Is Windows Vista 64-bit edition recommended yet?

By Quillz
in Microsoft (Windows)

 Share

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
Posted

I'm getting a new laptop very soon that only comes with 2 GB of RAM. I fully intend to immediately upgrade to 4 GB of RAM, but to get full benefit, I will need to run a 64-bit edition of Vista. I'm coming from Leopard, which apparently runs both 32-bit and 64-bit software side by side. Does Vista 64-bit work the same way? Will I have any compatibility issues with it? Because if not, it seems that the 64-bit OS is the way to go for me.

Grand Master

RAID 0

Posted
Posted

If I were to go out and buy Vista, it would be the 64 bit version even thought I only have two gigs of RAM. There's no reason NOT to start the move to the future. Although, if I did buy Vista, I would be triple booting Vista, XP and Ubuntu. Variety is the spice of life.

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Yeah, I really want to move to Vista 64-bit as well, so that my 4 GB of RAM will be recognized, but then I found a site that still recommended that we stick with the 32-bit edition, due to a lack of 64-bit software. So I'm still confused. Can a 64-bit version of Vista run 32-bit apps? Why do people always complain about compatibility issues if this is the case?

Mentor

Kupo-Cheer

Posted
Posted

I say go for it. I've been using Vista 64bit on 2 of my machines for well over a year now. Software incompatibility is hard for me to come by, since 64bit is now mainstream. The only problems you might come across are older drivers and software. Most everything will have an update or specific version for 64bit Vista, or else will have a generic driver that will automatically install anyway. But to people warning others away because of lack of software support, I don't understand where they're coming from, because between running 3 different computers with a 64bit OS, I haven't had a problem yet.

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
  • Author
Posted
I say go for it. I've been using Vista 64bit on 2 of my machines for well over a year now. Software incompatibility is hard for me to come by, since 64bit is now mainstream. The only problems you might come across are older drivers and software. Most everything will have an update or specific version for 64bit Vista, or else will have a generic driver that will automatically install anyway. But to people warning others away because of lack of software support, I don't understand where they're coming from, because between running 3 different computers with a 64bit OS, I haven't had a problem yet.

But I'm still confused. Will 32-bit software run on Vista 64-bit? Or do I need a 64-bit version of all the software I plan to run? Like, can I just download Firefox 3 and it will work, or do I need a 64-bit version of Firefox 3? One of the things I like about Leopard is that both were supported, so you never had any issues finding software.

Grand Master

Robbie Khan Reviews

Posted
  • Reviews
Posted

Pretty much ALL 32bit software will work and those that don't will have updates to make them work.

Natively 64bit Vista has Windows-on-Windows (WoW64) wrapping to emulate 32bit for those apps. Microsoft says the performance loss in emulating 32bit is very minimal and in some cases of a 32bit app that uses masses of RAM like Photoshop for example it can even run faster even though it's being emulated on Vista64.

I have not seen any app not work or run slow since going 64bit last week and I have a installed app list that scrolls several times.

In task manager you will see what apps are 32bit and what are 64:

taskmanager.PNG

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Alright, everything looks like it will just fine then. I just ordered a new Dell laptop yesterday, but it's shipping with Vista Home Premium 32-bit. Can I contact Microsoft, give them the product key and as for Home Premium in 64-bit? How do I get a 64-bit copy of Vista?

Grand Master

Robbie Khan Reviews

Posted
  • Reviews
Posted

If Dell give you a proper OEM disc to reinstall if a problem occurs instead of a Dell rescue CD then you can simply borrow anyone else's Vista 64bit DVD and install using your product key. If Dell give you a rescue CD then you have a Dell OEM branded version of Vista which has no product key so cannot be upgraded the same way as a system builder OEM version can.

Grand Master

Robbie Khan Reviews

Posted
  • Reviews
Posted

You will see a performance drop with anything below 4GB RAM on Vista64 since it uses almost 2GB Ram in general anyway so your pagefile is going to be constantly sent data and read from resulting in sluggishness.

4GB is the minimum for 64bit, above 4GB is recommended to see any benefit.

Veteran

afusion

Posted
Posted
You will see a performance drop with anything below 4GB RAM on Vista64 since it uses almost 2GB Ram in general anyway so your pagefile is going to be constantly sent data and read from resulting in sluggishness.

4GB is the minimum for 64bit, above 4GB is recommended to see any benefit.

wow that's pretty informative, I was going to install Vista 64

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
  • Author
Posted
If Dell give you a proper OEM disc to reinstall if a problem occurs instead of a Dell rescue CD then you can simply borrow anyone else's Vista 64bit DVD and install using your product key. If Dell give you a rescue CD then you have a Dell OEM branded version of Vista which has no product key so cannot be upgraded the same way as a system builder OEM version can.

I obviously haven't gotten my laptop yet, but it did say I'd get a proper Windows Vista Home Premium DVD. So, I can borrow any Vista 64-bit DVD and use my product key? Even if it's another version, it will still pick up Home Premium?

You will see a performance drop with anything below 4GB RAM on Vista64 since it uses almost 2GB Ram in general anyway so your pagefile is going to be constantly sent data and read from resulting in sluggishness.

4GB is the minimum for 64bit, above 4GB is recommended to see any benefit.

Very informative, thank you. I didn't realize I should only run 64-bit with 4 GB of RAM.

Mentor

morphen

Posted
Posted
Pretty much ALL 32bit software will work and those that don't will have updates to make them work.

Natively 64bit Vista has Windows-on-Windows (WoW64) wrapping to emulate 32bit for those apps. Microsoft says the performance loss in emulating 32bit is very minimal and in some cases of a 32bit app that uses masses of RAM like Photoshop for example it can even run faster even though it's being emulated on Vista64.

There will be no performance loss, since it isn't emulated, it runs nativly, but it can only adress the 32-bit part of the CPU, and up to 4GB ram.

WoW64 is a wrapper, not an emulating layer, like the ones used on IA64 platform, where performance loss is an big issue, since the code set in the cpu is totaly different. The x64 platform is a superset in addition to x86, so there is no need for

emulating, just wrapping.

Grand Master

Robbie Khan Reviews

Posted
  • Reviews
Posted

Microsoft state it is a 32bit emulator, I state my source from a Microsoft article:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384249(VS.85).aspx

There is a very small performance difference but given the power of 64bit Windows this difference is seldom seen by anyone on any machine capable of 64bit computing and on the contrary as mentioned some heavy RAM usage apps that are 32bit often run better on 64bit through WoW64.

Tom's did a writeup too recently, check it out here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vista-workshop,1775.html

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.