Vista 64bit or 32bit

[Major.Hangover]

Hey there, so my comp should be arriving any day now and i have a problem. Which should I install, 64bit or 32bit. It's a pretty high tech comp with 4gb RAM, therefore if 32 is installed i wont use the 4gb RAM to the end, on the other hand 64bit i could. However, apparently there are major problems with 64bit vista therefore im not sure whether to take the risk of installing 64bit for a extra gig of ram. If any of this makes sense... :S :P

What do you think?

[Acreo Aeneas]

If you install 32-bit Vista, you'll have to pull out 1 GB of RAM as Vista has boot-up issues running with more than 3 GBs of RAM installed.

As for 32-bit vs. 64-bit, it depends heavily on your usage record with your last system.

For example, if you are a power user like myself, you might have a media player playing a song, Photoshop CS2 open with several high-res digital photos doing various edits and such, Dreamweaver running with about 10 pages/tabs open, Firefox running with multiple tabs, IE7 running, Opera 9 running, and maybe even a download or two going.

My above example can easily eat through 2 GBs of RAM in the matter of one hour of work. So for me, 4 GBs of RAM is justified.

However, if you plan on just running the latest games and perhaps some ligher multitasking, than 2 GBs of RAM is more than sufficient and therefore 32-bit Vista would suit you well (or 64-bit if you have a bunch of 64-bit programs).

[Bamboo]

Naughty Naughty Hangover.
Should have scrolled down or searched and found this thread from a week ago:
http://www.tacticalgamer.com/hardwar...t-windows.html

Pretty good discussion going on there. I say the 64, but question is if you computer is a ready made rig, like from Dell, or one you are building yourself?
If it is one you are building yourself, I think that the 64 bit version disk is different than the 32, at least from the places I have seen it for sale.
If it is from Dell or someother place, you will have the OS installed already, and I have heard that Dell doesn't like you installing 64, and probably not like HP and Gateway, etc.

[Apophis]

I just ordered another 4GB of RAM and Vista Ultimate 64. It will be arriving tomorrow and going on my machine machine at home. So I can assume you'll guess what my suggestion would be.

I've not had any issues with Vista 64 on my laptop so I'm making the plunge on the desktop.

[msdz]

I've just received my copy of Vista 64 today, of course it is not intended for this computer cause it would not handle it anyway. I am still waiting for some other stuff so I can build my new computer. I will be running 4Gb of RAM with it but bought the RAM with intentions of possibly more later. Maybe another 4Gb, all the motherboard can support.
Which makes me think, anybody seen a motherboard that could support a lot of RAM, like say the full 128Gb of RAM Vista 64 bit is supposed to handle. Makes me wonder how they know Vista will support 128Gb of RAM if no company offers a MB that supports that much RAM? MostI have seen supported has been 16Gb of RAM.

[Apophis]

Originally Posted by msdz

I've just received my copy of Vista 64 today, of course it is not intended for this computer cause it would not handle it anyway. I am still waiting for some other stuff so I can build my new computer. I will be running 4Gb of RAM with it but bought the RAM with intentions of possibly more later. Maybe another 4Gb, all the motherboard can support.
Which makes me think, anybody seen a motherboard that could support a lot of RAM, like say the full 128Gb of RAM Vista 64 bit is supposed to handle. Makes me wonder how they know Vista will support 128Gb of RAM if no company offers a MB that supports that much RAM? MostI have seen supported has been 16Gb of RAM.

I just ordered a machine at work with 128GB of RAM. I think you need to look in a place other than NewEgg considering the RAM alone for the machine cost over $20,000. I'm not sure you'll find that type of hardware on your average consumer site.

[msdz]

LOL, I doubt it. I was just wondering though.

[Bamboo]

Lots of MBs can support that, but they are mostly designed for use in servers, which could actually put that much memory to use.
I have read of some folks in the forums I cruise that have 8 gigs, but even with everything I can throw at my computer, I still can't get it to go past 3.5 gigs usage.
I was even running Prime95 tonight, which put my q6600 at all 4 cores flat out 100%, and the memory was at 3.2 gigs. I was also using Firefox and Paint.net at the same time with now real slow down. Hows that for multi tasking. Couldn't be done with Vista 32 nearly as well.

[Rincewind]

I love my 8gb of ram

[thebonecollector]

lol why would you need 8 gig for , even with video editing program i cant cap the 4 gig

[Grieg]

64 bit Windows XP. Best of both worlds. I'm living in Vista hell at the moment. If directX 10 is your reasoning behind going with Vista, I can tell you from experience its not worth it.

[Bamboo]

There is actually way better support for Vista 64 than there is for XP 64. I like playing with little programs and testing things, and lots of times I see where they have an update for it to work with Vista 64, but not XP. Microsoft is really pushing vendors now to get in gear and fix their drivers and software, which they never really did for XP 64.
And DX10 was pretty low on my list for reasons. I went with it for the 4 gigs of memory, and the fact that I had to buy a new OS for a new computer, and it is stupid to buy XP when in 9-12 months you are going to want Vista and have to spend another $200 or so. I think sales are going to go way up next month after service pack 1 is released, though they have most of the updates out already in their monthly releases.

[ScratchMonkey]

Originally Posted by Major.Hangover

However, apparently there are major problems with 64bit vista

Can you post links to these problems? I've not heard of anything specific to 64 bit, only general Vista issues. And many of those are due to poorly-coded applications that don't work properly under the better security in Vista. (Some break under a proprerly-secured XP, like older versions of AutoCAD.)

[ScratchMonkey]

Originally Posted by thebonecollector

lol why would you need 8 gig for , even with video editing program i cant cap the 4 gig

Solidworks. Especially when it pulls in lots of library parts and external subassemblies. That program is a big memory pig.

But I'm curious to know what Apophis' 128 GB beast will be doing. That's more than I can imagine even SW using. Perhaps a monster transaction system? Just imagine how long it would take to stream 128 GB of data from a fast hard disk or 10 gigabit network.

[Apophis]

Originally Posted by ScratchMonkey

Solidworks. Especially when it pulls in lots of library parts and external subassemblies. That program is a big memory pig.

But I'm curious to know what Apophis' 128 GB beast will be doing. That's more than I can imagine even SW using. Perhaps a monster transaction system? Just imagine how long it would take to stream 128 GB of data from a fast hard disk or 10 gigabit network.

It's going to be a VMware testbed. In preparation for the REAL VMware server. It's insane how expensive memory gets once you start getting into higher densities.