64 bit

[Gatsby]

My LS was talking about 64 bit Vista (lolvista), since I can upgrade to 64 bit from 32 bit is it worthwhile from those who have upgraded it?

Thanks

[SephYuyX]

There are pros, and negitives, but honestly, to keep it short, unless youre planning to use x64 only stuff, save yourself the headache. There may be a few nice x64 features, but if you play alot of older games, or use small time software, alot of those only support x86, and youll be sol on x64. There just ends up being to many issues to deal with on x64.

[Stiker]

I've upgraded to 64-bit and haven't had a problem with any x86 applications yet as Vista surprisingly has been doing a good job running them all.

However, the biggest pro to using a 64-bit OS is to take advantage of being able to utilize more RAM (and that is dependent on which 64-bit version you get) as 32-bit caps at 4 GB of RAM I believe. So if you aren't going to try to push the RAM envelope, there really isn't too much of a big reason to go 64-bit.

[Gatsby]

There are pros, and negitives, but honestly, to keep it short, unless youre planning to use x64 only stuff, save yourself the headache. There may be a few nice x64 features, but if you play alot of older games, or use small time software, alot of those only support x86, and youll be sol on x64. There just ends up being to many issues to deal with on x64.

I don't play older games or use small time software. Its mainly mass market stuff that I'm not really worried about. If I use recent stuff and its my personal machine, there aren't any major drawbacks other than the small occasional software headaches?

[Kiro]

I have XP Pro 64-bit and I haven't noticed any changes. There have been programs in the past that wouldn't work properly anymore, but there was always a 64-bit alternative. Most of my old games still work as well. Only one that doesn't that makes me sadface is CoD2.

[Mojo]

64 bit is quite nice for newer games and applications. Anybody saying that Vista won't be able to 32 bit programs well probably hasn't used Vista in a long time. XPx86 will still run 32 bit applications faster and better, although Vista SP1 did a good job at closing the gap. If you play new games, upgrading to Vistax64 is definitely worth considering. I don't recommend XP 64, Microsoft has discontinued support for it. If you don't want to pay for anything and don't want to go through the hassle of pirating it, you can download Windows 7 and try the beta I suppose although that could be troublesome on some occasions.

[Kaisha]

If you play new games, upgrading to Vistax64 is definitely worth considering.

Out of curiosity, do the newer games even sport a 64-bit executable these days? All I ever see in modern games is just a DX9 & DX10 EXEs both in 32-bit and that's it.

I'm also assuming running a 32-bit app in a 64-bit OS still gives the game the limitation of 4gb RAM, or is Windows Vista smart about that?

[Reality]

Only a handful of games (newer games obviously) have 64-bit executables, Crysis and perhaps Farcry 2

With that said, each game's 32-bit alternative executable still receives the benefit of the additional ram you'd be able to put into your machine from going the x64 route

personally speaking, i've got XP x64 & Vista x64 in a dual-boot config on my setup, and everything runs just fine (the only hiccup was converting my IDE-emulated SATAII boot drive for XP & Vista, back to SATAII after the OS's were installed, that was a pain in my ass)

[Isiolia]

There are the occasional games with 64-bit support. Crysis for one.

I've used 64-bit on some machines, 32-bit on others, it's largely transparent until you're needing drivers or something.

IMO, if you've got 32-bit, and it's working fine, then no reason to swap. Windows 7 "shouldn't" be too far off.

[Mojo]

Some games do, some games don't, although most high profile games do. I don't have an answer for your RAM question, I honestly never thought about that before.

[Cephius]

I use Vista 64-bit, have been for about 6 months now, and I couldn't be happier with it. It seems quicker in general, and I haven't had any driver problems (other than Linksys, fuck those guys for refusing to make 64 bit drivers, seriously) or compatibility errors. I even managed to get some oldass games like Wing Commander and Freespace 2 to run fine on it.

To answer your RAM question, 32 bit apps are limited in how much RAM they can use, but you still have a larger amount of addressable RAM, so it's not that much of an issue unless you're running some game that's using more than ~3.5GB of RAM.

[Kaisha]

So for instance, if you had 8gb of RAM and 3gb was in use, the OS can give 4 of the 5 GB of free space for the 32-bit app to access? I always assumed they'd be limited to the first 4gb due to the way memory is addressed, unless the OS was programmed to work around that/

[Mojo]

The OS will be able to give it a full 4GB, it shouldn't matter whether it's the first or last 4GB of addressable memory.

[Olo401]

Basically the maximum amount that a 32-bit OS can identify AND address is exactly 4GB. However the OS will be limited on the amount of memory it can "see" and "use" beyond 3GB because of the way a 32-bit system addresses memory. The final amount of memory available for programs is that weird number that shows up in your system properties or task manager (on my machine it's 2.8GB, average is 3.12GB). 64-bit systems also have this problem, however they can identify up to 32GB of memory so you can just add more memory if your system demands it.

Here's a great thread that explains what's happening. It's heavy on the techiness, just to warn you.

Edit: This is a slightly less techy version.

[Mojo]

That's actually not what he was referring to. Windows devotes a maximum 4GB of memory to any 32 bit application. 2GB of that will be used by the OS and 2 GB of that will be used by the application. This was never really applicable though because any 32 bit version of Windows was in itself limited to 4GB of addressable memory. Vista changes this, and again I'm not exactly sure how it works out although I don't think you'll come across many 32 bit applications that can take advantage of more than 4GB of ram.

[Olo401]

Oh right that's true - that's the reason Windows uses a swap file for when physical memory isn't enough.