Installed 64 bit Win10 by mistake. Should I install 32 bit instead?

gizmo1990 · 21 Sep 2020 at 09:03

I installed Win10 recently on an old netbook (yep one of the old 2gb Atom's!) and it runs about as well as I'd/you'd expect.. Which is actually to say, not bad really considering! It's only intended to be a back up machine and is handy to have around.

Anyway, I forgot that the Win10 boot usb was 64 bit. Is it worth going through the whole thing again and putting win10 32 bit on? Would it be noticeably faster in some way? As I said it already runs pretty much how I would expect so I'd be surprised if it were to run faster but I've no idea.

If anyone knows if it's worth putting on the 32 bit ver I'd appreciate it.

malachi · 21 Sep 2020 at 09:38

If its working fine how it is then leave 64bit on.

arknor · 21 Sep 2020 at 11:04

pretty sure win10 wouldnt have installed and booted in 64bit if your cpu was so old it only supports 32bit which would be stupidly old

The Pentium-4 2.8GHz released in Novermber of 2002 was the last desktop 32-bit CPU

JasonM · 21 Sep 2020 at 11:16

Stay on 64bit, there is no performance disadvantage. As others have said if it installed your computer is compatible.

Django x2 · 21 Sep 2020 at 12:11

JasonM said:
there is no performance disadvantage.

Not technically true, but that's for another day

gizmo1990 · 21 Sep 2020 at 22:38

Thanks for the replies everyone. I took it for granted that the Atom was 32 bit but I found this which says otherwise. Amazing really.

Anyway, I'll leave it on 64 bit. It does run surprisingly well for a 10 year old netbook.

Dinkleberg · 21 Sep 2020 at 22:38

32 bit is really only useful if you have less than 4GB ram. Practically speaking.

darael · 22 Sep 2020 at 09:34

64-bit will actually use a little more memory and storage than 32-bit. So I would argue that yes there is a small loss in performance, particularly when the laptop only has 2GB of RAM.

If you want to test the above yourself, compare fresh installations of the two on a virtual machine. Before you even start installing, you can see the increase in ISO file sizes - 64-bit being around 1.4x the size of 32-bit.