any pros or cons to installing 64bit windows 7

bigjimmyauk

bigjimmyauk

bigjimmyauk

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Well finally decided with the help of everyone on here what i'm getting
i7 920 DO
P6TD deluxe
6gb ram (altho undecided on brand)

since i'm going for the upgrade thought i should make the move from XP pro
just wanted to know is there any pro's or con's to installing the 64 bit OS
want to know everything will go normally and i won't be having to hunt down 64 bit versions of programs i use.
 
32bit apps will generally run on a 64bit OS. With your spec you have to go 64bit unless you decrease the amount of ram you purchase.

Most decent applications will have some form of documentation to whether they support 64bit. Either way I'd be inclined to go 64bit.
 
If a prog doesn't support 64bit, it is not worth using???

There is an option to run files in XP Compatibilty mode anywho.
 
I used 64bit in late 2005, back then it was a bit of a nightmare getting drivers for peripherals like printers and I seem to remember spending a lot of time with a USB wireless adapter.

4 years later and its a different ball game, I can't think of anything I've used that I've not been able to run.
 
No real reason not to go 64bit (unless you are a gamer and want faster performance)
32 bit apps will run fine under 64 bit (altho a little slower than a native 32 environment)

You could do what I do , keep your 32 bit installation and use it when gaming.
Set-up a dual boot system , so you can choose which OS to use upon start-up
 
Bony Maloney said:
GO WINDOWS X64.ENJOY, CLOSE THREAD ;)
Click to expand...

Why is everyone still so scared of running a 64bit O/S? :(.

derkaderka said:
No real reason not to go 64bit (unless you are a gamer and want faster performance)
32 bit apps will run fine under 64 bit (altho a little slower than a native 32 environment)

You could do what I do , keep your 32 bit installation and use it when gaming.
Set-up a dual boot system , so you can choose which OS to use upon start-up
Click to expand...

Don't listen to this :). 32Bit apps run on a 64Bit O/S with no slow down and from reading on the forums games will not suffer due to 64Bit.
 
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I ran XP64, I bought it the same week that the Core 2 E6700 series was released! I found drivers for my scanner, printer, tomtom, sound, graphics.... the list goes on. The only thing I never got sorted was a working driver for a SonyEriccson k800i. Lazy buggers stuck with 32bit only.

64bit performance ranges from 95% as fast as 32bit, up to considerably faster depending on the application. In practice for games I found generally no difference, although when running 2 copies of Everquest 2, or WOW, the extra available ram in the 64bit windows made it smoother.. But thats pretty extreme gaming :P.

I dont like Vista in general, but its 64bit build has less driver issues than XP64, so dont know any horror stories that apply to Vista64, that didnt apply to Vista32.

Windows 7 is quite a nice comprimise. In some ways XP is still better. But at least W7 is better than Vista in my opinion. If DX10 had been written to be compatible with XP (and dont say its impossible, it may work differently on Vista, but a compatible API would have been possible if M$ wanted it) then Vista and probably even windows 7 would be struggling to make sales over XP.
 
While the comments here are undoubtedly true, the industry hasn't fully embraced 64 bit computing as a whole. You need to look very specifically at your applications and see if they support 64 bit Windows 7. If they do not you have to make a "business" decision about how much it would matter if a non supported application you need doesn't work quite properly in some way.

At the end of the day it is a balance of risk which you are really the only person to evaluate.

Alternatively, try Acrosis Disk Director's boot manager and run with 32 bit and 64 bit operating systems user selectable at boot time.

There is of course 32 bit Windows 7 as well.....?
 
wish they had just released win7 in 64 bit.... that would have caused uproar but at least it would have given everyone a kick up the arse
 
I suppose the best way to do this is to try it out and do some benchmarks

Thats what I did , thats how I know that for example:
The 8 games I tested out only ONE ran faster under windows 7 64bit than xp32
The rest ran faster under xp32bit

Suck it and see as the saying goes
 
thnk i'll just go with 64 bit just used the m soft compatibilty scanner and it came back saying only 1 program i uncompatible with windows 7 luckily something i've only used a few times so no real biggy.
well time for a change then me thinks..
win 7 retail comes with 32 and 64 install don't it
 
_Jimlad_ said:
wish they had just released win7 in 64 bit.... that would have caused uproar but at least it would have given everyone a kick up the arse
Click to expand...


Yes but how could they convince major companies with 1000s of PCs to upgrade.
 
derkaderka said:
I suppose the best way to do this is to try it out and do some benchmarks

Thats what I did , thats how I know that for example:
The 8 games I tested out only ONE ran faster under windows 7 64bit than xp32
The rest ran faster under xp32bit

Suck it and see as the saying goes
Click to expand...

How much faster? Benchmarks may show a difference in the numbers, but what about actual game play? And what games were they?
 
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