Q6600 and Windows 64bit

[shipinabottle]

hi, this might be a daft question but im thinking of formatting my computer and was wondering if i should switch from windows 32bit to 64bit?

according to the microsoft website the 64bit has mutlicore support, does this mean applications will run allot better as the operating system is designed for multithreading?

Will game performance be affected if i moved onto 64bit?

and ofcourse if i jumped to 64bit i would probably bump my memory upto 4GB

 

[shipinabottle]

bump

 

[Trunks9486]

i doubt that there are any special performance increases...

if you are running vista, go with 64 though. 64 is the future, no point in dragging 32.

 

[CaDLoN]

yea go with the 4GB & 64bit, i bit the bullet a while ago, had a few driver issues initally & i cant run any of my work VPN clients (still)!

but apart from that it's not that bad

 

[Corasik]

according to the microsoft website the 64bit has mutlicore support, does this mean applications will run allot better as the operating system is designed for multithreading?

No, because Windows 2000, XP Home/Pro/Server, Windows 2003, and Vista 32bit edition all support multi processor systems, and XP Home and above support multi core CPU's. (Dont remember if 2000 does, but some 2000's certainly support multi socket multi cpu setups.)

So in terms of multithreading 32bit V 64bit... No difference at all.

64bit does support more memory though. a lot more . (Between 8GB and 128GB depending on which version of vista)

The performance difference between 32bit games running on 32bit windows, and 32bit games running on 64bit windows is pretty small as long as you have plenty of ram. Slightly slower, but pretty insignificant really. Most applications & games will remain 32bit for some tiime, as microsoft in their "Wisdom" released a 32bit version of vista, and that is the version that the purple shirt guys sell by "default" So the "Majority" of people who buy vista do end up with the 32bit version, unless they are "interested" in computers.

 

[hbunny]

Which 64bit version?

It also depends on what you mean by 64bit. There's Vista 64 and XP x64.

My opinion is that XP x64 offers the best of both worlds - 64bits and still XP (not that POS Vista). I use XP x64 with 4GB of memory.

My understanding is that Vista 64 has even more driver issues that the 32bit version. XP x64 had a shortage of drivers in the beginning (2005/2006), but I've always found the driver I want (Nvidia/ATI/Cannon/...).

Before you make a choice, see if either O/S has the driver support you need.

 

[Bolerus]

this may or may not help BUT

a while ago ( i run windows XP 64 bit) I was building a machine for somebody which included XP pro.

AS I had just bought myself a second hard drive, it was a perfect oportunity to run a little test.

I formated the new hard drive and installed XP pro.

then ran a couple of benchmark trest on both XP and XP64. Obvioulsy same cpu adn same memmory.

Cant remember the exact scores but xp-64 was EXACTLY 20% higher

The test wasnt perfectly scientific ( I didnt format my xp64 hard drive, nor was the two hard drives the same make, although they were both same size) but as close as you can get with out being anal about it.

I still Have a few x64 driver issues every now and then, but in my opinion the extra performace is well worth it.

 

[philjohn]

Go for it, I recently did after buying another 2GB of RAM (because I had to RMA the current lot in my machine), so once Corsair sent a replacement I wiped the disk and installed Vista x64.

Make sure your current hardware has 64bit drivers. Graphics cards usually no problem, sound card may be if you have an add-on one, printers almost always - printer manufacturers have such high turnover rate of new models and support them for such a little time that even a printer 1 or 2 years old will possibly never have 64bit drivers produced.

I ran into this recently after buying a Canon LBP-5000 (brilliant printer BTW), I knew up front there were no vista x64 drivers and it's used predominantly by my wife for her job so it didn't bother me. I did however find a work-around! I have a Power PC era Mac Mini (1.2GHz G4) which is on 24/7 (used for downloading backups from servers overnight as it uses a miniscule amount of power to run). I installed the printer on that and then used Apple Bonjour for Windows to set up a postscript driver that takes care of properly sending the print job over to the Mac where it does all the host-based gubbins cheap modern printers require. End result: All my hardware is x64 compatible, albeit with some cajoling!

 

[Admiral Huddy]

The longer instruction sets must have a negative effect on performance which is negated by having more memory i.e. 4GB. The net effect between having a 32-bit OS with 2GB RAM and 64-bit OS running 4GB I would think is marginal. That said, having an 64-bit OS means there is scope to add further memory if need be.

 

[Jamous]

Yes Vista 64 does have more driver issues than Vista 32, but whether we like it or not, 64 bit operating systems are our future and so is Vista, so may as well do it now.