Vista 32bit or 64bit?

Rokfire · 3 Jan 2008 at 16:43

I'm about to order the parts for my new pc but i can't decide on the OS. The machine is mainly going to be used for Games, Surfing, watching films and a bit of office work.

Basically i need to know if Vista 64 run the games I play , i.e. C&C Generals, CS:S, TF2, FEAR, COD4 and World in Conflict.

Also is it easy to get drivers etc for Vista 64 are there any major issues to it running 32bit apps etc. Will Vista 64 run Divx, WinAmp etc. Appreciate any advice you guys can give me.

Admiral Huddy · 3 Jan 2008 at 16:46

I had problems installing sound drivers in the early days but they seem to be all sorted now. I've not had any problems and I've had it running since October.

Very happy wth Vista 64

Do you intend on using 4GB memory?

mandelbug · 3 Jan 2008 at 16:49

WiC Runs fine on Vista x64 for me at least, along with UT3 and even Hitman 2. Vista x64 appears a lot better than XP x64 with x86 apps

Rokfire · 3 Jan 2008 at 16:54

Thanks for the info, I was planning on getting 4GB of PC6400 RAM in 2x2GB setup if i got Vista 64 as i don't want to waste 1-1.5GB of RAM in Vista 32.

Am glad it seems to run games ok so i think i'll be getting Vista 64. Out of interest though is 2GB enough to run Vista 32 bit? Is it sluggish with 2GB?

mandelbug · 3 Jan 2008 at 16:56

I dont find it sluggish with 2Gb and runs WiC without too much hassell along with UT3

NathanE · 3 Jan 2008 at 17:24

If you are building a new PC using new parts then you shouldn't have any problems with x64 really.

All of those games work on x64 without any issue. As does DivX and Winamp.

Rokfire · 3 Jan 2008 at 20:39

Cheers thanks very much for the advice am going to get Vista 64 Home Premium. Slightly off topic but once I've built the PC will my steam still work as its on a different drive or do i have to reinstall it under Visat 64 etc?

Herojuana · 3 Jan 2008 at 21:57

What you can do is reinstall steam on your new drive with the fresh vista install, then - copy your steamapps folder from your old drive to the new steam directory and you shouldnt have to re-download all your games.

I did this last time I re-installed and it worked ;D

FatRakoon · 4 Jan 2008 at 02:23

mandelbug said:
Vista x64 appears a lot better than XP x64 with x86 apps

I have never had a problem at all with an Apps in XP64?

Which ones is Vista better at?

mandelbug · 4 Jan 2008 at 06:13

Some java Apps, the UT3 demo wouldnt run on XP x64 and when I had it at work there were a couple other little niggle apps that wouldnt work but cant remember them

FatRakoon · 4 Jan 2008 at 11:36

UT3 itself runs fine.
I have never had an issue with Java either.

In fact, Im struggling to think of a single game that does not work in X64 and in fact many of the games I play run better in X64 than in plain old XP32!

Some games ( FarCry, Source Based Games ) actually run a lot better in X64

The only few apps I have had issues with are :-

PageDeFrag
Partition Magic - Im now using Acronis
O&ODeFrag - but then there is a 32Bit and a 64Bit version.

Everything else I have tried runs in XP64 just great.

A lot more programs run in XP64 than they do in Vista...32 or 64.

v0n · 4 Jan 2008 at 12:38

Rokfire said:
Thanks for the info, I was planning on getting 4GB of PC6400 RAM in 2x2GB setup if i got Vista 64 as i don't want to waste 1-1.5GB of RAM in Vista 32.

It's not as bad as 1.5Gb waste this time around - my Vista Ultimate x86 at home use 3326Mb out of 4096Mb at the moment, test machine with Vista Home shows 3545Mb out of 4096Mb available. Obviously memory access limit of 2Gb per process still exist, but there aren't that many applications at the moment on home desktop that need to open files bigger than 2Gb on the fly or, for that matter, applications that would allow it without work arounds (creating own cache etc).

NathanE · 4 Jan 2008 at 14:07

The biggest thing that affects how much memory is "lost" is your graphics card. If you have 512MB of memory on your graphics card (as is quite common nowadays) then that instantly means that 512MB of your physical memory (on a x86 OS) will be unaccessible. Then it's whatever other devices you have installed. Even basic things like network cards will take several kilobytes of virtual memory address space. Technically, any device that uses DMA.

The virtual memory address space is of course 32-bit and limited to 4GB. Which is why when you've got 4GB of physical memory installed that you will rarely ever get the full amount to be accessible on an x86 OS.

This makes x64 OSes quite an attractive alternative for anyone that has got a lot of devices that eat into this virtual memory address space. I, for example, have got two 512MB graphics cards. So that instantly caps me to a maximum of ~3GB of physical memory on an x86 OS. On an x64 OS the virtual memory address space is so rediculously large that you no matter how many devices you plug in you aren't likely to start capping the amount of physical memory you can use.