[7 x64] What Brings You To x64 Land?

[yowanvista]

because i have 8gb of ram

[J_R_G]

Had a problem in x86 Vista, so I decided to try x64 Vista to see if the change would affect things. Ended up liking x64 Vista (had both discs because I bought Ultimate edition), I was amazed at how it ran just as good if not better than x86, and how it ran everything and didn't eat my family as some people liked to imply back then (2007). Kept x64, and upgraded from 2GBs to 6GBs, that's when I really started to like x64 (and Vista, I swear that OS never crashed once in 3 years of 24/7 running, only semblance to crashing I had is when the PSU died, and then a bad graphics card, after RMAs nothing but smooth runnings) . Never did fix the original problem that made me switch to x64 I believe, I can't even remember what it was now, but I'm glad it got me to x64. Now running Core i7 965EE with 12GBs and Win 7 x64, and it's just awesome.

[Carbon Fiber]

6GB of RAM, that's why

[beanboy89]

Because I have an x86-64 processor. Back in 2006 when I built my PC, I had gotten the latest and greatest Athlon 64 X2 and went right ahead and tried to install Windows XP x64, but due to so few drivers being available, I quickly abandoned XP x64 and moved to Vista x64. I only had 1 GB RAM at the time, but I didn't care. I just wanted to run x64. Throughout the years, I've upgraded the RAM and the OS of that machine to the point where I have 6 GB RAM and I need to run Windows 7 x64 to take advantage of that RAM.

[WilcoGamer]

Always been so i can use more memory really.

[Raa]

Having more than 3.5Gb of Ram.

[Frylock86]

RAM, general stability of the x64 platform, malware prevention, OS virtualization.

[Dermot]

8gb of ram, 6 core cpu and moving with the times.

[articuno1au]

The biggest objection I have to this thread is comments like "Microsoft (meaning Windows) apps need to keep with the times and start using 64-bit".

For 90% of things, the move to 64bit will have no advantage beyond the removal of WoW64 emulation (which you are doing anyways with Intel using 32bit on 64bit by way of slower memory and stack execution on 32bit apps with x86-64 instructions) :\

Recently uTorrent released a 64bit version. The advantages? Larger disk queues. That's all. For 99.9% people this will NEVER be a problem :s

Office and Visual Studio get pretty decent advantages from 64bit due to large linking and greater memory requirements, not to mention the extended instruction sets. Web browsers will get nearly no benefit. Games will get some benefit, but mainly due to more efficient calls using x86-64 and DirectX libraries. Video encoding will get a pretty huge advantage, as will Photoshop due to more memory and better instruction sets (SSE3 and greater working better on x64). Bleh..

It's just a big load of who cares overall..

I moved when I had 4GB to get the increased performance of 64bit over 32 bit on my x86-64 instructed chip. That's it >.<

You aren't going to see more 64bit apps until market penetration is greater then 75%, otherwise developers are just losing users for little performance benefit. All of the applications that gain advantage from x64 already have an x64 download available >.<

[Anibal P]

Because I have 64bit hardware, makes no sense using an inferior version of the OS an waste the hardware

[daniel_rh]

I have now 6gb of RAM so it was a must, but I've been using x64 since Vista when I had 4gb

[Gerowen]

I switched when I made the complete switch from Windows to Linux. 99% of the software I've needed for Linux has either already been compiled for 64 bit, or came with the source code so I could do it myself. The only 32 bit app I have installed is Avast Antivirus, which I use to scan files for Windows viruses before transferring them to people who may be running Windows. The ability to upgrade beyond 4 GB of RAM in the future if I needed to. Greater encryption strength possibilities are also a plus. Not to mention that everything is going 64 bit anyway, most computers you buy nowadays have 64 bit capable processors, so why would you even bother with 32 bit? That's like buying a car designed to run on premium fuel and filling it up with regular unleaded.

[splur]

Only one reason, I got 8 GB of RAM and would totally be wasting it without 64-bit.

[dezzo]

I upgraded to x64 a few years ago, only because I had a new system with 4GB RAM which I planned on expanding later.

