seem to see an actual world difference between the 2, im using a core 2, 4 gig, geforce 8 so i did expect a significant difference but no..

I hate to say something on my first post that might get me flamed but what the hell.. STICK WITH XP, it rocks, everything just works !!

problems im still having with Vista include: framerate issues on a 2 games (some kind of memory leak), i would say most games ran just that little bit better under XP (marginaly but its still there), someone mentioned mame32, well all i can say is i cant get it to even attempt an installation, this is a major bummer for me as it one of my favourite programs and have over 2000 roms i cant use : ((( HEELLLLPPPP

If you do any torrent downloading, DO NOT BUY ANY VERSION OF VISTA, after days of messing about i finally got one to download about 90% slower than under XP.

still have a webcam, memory stick !!, joystick and tv tuner (gave up on them now) that won't work at all.

Logitech z-10 speakers still wont run as intended, this as soured me against logitech as they clearly stated Vista ready on the box but they only work as bog standard pc speakers.

I'm not mentioning half of it, in fact if it wasnt for direct x10 id revert back to XP in a heartbeat and wouldnt look back.

[echo]

If you do any torrent downloading, DO NOT BUY ANY VERSION OF VISTA, after days of messing about i finally got one to download about 90% slower than under XP.

Don't worry about getting flamed...at least by mature posters anyways. As long as you aren't posting ignorant/rude/offensive/etc... posts you are fine.

Everyone has their experiences and everyone seems to have their own opinions. For me X86 (which is what is technically x32, but i understand when you say x32) Vista ultimate was great, and x64 ultimate is even better. I have but ONE problem and that's a sound problem with doesn't pose a problem to me. I have had no program problems, but i've already posted in this thread...so anyways.

Your torrent problem...i think it's the torrents you are downloading. I have downloaded a ton of torrents already (of course they are freeware programs :whistle: ) and have had no problems with any of them. So it's either the client you are running (i'm running u-torrent) or the .torrent files themselves. Not sure, but it's not Vista.

[Jelly2003]

I hate to say something on my first post that might get me flamed but what the hell.. STICK WITH XP, it rocks, everything just works !!

YOU'VE BEEN FLAMED!!!!

Don't worry about getting flamed...at least by mature posters anyways.

Sorry that was actually quite immature.

Back on track though, I have an ASUS F3Jm, but ASUS were VERY slack in releasing Vista compatible drivers. I tried Vista x64 in January it was less than useful because of the lack of drivers. It seems that they have just about everything covered now concerning drivers so I decided to give it another go.

Surprisingly, Enemy Territory doesn't work in the x86 build of Vista, so it's not an x64 specific problem

This thread inspired me to give Windows Vista another shot on my laptop, so I downloaded Vista 32-bit to trial and this time around it seems to run everything.

I saved the copy of 64-bit that I downloaded earlier this year, so out of interest I am now going to install the 64-bit version tonight onto my temp Vista partition and see if I can get everything running to the same level on the 64 bit version as I have on 32 bit.

If everything works on 64-bit Vista this time then I will probably install that when I upgrade in the near future, otherwise I will stick with the 32-bit version and buy that instead.

Although... I think Vista Ultimate comes with both 32-bit and 64-bit DVD's when you buy it. Is that true?

[beanboy89]

I've had three OSes installed on my PC. Originally XP x64, then Vista x86 RC1, and finally Vista x64 RTM.

I'm using Vista Ultimate x64 right now. I have had absolutely no hardware driver issues. In fact, all my hardware was working right after I installed Vista, I had to install no drivers whatsoever. Also, I've had no software compatibility problems, either. Every piece of software I've tried has worked just fine. I've been very pleased with the performance of Vista x64, too.

Now, Windows XP x64 was a totally different story. My sound card wasn't detected, I could find no drivers for my wireless card, and there were a few other issues. Vista x64 is a huge step forward, IMO, compared to XP x64.

[Jeff-Flowers]

I'm running Vista x64 and for the most part, it is just like running 32-bit Vista.

[johnbennet]

I think all versions of Vista except basic come with both 32 and 64bit versions on disk. Not 100% certain.

Im using Vista Home Premium not Ultimate, do you think there could be some kind of difference between the two that might affect torrent downloads? I too use u-torrent.

[dr.bisho]

stick to xp till vista get fixed up by SP's and fixes updates, like 1 year or so, then get it :p

[apollo_1444]

x64 is just for nerds that want to get the lattest things, x32 is perfectly fine for today standards it has great driver support, great stability and most of the games run better on x32 so I'm not going to upgrade for now. lets just all wait for SP1 and then I'll think about it.

[Jelly2003]

It's a good thing that I am a nerd that wants to get the latest things.

After re-installing Vista 64 it's definitely improved now, I have all my drivers installed and everything works as you'd expect.

