Windows 7 64-bit - What's the point?

trentlad · 16 Apr 2010 at 15:12

What really is the point of installing the 64-bit version of Windows 7 over the 32-bit?

Is it just because 32-bit can only support up to 4Gig of RAM? To be fair, there aren't many occasions where 4Gig of RAM hasn't been enough!!

Plus 64-bit drivers can be a pain in the ass, so installing it 'just cos' doesn't really seem worth it.

Am I missing something?

trentlad · 17 Apr 2010 at 03:32

Ok so going by most responses, the memory really is the main benefit which is important if required in mass by your applications (i.e. CAD, rendering, Virtual Machines,etc). Another point that I really liked was how installing 64-bit OS is more of an encouragement to get the ball rolling on 64-bit apps, if there are way more people on a 32-bit OS then developers are bound to feed the masses over the minority.

I liked the analogy earlier about going to an Formula 1 forum and saying, lets use my Corsa instead of wasting resources on F1 cars. The problem at the moment, there is no bloody fuel for the F1 cars! I can only find a handful of 64-bit apps and its not anything I'd use regularly (saying that, IE 64-bit has to be fastest browser I've used to date and I hate IE).

The 64-bit driver issues I had before were mostly with Vista 64-bit. Back when the 4870 was first released, the amount that bugger crashed on 64-bit drivers was annoying a hell. I had a dual boot with XP and it ran seamlessly on 32-bit drivers. There were only a couple of other driver issues but it didn't seem worth tackling them again. Sounds like most issues with 64-bit drivers have had enough time to be ironed out now.

Cheers peeps.

trentlad · 17 Apr 2010 at 14:06

J.B said:
Not only a supported RAM increase there is also a greater throughput on the CPU.

Is this true? I haven't really seen anything to back up a statement like this, it's usually been hearsay more than fact.

trentlad · 29 Apr 2010 at 00:57

Firewalls!

That was my number one gripe about moving to a 64-bit OS. Looks like ZoneAlarm finally have 64-bit compatibility.

trentlad · 29 Apr 2010 at 14:00

Tripnologist said:
I still get questioned by friends/family on if they should go x86 or x64. They ALWAYS bring up 'driver problems' but as has already been mentioned, unless you have really old legacy apps, periphs or something, those problems are a thing of the past.

Easy rule of thumb is that if you're offered an x64 driver, use it, otherwise, just use the one offered.

Yeah thankfully that is the case now.

When Vista 64-bit was released the drivers for the brand spanking new 4870 (when it was first released it had 512MB) were utterly crap. It kept restarting the video so you'd get a nice blank screen for a few seconds or a game would completely crash and you'd have to restart the machine.

The 32-bit drivers worked fine when using the same card in XP. To be fair though, the issues could be tied to it being a brand new device rather than the driver memory addressing.

Printer drivers were difficult to find too. These were a surprise because XP 64-bit had been out for a while at the time.

Anyway, that was back then and we've thankfully got much better 64-bit driver support now.

trentlad · 29 Apr 2010 at 14:02

uv said:
I've always found sitting behind a router, and simple internet common sense to be good enough. I never use a firewall (I disable the native Windows one), and whenever I do my ~yearly scan, I find nothing.

Protection against incoming attacks aren't the only reason for a firewall.

trentlad · 29 Apr 2010 at 17:47

Gunni Parker said:
I am annoyed that my xfi doesnt work anymore! Other than that I am made up I went to 64 bit.

There has to be a fix for that sometime soon. My mate lost his ability to use 5.1 surround sound after the switch too, he posted on here to see if anyone knew of a fix but didn't get anything.

trentlad · 29 Apr 2010 at 20:41

groen said:
when you start doing more advanced things on your computer you will need more than 3.2gb. when you converting video from one format to another for example, 64bit has a performance boost.

but at the end of the day as this guy i know says. "oh yay word opens 9ms faster."

but if you spend a lot of time on your pc you will get annoyed with the slightest slowness. when i am on another pc i can get annoyed when it does not respond as fast as my pc at home. if you use photoshop or other such software you will need more than 3.2gb. there is no reason not to use the 64bit versions because that is the latest.

some benchmarks http://blog.tune-up.com/windows-insights/32-bit-vs-64-bit-more-bit-more-performance/

Yeah the problem still is a lack of 64-bit applications. Look at how many people browse the internet but do we see a 64-bit browser? The only one I can think of is I.E. which is possibly the fastest browser I've ever used... but I hate I.E. so I won't use it.

I had a video conversion suite which used multiple cores to convert, took the exact same amount of time as the single core version.

It's ok though, slowly but surely we're getting more apps able to utilize wider memory addressing and multiple cores. At the moment the only applications we see are from developers who can afford to, i.e. CAD, Photoshop, etc.

I think the biggest thing I found in here is by switching over to 64-bit you're encouraging more developers to move on.