32bit or 64bit


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i am trying to decide if i should go for 64bit over 32bit

if i go 64 will the 32 bit programs i use work also will my games work

thanks for ya help

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I personally don't like 64 bit yet.... Honestly, it just isn't as fast as 32 bit on any sys i've used so far... Could be the drivers causing the issue, but there's not much i can do about that... So, its 32 bit for me for the foreseeable future.

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Some games will be buggy because of the luck of developers support and the programs will run in emulated 32bit mode, which removes the 64bit need (and support).

I've yet to encounter any problems since Vista was released - go 64-bit.

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I use 64-bit because I have 8 Gigs of RAM. Having said that, it works flawlessly. Every app I had installed on my Vista 32-bit setup works perfectly in my 64-bit Win 7.

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Go 64-bit it works fine. The only problems I've encountered have been programs that need to install a Driver to work on the system but they don't have the money to get their Driver certified by Microsoft so it wont run on 64-bit but these programs are few and far between. I've also had issues with Vista Codecs but not any longer Codecs have come a long way for 64-bit Vista and now work fine.

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cool thanks for the info \m/

Actually...that depends. Is your system 64bit capable? ie: Dual Core/64bit CPU? If you have a single core then you won't be able to install 64 bit.

Drivers are an issue too. If your system requires specific 64 bit drivers and they are not available, then you will run into some problems. In general, most Vista 64 bit drivers should work.

I have a dual core laptop and have been switching between 32 and 64 bit and both run well. My only gripe is that there is no 64 bit "print to OneNote" driver.

David

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If you don't have more than 4 gigs of ram, then you honestly aren't missing out at all with 64-bit. If anything, preformance will drop since there are MORE processes running in 64bit windows. I also noticed that the windows 7 rc is a bit buggier with the 64bit version so i just finished going back to x86 =].

Edited by consume
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Actually...that depends. Is your system 64bit capable? ie: Dual Core/64bit CPU? If you have a single core then you won't be able to install 64 bit.

Drivers are an issue too. If your system requires specific 64 bit drivers and they are not available, then you will run into some problems. In general, most Vista 64 bit drivers should work.

I have a dual core laptop and have been switching between 32 and 64 bit and both run well. My only gripe is that there is no 64 bit "print to OneNote" driver.

David

64-bit and dual-core are two separate things. In fact I'm running windows 7 x64 on my single core AMD Sempron laptop and it runs just fine.

@OP

Some of the problems I've run into with x64 are related to drivers and driver-related programs, so it's still not perfect. On my my desktop I have to run x86 because ther are no 64-bit drivers for my TV Tuner. On my laptop a program the checks the charge and wear-level of my battery does not work on x64. Neither does Netstumbler. So you might run into problems depending on the programs you run.

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Actually...that depends. Is your system 64bit capable? ie: Dual Core/64bit CPU? If you have a single core then you won't be able to install 64 bit.

Whoever gave you that nugget of information was completely wrong.

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Microsoft should keep the 32-bit / 64-bit nonsense behind the scenes and default to whatever the system supports, with advanced options for those that to get around it. Instead we have OEMs shipping the 32bit version of Vista for no good reason and continue to have confusion.

If your machine supports 64bit then install the 64bit version. Simple.

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I personally don't like 64 bit yet.... Honestly, it just isn't as fast as 32 bit on any sys i've used so far... Could be the drivers causing the issue, but there's not much i can do about that... So, its 32 bit for me for the foreseeable future.

First off, which games are you having the issue with? (So far, I have not had the issue with *any* game that has shipped within the past two years. In every case, the performance, so far, has been the same as in 32-bit, except that in some cases, performance has improved, both in terms of frames per second and in terms of stability.) What's even wackier, I'm running ATI PCIe graphics on an nForce 630i-based mATX motherboard.

Also, what *hardware* are you running? (It could indeed be a driver issue; however, without knowing what drivers you are using, how can the issue be addressed?)

I triple-boot Vista Ultimate 64-bit (SP 1), 7 Ultimate RC, and Kubuntu 9.04 on a Celeron DC E1200 with but a gigabyte of RAM. I may be doing something differently.

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Actually...that depends. Is your system 64bit capable? ie: Dual Core/64bit CPU? If you have a single core then you won't be able to install 64 bit.

Drivers are an issue too. If your system requires specific 64 bit drivers and they are not available, then you will run into some problems. In general, most Vista 64 bit drivers should work.

I have a dual core laptop and have been switching between 32 and 64 bit and both run well. My only gripe is that there is no 64 bit "print to OneNote" driver.

David

There are some single-core (modern Celeron/Sempron) CPUs that are 64-bit ready; there are also some dual-core CPUs that are not (Core Duo, as opposed to Core 2). I've crossgraded four systems from 32-bit to 64-bit, and the first two were based on single-core Celeron-Ds.

Drivers are the biggest bugaboo remaining; however, the more recent the hardware is, the less that should be an issue. (It should NOT be an issue for any major IHV with hardware two years old or less.)

While you can't print to OneNote directly, you can print to XPS (which OneNote is compatible with) using a 64-bit driver (the Microsoft XPS driver, which is included with Office 2007, in fact, and is updated with Office 2007 Service Pack 1); there's a 64-bit PDF printer driver available as well.

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Microsoft should keep the 32-bit / 64-bit nonsense behind the scenes and default to whatever the system supports, with advanced options for those that to get around it. Instead we have OEMs shipping the 32bit version of Vista for no good reason and continue to have confusion.

If your machine supports 64bit then install the 64bit version. Simple.

Exactyl. 32bit should only be left reserved for the few cases where 64 bit is not supported, otherwise it should install 64 bit by default.

I've been running 64 bit for 3 years now, first XP 64, now (since January) Win7 x64, and never had a single problem with apps or drivers.

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Don't notice any difference to be quite honest and it takes up a higher disk footprint than a x86 install which matters on my 80gig notebook HDD. But if you have the supporting hardware and 4gigs+ RAM you'd be really being doing yourself a disservice not going x64.

OT, for any dell notebook users using the I8k fan utilityx64 is there anyway to get passed the Windows unsigned driver block?

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