When I get my new hard drive I think Vista x64 will be going on there, but for the moment I am sticking with XP Pro. Enemy Territory still doesn't run with punk buster enabled :cry:

[Linkinfamous]

x64 is just for nerds that want to get the lattest things, x32 is perfectly fine for today standards it has great driver support, great stability and most of the games run better on x32 so I'm not going to upgrade for now. lets just all wait for SP1 and then I'll think about it.

Uh huh. And if you want 4 gigs of memory?

[Sillysam]

XP is better.

Vista 32 if you want a somewhat usable OS.. Vista 64 if you only want to be able to use notepad, and possibly MSpaint.

Theres little driver support for vista to begin with, and no one is writing decent 64-bit compatible drivers...

Spoken from a true idiot :D

[d3nuo]

XP is better.

Vista 32 if you want a somewhat usable OS.. Vista 64 if you only want to be able to use notepad, and possibly MSpaint.

Theres little driver support for vista to begin with, and no one is writing decent 64-bit compatible drivers...

ignorance is such a beautiful thing! you've obviously no idea what you're talking about.

[ScottKin]

Hi guys, my first post (under this name, cant remember old one)

Ive tried both versions of vista now and can honestly say i cant seem to see an actual world difference between the 2, im using a core 2, 4 gig, geforce 8 so i did expect a significant difference but no..

It would be interesting to see what kind of benchmarks that your Vista 64-bit would generate.

I hate to say something on my first post that might get me flamed but what the hell.. STICK WITH XP, it rocks, everything just works !!

Bah - everyone here has been flamed at least three or more times here...it toughens you up, along the lines of "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. :yes:

problems im still having with Vista include: framerate issues on a 2 games (some kind of memory leak), i would say most games ran just that little bit better under XP (marginaly but its still there), someone mentioned mame32, well all i can say is i cant get it to even attempt an installation, this is a major bummer for me as it one of my favourite programs and have over 2000 roms i cant use : ((( HEELLLLPPPP

You can try installing Mame32 by (a) opening-up the properties of the installer program, and (b) on the "Compatability" tab of that prop-sheet you should be able to select the proper XP emulation you need for your system. A few older games that I wanted to check against Vista - such as "Homeworld 2", "Half-Life" and "StarCraft" had troubles installing untill I specified the XP Compatability for the installers...but ran without complaint once they were installed.

If you do any torrent downloading, DO NOT BUY ANY VERSION OF VISTA, after days of messing about i finally got one to download about 90% slower than under XP.

I have no problem with downloading any .torrent contect with my client (G3Torrent) on Vista. Windows Firewall may be screwing-around with the permitted ports and such, so check there and make suret the you don't have any ports blocked and/or applications blocked or permitted.

still have a webcam, memory stick !!, joystick and tv tuner (gave up on them now) that won't work at all.

I'm sure that if we all put our heads together that we could find a solution for the webcam , memory stick, joystick and tv tuner card issues.

Logitech z-10 speakers still wont run as intended, this as soured me against logitech as they clearly stated Vista ready on the box but they only work as bog standard pc speakers.

After a little digging, I think I found a patch from Logitech that specifically resolves issues for the Z-10 2.1 USB speakers:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925528/en-us

Even if your system is less than 2GB of RAM, this patch might be just what you're looking for - more info in this threat on Logitech's Forums:

http://forums.logitech.com/logitech/board/...message.id=1461

I'm not mentioning half of it, in fact if it wasnt for direct x10 id revert back to XP in a heartbeat and wouldnt look back.

A really good source for fixes or work-arounds are the microsoft.public newsgroups - tons of fairly new and relevant solutions there...and here as well!

The biggest issue I have with Vista overall is the orphaning of ActiveSync for Pocket PCs and removing support from within Windows Mobile for any Pocket PC device that is not running Pocket PC 2003 or later - hence, I'm regularly dual-booting XP x64 and Vista 32.

Hope this info helps you!

--ScottKin

P.S. If anyone would like to donate their old, disused Pocket PC devices to me - where I can keep one of them that runs at least Pocket PC 2003 and donate the rest to the Used Electronics drive to help my 10-year-old's Start-of-the-School-year fundraiser in September, 2007, please PM me. THANKS!

[veegun]

I still run Windows XP SP2 (32-bit) but inside a virtual machine (VMWare). Mainly, just to test out if the stuff I write still runs on legacy Windows platform. Yes, windows xp is a legacy OS. When an OS is a decade or older, it's considered a legacy product/technology IMO. Of course, my host OS is pure x64 Vista goodness. I also run Ubuntu linux as a guest OS. Yes, I'm a geek.

Oh, by the way, VMWare has experimental support for DirectX. So, some games will run inside the guest OS. I haven't tried throwing DX games at it to see how good it runs them though. It's pretty sweet to be able to run stuff that usually can only be run full screen inside a virtual machine window.

VMWare also supports hardware virtualization (although I don't have a cpu that has this feature both AMD and Intel offer them). I plan to get one the next time I upgrade to a better machine (quad core or octo core). It's already running pretty fast on my dual core machine. Starting up the guest OS from power up takes a while though. But once it's up and running, the speed is pretty reasonable.

