Win8 x86 or x64?

Mark M

Mark M

Mark M

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Can someone please advise which is the one to go for? I believe the x86 is 64bit and the x64 is 32bit? What will the differences be to me and what do I need to watch out for hardware wise?

I need to used office 32bit for some other software I use (I think, will check) but I believe you can install 32bit software on a 64bit os?

The rig is oldish and is currently running Win7. Ive bought a new HDD so going to put Win8 on there.

Thanks.

Edit - think Ive got the above wrong, x86 is actually 32bit?
 
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Not just ram in the normal sense. Any memory. Gfx cards will be a big contributed these days.

No need for anyone ti go x86 these days. (unless your enterprise or have some legacy program you know won't work)
4gb or not everyone should be buying x64.
 
Glaucus said:
Not just ram in the normal sense. Any memory. Gfx cards will be a big contributed these days.

No need for anyone ti go x86 these days. (unless your enterprise or have some legacy program you know won't work)
4gb or not everyone should be buying x64.
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if hes not sure the difference between 32 and 64 bit, i doubt hes in the market for a +4gb gpu.

i agree, i always bang on 64bit just because its what i have redilly available, tis just easier. theres no reason not to use it, but plenty of reasons to use it :)
 
davido_labido said:
if hes not sure the difference between 32 and 64 bit, i doubt hes in the market for a +4gb gpu.

i agree, i always bang on 64bit just because its what i have redilly available, tis just easier. theres no reason not to use it, but plenty of reasons to use it :)
Click to expand...

Just what.

Most systems come with 4gb ram, you then will likely have a 1gb on gfcpx card. Meaning you need x64. I'm not saying you need x64 for a 4gb gpu.
 
32 bit is basically a legacy product, some ancient CPUs don't support 64bit.

The only time you might want to use 32 bit is one an Atom based Netbook or in some sort of virtualised setting.

You can run 32 bit apps on 64bit. There is a 64 bit version of Office but Microsoft's advise is to use the 32 bit version.
 
Mark M said:
what do I need to watch out for hardware wise?
Click to expand...


Only thing to watch out for is drivers for hardware ie use 64 bit drivers for 64 bit OS like Win8.1 x64,nowadays 64 bit driver support is excellent and you should not have any issues,also if your CPU is very old and 32 bit then obviously you can only use 32 bit OS.


Definitely go 64 bit for OS,I've not used 32 bit OS since WinXP days back in 2001 to 2007.

Personally I've not encountered any 32 bit software that would not run on 64 bit OS so that's like 7 years of 64 bit OS testing experience.
 
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64bit has been standard since the beta versions of vista started floating around in 2006. the only reason not to use it is if you have some lame ass netbook or ancient pc with a 32bit cpu.
 
Answered above, but x64 definitely. No reason not to these days unless you are running on very old hardware. Pretty much every single CPU released for the past five-nine years is 64 bit capable. Main difference with hardware is how much RAM you can use.

32bit is limited to 4GB (though the OS usually counts 3.5GB. Can go higher with PAE but that is irrelevant now). 64bit can go way beyond that to amounts you're unlikely to need. Nigh on every 32bit software will work on 64bit. x64 will not work on x86 (32bit).

Because of the ability to address memory with greater capability you should notice better performance between 64bit programs on a 64bit OS than you would with the 32bit on the 32bit OS.

There is no reason to get a 32bit anymore.
 
As above only reason for using the 32bit version at all is if your hardware isn't 32bit compatible or your still running old 16bit software that requires the VDM to run - for some reason MS didn't include a 64bit compatible VDM.
 
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