8GB ram vista 32bit

Dyewitness · 1 Apr 2008 at 14:56

Hi all.

Im running vista 64bit with 8gb ram and im thinkin about going back to 32bit. even though vista sp1 32bit doesnt see 8gb of ram. will my computer still be the same speed ?

c

vanandjuanunited · 1 Apr 2008 at 14:57

Wont be as fast due to going from 8 gig to 3.25 gig of memory. ANy reason for doing so?

Craig321 · 1 Apr 2008 at 14:57

Probably not. With 8GB of RAM you'll find Vista is able to pre-load a lot of your most used programs, so when you come to open them it's nice and quick.

If you go back to Vista 32-bit it'll only see ~3.25GB of RAM so it'll only be able to cache around 2GB of that rather than around 7GB.

Dyewitness · 1 Apr 2008 at 14:59

ive just noticed a lot of software still dosnt support 64bit. which can be rather annoying.
my computer is running like a dream at the moment and i dont really wanna change like.. but just fed up with incompatibility issues.

c

vanandjuanunited · 1 Apr 2008 at 15:00

Why not dual boot?

Dyewitness · 1 Apr 2008 at 15:01

i already have a dual boot of vista/xp. i have xp as my music production side. and vista as internet-gaming side.

amkan13 · 1 Apr 2008 at 15:38

use physical address extentions in vista to improve your memory performance a bit, it wont be the same as 8gb in vista 64bit, but it definately is an improvement on 3.5ish gb you would normally see with 32bit

see for more info:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366796.aspx

steve258 · 1 Apr 2008 at 15:50

crazeconnolly said:
i already have a dual boot of vista/xp. i have xp as my music production side. and vista as internet-gaming side.

So why not just use the incompatible software on 32-bit XP and use the rest on 64-bit vista?

That's what I have as well 32bit XP/ 64bit Vista dual boot.

PhillyDee · 1 Apr 2008 at 16:07

What programs are incompatible?

VortexA1 · 1 Apr 2008 at 16:32

PhillyDee said:
What programs are incompatible?

Yeah I'd like to know too.

:rolleyes:

Fire Wizard · 1 Apr 2008 at 17:38

Hello crazeconnolly, if you go back to using a 32-bit Operating System, depending on the hardware of your system, you will only be able to use roughly 3GB of that 8GB of RAM that you have installed in your system so you will be wasting around 5GB of RAM.

Now, as regards to the speed difference that you will notice, because of the way Windows Vista handles memory, it's highly probably that you will notice a decrease in speed of your overall system.

I would also be interested to know which programs have trouble running under a 64-bit Operating System?

InkZ · 1 Apr 2008 at 17:50

I use virtual machine for my VPN software which doesn't work on 64bit.

crazyDAJT · 1 Apr 2008 at 17:57

crazeconnolly said:
i already have a dual boot of vista/xp. i have xp as my music production side. and vista as internet-gaming side.

so your using 8GB for gaming?? why

afraser2k · 1 Apr 2008 at 18:13

crazyDAJT said:
so your using 8GB for gaming?? why

Why not? With memory prices so cheap these days 64-bit users might as well go for it if they can.

Craig321 · 1 Apr 2008 at 18:21

crazyDAJT said:
so your using 8GB for gaming?? why

Nothing wrong with having 8GB really, it's only about £35 per 2GB, so very cheap.

8GB would probably even be a benefit in Vista as it'd be able to Superfetch a lot more meaning even your less used programs would be pre-loaded and start up nice and quickly

steve258 said:
So why not just use the incompatible software on 32-bit XP and use the rest on 64-bit vista?

That's what I have as well 32bit XP/ 64bit Vista dual boot.

Meh, that's just inconvenient...

"Just quickly need to use this program that doesn't run on Vista, it's only a small program so it shouldn't take long..."
"Doh, need to boot into XP"
... few minutes later after reboot
"Right, I can use this program now, just for one tool"
"Done with that"
"Bah, now I need to use my programs that are installed on Vista"
... few minutes later after reboot
"Ok, back to my usual stuff then..."
"Damn, I need that program in XP again!"

Lucky everything I use works in Vista 64

crazeconnolly said:
ive just noticed a lot of software still dosnt support 64bit. which can be rather annoying.
my computer is running like a dream at the moment and i dont really wanna change like.. but just fed up with incompatibility issues.

c

You say you have 8GB RAM. Install Microsoft Virtual PC or VMWare Server, install XP 32-bit on a virtual machine and run your software that doesn't run on Vista x64 on there?

Shouldn't be a problem with so much RAM really, I don't think you'd even notice it running unless the XP virtual machine was running something CPU intensive.