I was hesitant to upgrade to x64 at first, due to all the background noise I had heard from others about things not being compatible, etc etc.

Though, I had zero problems at all, and there is no noticeable difference to me between 32 and 64.

[qdave]

4gb of ram.

Before i used vista 64. And even before that i tried win xp 64 but didnt like it.

[Jimmy422]

Had 4GB of ram, and after getting a video card with 1GB of video ram, was kind of disappointed I couldn't use all 4GB of my RAM. Windows 7 came out and I figured I might as well get 64bit. I don't see too much of a difference except that I can't run any 16-bit programs (Which I can use Windows XP Mode to take care of).

[Volatile]

More RAM.

[MarkusDarkus]

Because I use

CAD

Revit

and CS5.

They all need insane amounts of RAM.

[PGHammer]

.

.

The biggest objection I have to this thread is comments like "Microsoft (meaning Windows) apps need to keep with the times and start using 64-bit".

For 90% of things, the move to 64bit will have no advantage beyond the removal of WoW64 emulation (which you are doing anyways with Intel using 32bit on 64bit by way of slower memory and stack execution on 32bit apps with x86-64 instructions) :\

Recently uTorrent released a 64bit version. The advantages? Larger disk queues. That's all. For 99.9% people this will NEVER be a problem :s

Office and Visual Studio get pretty decent advantages from 64bit due to large linking and greater memory requirements, not to mention the extended instruction sets. Web browsers will get nearly no benefit. Games will get some benefit, but mainly due to more efficient calls using x86-64 and DirectX libraries. Video encoding will get a pretty huge advantage, as will Photoshop due to more memory and better instruction sets (SSE3 and greater working better on x64). Bleh..

It's just a big load of who cares overall..

I moved when I had 4GB to get the increased performance of 64bit over 32 bit on my x86-64 instructed chip. That's it >.<

You aren't going to see more 64bit apps until market penetration is greater then 75%, otherwise developers are just losing users for little performance benefit. All of the applications that gain advantage from x64 already have an x64 download available >.<

I care (and moved) because OS-related crashes means downtime. I don't care if you're an enterprise user or a gamer or even if your biggest *application* is Farmville - OS crashes, application crashes, and software-crash-related downtime bites.

Benefits of x64 *applications* quite aside (and I moved there also where possible), the x64 OS underpinnings are worthwhile even if you change exactly *none* of your applications. If your argument had any weight, then Windows NT would not have made any sense (compared to Windows 3.1).

[Roger H. Veteran]

Oddly enough, as much as i'm a techguy i've been using x86 all this time. In my machines since Thinkpad T60 (~2007) i've always had 4GB of RAM even though the T60 was hard limited to 3GB. I never bothered to install x64 till recently just to test some stuff out. I purposely installed Windows 7 Pro x64 at work the other day - installing Office 2010 on all the machines and mine wouldn't boot back up! Dunno what that was about. That machine was running XP Pro SP3. I took the opportunity to install Windows 7 but that system had 4GB also so i figured why not go 7 64bit to test and if not i'll go back to x86. Installed in 20mins and did updates and installed some of our older apps and they worked from what I saw. Then again i knew they would as my boss got a new machine and that already had 7 x64 anyways :)

After testing it at work, (shouldn't it be the other way around :D) i finally installed it on my laptop to test it there also, just to see how it would run. I did install it once before but something wasn't right on it for some reason, i tried for 1hr then wiped and installed X86.

LOL - oh well - here I am. WEI actually shows higher numbers now too, i'm guessing because of the "more RAM" thing :D

[daniel_rh]

6gb of RAM now, and all the x86 software I have is working perfectly fine

[iKenndac]

I installed the 64-bit version of Windows because my computer has a 64-bit CPU in it.

[Si Veteran]

Switched to the "latest and greatest" some time in 2005 - I was lucky enough to have devices all with drivers for XP Pro x64. Didn't encounter any problems so I've stuck with x64 through Vista and now 7. Still no problems.

[BeerFan]

Lot's of RAM. No reason not to switch to x64.

[nyolc8]

RAM upgrade.