Vista 32bit > 64bit?

[TheBigCheese]

Hi guys

Sorry I'm sure this has been done to death already but it's a bit of an urgency.

I'm ordering a new build today and have just been told to go for Vista rather than XP...should I be looking at 64bit of 32bit?

From what I've heard already (and may be wrong) 32bit is more likely to be compatible with older games.

Can you get all the usual free software such as spyware checkers, firewalls and anti virus in 64bit flavours as well as 32bit?

Any pitfalls / incompatibilities to 64bit? The only things that will be plugged into it is a printer, and I've checked there is a 64bit driver for that.

Thanks for any advice, and sorry for the rush!

 

[stickroad]

Go for Vista 64bit.

Theirs a few prgrams out their that dont work but the majority now work.

As for older games just simply install it then right click on the game iocn and go to properties. Then go to the Compatiabilty tab and check the box that saids, Run this program in Compatiabilty mode for and choose Windows XP (Service Pack 2).

Also check the box that saids, Run this prgram as an administrator.

Do that and most of the stuff will work.

 

[TheBigCheese]

Brilliant, thanks very much for the information!

 

[v0n]

Vista 64bit runs with certified drivers only, and there is very, very little programs that actually take advantage of memory addressing or 64bit in general, so what you effectively have to choose is:
- badly optimized 32bit programs running in 32 bit optimized environment or
- badly optimized 32bit programs running in 32 bit compatibility mode in badly optimized 64bit environment.

I wish people would just stop looking at it like it was windows emulator for unix - does this work, does other stuff work. What do you actually need 64bit for now? Well, null. Everything else will be faster on 32bit. Unless you need to run progs with more than 4Gb of memory there is no advantage to be had from 64 bits at home at the moment, other than to slow you down and turn your system into genua pig