No, I don't work for VMWare. :no: I just like their product. :yes:

[johnbennet]

It would be interesting to see what kind of benchmarks that your Vista 64-bit would generate.

Bah - everyone here has been flamed at least three or more times here...it toughens you up, along the lines of "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. :yes:

You can try installing Mame32 by (a) opening-up the properties of the installer program, and (b) on the "Compatability" tab of that prop-sheet you should be able to select the proper XP emulation you need for your system. A few older games that I wanted to check against Vista - such as "Homeworld 2", "Half-Life" and "StarCraft" had troubles installing untill I specified the XP Compatability for the installers...but ran without complaint once they were installed.

I have no problem with downloading any .torrent contect with my client (G3Torrent) on Vista. Windows Firewall may be screwing-around with the permitted ports and such, so check there and make suret the you don't have any ports blocked and/or applications blocked or permitted.

I'm sure that if we all put our heads together that we could find a solution for the webcam , memory stick, joystick and tv tuner card issues.

After a little digging, I think I found a patch from Logitech that specifically resolves issues for the Z-10 2.1 USB speakers:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925528/en-us

Even if your system is less than 2GB of RAM, this patch might be just what you're looking for - more info in this threat on Logitech's Forums:

http://forums.logitech.com/logitech/board/...message.id=1461

A really good source for fixes or work-arounds are the microsoft.public newsgroups - tons of fairly new and relevant solutions there...and here as well!

The biggest issue I have with Vista overall is the orphaning of ActiveSync for Pocket PCs and removing support from within Windows Mobile for any Pocket PC device that is not running Pocket PC 2003 or later - hence, I'm regularly dual-booting XP x64 and Vista 32.

Hope this info helps you!

--ScottKin

P.S. If anyone would like to donate their old, disused Pocket PC devices to me - where I can keep one of them that runs at least Pocket PC 2003 and donate the rest to the Used Electronics drive to help my 10-year-old's Start-of-the-School-year fundraiser in September, 2007, please PM me. THANKS!

Thank You.

[xXTOKERXx]

Love threads like these that go off on tangents.

So people are in mixed minds about vista full stop and hardware support.

Well i would imagine a large percent of hardware is fully sorted, Microsoft certainly are not stupid and wouldn't release a platform that was complete useless.

I would say that early days they have been problems, since i bought my laptop with pre-installed home basic it has been painless and very easy to use fully supported on the hardware and not a problem updating drivers.

My actual question was regarding 64 over 32 which didn't really get much said, but appears 64 is mainly for people who require it out of the box and offers little to no performance increase under standard software.

Therefore i am quite happy to continue to use my home basic edition to do what i need to do, and 64 after SP1 depending on the feedback i come across.

Good read for my thread, so thanks

[NEVER85]

I still run Windows XP SP2 (32-bit) but inside a virtual machine (VMWare). Mainly, just to test out if the stuff I write still runs on legacy Windows platform. Yes, windows xp is a legacy OS. When an OS is a decade or older, it's considered a legacy product/technology IMO.

By that logic, XP won't be a legacy OS until 2011.

[BoDEAN]

What percentage of people use Vista64 over Vista32? 10% would you say?

[onecleverthought]

I thought I'd give my 2 cents since I've used both 32 bit and 64 bit versions for a few months now.

The 32 bit version of vista has virtually no problems with drivers. I have a Sony VAIO with a blu-ray writer, 2 gigs of ram, dual core, and a 256 gig graphics card in it. When I bought it, I assumed that because it had a 64 bit processor, that Sony would naturally hand out 64-bit copies of windows vista....I was wrong. It came with the 32 bit version pre-installed on it. So I ordered the ultimate 64-bit version from Microsoft and installed it. From the first time it booted up in March until today, I've had countless driver issues. I'll be specific:

1. Audio drivers - finally, fixed, but took forever to find the correct ones

2. Graphics drivers - Geforce doesn't support my graphics card for 64-bit processors. So I installed another driver that happened to work OK.

3. Server programs I used prior would not install...had to switch.

4. Could not burn blu-ray movies (no support).

5. All my media and special function keys no longer worked on my laptop.

6. The motion eye (video cam) on my laptop no longer worked.

7. Most recently (and also what pushed me to reinstall 32-bit vista today), no support for the iPhone through iTunes...at all.

I've seen a lot of posts on here saying that it's not Microsoft's fault...it's not vista's problem...it's the 3rd party software developers' faults. That's true, but it's still a problem nonetheless...no matter who's fault it is. Honestly, using both I have seen little difference in performance between the two versions, if any at all! So if anyone is considering moving over to the 64 bit version of windows vista, I would strongly recommend NOT doing so. If you have a SONY VAIO laptop with blu-ray...I DEFINITELY steer clear from converting over.

Hope this helps,

Curt