Windows XP 32 bit vs Windows 7 64 bit

Howski

Howski

Howski

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Joined
1 Sep 2005
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410
Hi,

I'm thinking of making the jump in to the lovely world of 64 bit but I have a question. What is the system overhead on the OS like running the 32 bit version of Windows XP vs the 64 bit Windows 7? I have 4GB of RAM in my systems and was kinda hoping that the extra resources Windows 7 needs would be negated by being able to use the whole 4GB of RAM.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance
-Howard Webb
 
There are no issues I can report in either terms of performance and compatibility. Windows 7 is sleek and a welcome upgrade from XP. And of course, your system will benefit from the additional addressing.
 
if you have a p4d 2ghz and an old 40gb ide ata33 drive it will run like a dog much slower than xp

if you have a 3ghz quad with a super fast 10k rpm sata300 drive it will be better..

if you dont use more than 1gb of ram you will not benefit from the extra addressable ram.

w7 64 was slower on my x2 4600 athalon but so fast on my quad 2.6 that if it was slower / faster I cannot tell...
 
also I have had no compatibility issues with w7 yet, however it does make a mess of sage accounts and where it stores its data files, if you use that app I would move the files to my own location...
 
Well its a laptop and a relativly new-ish one (about 18 months) but I can't remember the CPU and I'm in work but I think its a Intel Core 2 Duo P8600.

I would use the extra RAM when running VMs/VPCs so that would be nice. Ideally I'd like to go up to 8GB (and I would use that) but the cost is prohibative at the mo. But when the prices do come down I'd be ideally placed to just slot in the RAM.
 
Traditionally the biggest problem as we all know is driver availability for 64 bit editions however Windows 7 has done a great job, even at launch I only had a few problems with a wireless adapter and managed to fudge the driver on in the end.

I'd give 64 bit a go, it doesnt take long to figure out if you're going to have problems and if so you can try and troubleshoot them or just flick to 32 bit. The extra RAM you'll be using in 64 bit is worth the effort though :)
 
Its kinda of difficult to compare the overheads xp to 7 because 7 makes better, smarter uses of all the resources it has available. It will try to guess what might be needed and preload it to memory for quicker access. This can make it appear to be using significantly more resources whereas its actually just being clever about it. See wiki
 
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