Does anyone still use 32bit?

Kotu · 6 Jul 2012 at 17:59

Ive got an old shuttle with an x2-3800 which still runs quite a few modern games thanks to a 3850agp card, it can't use a 64bit OS however due to nvidia never releasing any proper 64bit drivers for nforce2/3/4

gronf · 6 Jul 2012 at 20:50

Made the change from XP 32bit to W7 64bit in late 2010 and haven't looked back..

Philtor · 7 Jul 2012 at 01:23

That's a good question... does anyone still use 32 bit? It's like saying does anyone still use the Amiga 1200?

Nightglow · 7 Jul 2012 at 08:09

Been using W7 64 nearly three years now, both my lappys use W7 64bit, as does my four pc's.
Also got 'The Relic' built around a Opteron 180 & running XP64.

orderoftheflame · 7 Jul 2012 at 09:27

Only on my netbook. You'd be mental to not use 64bit wherever you can now.

hansp · 7 Jul 2012 at 15:58

Moredhel said:
The entire VRAM address space is not mapped by the CPU, instead part of the 2GB virtual address space is mapped (up to a limit of 256MB) plus in XP (but not in a patched up Vista) the dynamic PCI-E aperture (or fixed 64mb, 128mb or 256mb aperture on AGP).

It is true that not all of the VRAM is mapped (depending on how much you have), but it is mapped into the physical address space - hence it takes up some of the limited 4 GB address space.

The mapping of VRAM into the virtual address space is another story.

The limit is 4GB in total, this includes RAM and certain parts of the page file.

The page file doesn't take up any physical address space.

hansp · 7 Jul 2012 at 16:00

wildman said:
I thought a 32bit OS couldn't address / utilise > 4gb so isn't 8gb in a 32bit system overkill and quite possibly useless ?

It is a cosmetic limitation in client editions of Windows.

scrlk · 7 Jul 2012 at 16:05

I really don't understand the fuss about staying on XP - it's painful to use an 11 year old OS! Upgrade already, people are you are holding PCs back!

Vista was a good OS, it's a shame that the internet kicked up a ****storm of fuss when it was first release, of course it's going to have teething problems due to the way Windows was virtually rewritten. I wouldn't mind going back to Vista if I was forced to.

RevBillyG · 7 Jul 2012 at 16:14

32bit Win7 on my lappy as there are no gfx drivers available for 64bit.

Works fine.

theheyes · 7 Jul 2012 at 23:19

hansp said:
It is a cosmetic limitation in client editions of Windows.

It's not simply cosmetic, and even some server editions only support 4GB of memory. It's a compatibility limitation.

hansp · 7 Jul 2012 at 23:59

theheyes said:
It's not simply cosmetic, and even some server editions only support 4GB of memory. It's a compatibility limitation.

You are allowed to call it that.

These days, many people uses a ram disk to access the ram above 4G. Even 32bit xp supports that.

powlesY · 9 Jul 2012 at 14:13

orderoftheflame said:
Only on my netbook. You'd be mental to not use 64bit wherever you can now.

Sounds pretty ignorant mate. Some people don't feel like spending a buncha monies on a new OS when 32bit isn't exactly limited. There's no reason to not use 64bit but for the average user there's little reason to bother either.

powlesY · 9 Jul 2012 at 14:14

You can dual boot a 32bit and 64bit version of the same OS. You could even have two hot-swap boot drives if you want to go that way instead.

What does the latter part of that exactly mean?

theheyes · 9 Jul 2012 at 16:27

powlesY said:
Sounds pretty ignorant mate. Some people don't feel like spending a buncha monies on a new OS when 32bit isn't exactly limited. There's no reason to not use 64bit but for the average user there's little reason to bother either.

I don't think he was suggesting people go out and buy for the sake of it. These days you're licensed for both so unless you have any serious compatibility issues, which most people don't, there isn't much point installing the x86 version.

siege2 · 9 Jul 2012 at 17:08

powlesY said:
What does the latter part of that exactly mean?

He means one operating system on one hard drive and another operating system on the other Hard drive, dual boot either is by means off pressing F8 "on mine" when you see the bios boot screen to select which hard drive to boot from.

in all 2 operating systems off choice to choose from on switching on your PC.

Kenneth.

PS you can add another operating system from within windows using Oracle VM VirtualBox.

DrunkRufie · 9 Jul 2012 at 17:44

My pc at work still has it, not sure how much longer as I think the company is switching over to thin client systems,

but for the lols here's the specs: Pentium 4 3.20GHz, 1GB RAM, Geforce FX 5200, such a beast

jre · 11 Jul 2012 at 17:02

Nothing wrong with sticking with xp if all you do is surf and use office.

More interesting question is what happens when xp reaches end of life next year. Will xp users finally upgrade or continue as usual?

weyland yutani · 11 Jul 2012 at 17:30

What exactly the "bit" refer to or do? This talk of bits just reminds me of the old consoles lol

On Win7 64bit here but it looks like a lot of applications (Chrome for example) are still 32bit :confused:

HangTime · 11 Jul 2012 at 19:46

wildman said:
I thought a 32bit OS couldn't address / utilise > 4gb so isn't 8gb in a 32bit system overkill and quite possibly useless ?

He didn't explicitly say that the person he knows running 32bit is the same one running XP with 8GB RAM - might be on XP x64.

FatRakoon · 20 Jul 2012 at 00:16

Whats 32Bit?

Oh yeah, its that outdates old O/S of the 1990's

People still use that? And they laugh at me when I talk about my Ataris... Pathetic.

I have used 64Bit ever since I first saw XP64 and I have never bothered going back since.