Vista 64 bit vs 32 bit

[craigdexter1]

What the pro's and cons of Vista 64 bit and 32 bit.

The system is a Asus M2A-MVP with a Athlon 64 X2 Dual core 6400+ CPU
Running 4 GB of Kingston Ram.
Also has a Sapphire 512 Video card with fire capabilities as well as the MoBo.
Creative 7.1 Sound card, 750w PSU. Overall. Pretty good machine.

 

[Blind Dragon]

in my opinion, these were the biggest factors

32 bit
*picks up 4gb of ram (which I had)
*more applications are compatible

64 bit
*picks up 8gb of ram (which I didn't have)
*I heard lots of complaints of program incompatibility (especially Vista64)

One day I'm sure I'll have a 64 bit OS, but for now I am happy with 32bit. I really don't see the need for it yet

 

[Daveskater]

64 bit OS's can register more RAM so it will make full use of your 4GB.

Programs that need to install drivers etc need a 64 bit version, e.g. anti-virus programs

Otherwise most programs run the same on a 64 bit OS as a 32 bit, as far as I know.

There's no advantage for me upgrading to a 64 bit OS (plus I can't) because I only have 1GB of RAM and an old Athlon XP-M CPU (single core, 32 bit) so I haven ever used a 64 bit OS. Just so you know of my personal experience with 64 bit

 

[Blind Dragon]

Do you know if this the correct way to calculate it or not?

2^32nd power = 4,294,967,296 (4.294 Gigs) recognized by 32bit OS

 

[Daveskater]

That sounds about right and I have seen that on TS somewhere before but I can't remember what thread it was, it was a while ago now.

That would mean 4,294,967,296 places (bytes) recognized by a 32 bit OS and that 4GB has to include graphics memory and the page file if I remember correctly.

(4,294,967,296 / 1,024 * 2 = 4096MB = 4GB)

 

[Blind Dragon]

I think you are right about the graphics and pagefile. I forgot about that

 

[werty316]

Only good reason to use an x64 OS is the use of 4GBs of memory or more since and x86 OS only reads about 3.25GB which isn't a bad thing.