Questions before jumping on the 64-bit

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rmdl51

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Ok, I know there have been some threads about this topic a while ago and I was reading the stickies about the 32 vs 64 bit but I've seen many people here on the forums with 4 GB and I assume you all have a 64 bit OS

I'm about to buy Vista Home premium 64 bit but I would like to know if all my applications and devices will work without mayor hassle.

What about gaming? did any one found a game (specially old ones) that won't work under 64 bit, do you have a link or a list for the applications (most common ones) that might not work with 64 bit?

What about antivirus? I have kaspersky 2009, what about programs like Nero 8, Encarta 2008, clone DVD, photosuite, well I don't know I jsut list a few programs that I use the most and have the concern of not working under 64 bit.

Thanks in advance for the input.
 
anybody? I was willing to upgrade this weekend but honestly I don't want to see most of my programs not working and having to roll back to XP 32 bit, Thanks!
 
im skeptical about windows xp 64 , vista 64 yes , xp 64 i wouldnt let my monkeys out of the barrel for that one...
 
xLokix is correct. XP64 is not being maintained, nor are drivers being written for it. Vista 64 is a barrel of new problems, but they will be sorted out.....eventually.....we will all have to go 64-bit. Sorry to be a wet blanket, you may have much trouble with older software, older hardware that you want to run, but you can either wait patiently IF you know the developement is still going on, or just junk it and replace with 64-bit versions. If you find a good site with listings of known go-nogo software for 64-bit working, please post it for all our reference.

For what it is worth, I would not bother with Vista. Windows 7 (likely to be Vista SP2 under the bonnet), is just around the corner relatively speaking. If all your kit is working fine, why give M$ more money for the moment?
 
Thanks for the replies, so XP 64 bit is a no go since it's out of business then.

I currently have everything running perfect with XP and honestly I'm not willing to do a lot of hassle (if there is) that moving to 64-bit could involve.

However since last year I was willing to upgrade from my current 2GB to 4GB but I've staying away of this because to do that I'll need to upgrade to 64-bit, soon applications will start requiring a minimum of 2GB of RAM and I don't want to stay with minumum requirements.

So, my main question could be: How is everybody doing with their 64 bit OS? which apps you installed and worked fine, which ones didn't work, have eventually a driver or software version been released for 64 bit? I'm talking about personal experiences with the software you use on a daily basis, if you could share that it will be a lot of help, Thanks!
 
I have had no (serious) problems with Vista 64 since I started using it several months back. All I really use it for is playing games though and some video editing/processing. I don't really play too many old games... oldest is probably glQuake, but I've play a very large number of games on it and all seems to go well. There was only one game that gave me any problems and it was actually the CD protection/DRM that caused the issue. It was a StarForce protected game which actually forced me to remove the sys files in order to get the machine booted again. I really don't remember what game it was (probably TOCA4 or something) but I just gave up on it and bought GRID.
 
64bit OS has to do with using large memory spaces per application.
The normal 32bit memory space is 2^32-1 and that's ~ 2.17 gb; subtract some OS
space, but that's just a massive amount of memory. Typically programs that NEED all of it
are giant number crunchers. For every process of that size, you need an equiv space
on the HD for paging. Very few applications (including Games) can use that much :)

That said, a program that NEEDS 2^64-1 is just a behemoth! These systems are
designed for online servers where 1000's of clicks occur per minute and the
server runs each request in its own thread -- thus eating memory.

The other form of 64bit is a filesystem with files that are as large as 2^64-1.
This was easily implemented some time back and IS NOT related to the Win64 install per se.
 
However since last year I was willing to upgrade from my current 2GB to 4GB but I've staying away of this because to do that I'll need to upgrade to 64-bit

Upgrading a PC to 4Gb has nothing to do with 64-bit. Merely that 64-bit OS is needed to use it ALL. XP-32 will use about 3.2Gb, and there are various points of view on this, but by and large, if you run games and such with very large memory requirements, an upgrade to 4Gb is beneficial. No change is required to the OS.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/247183-12-xp32-vista32
 
Upgrading a PC to 4Gb has nothing to do with 64-bit. Merely that 64-bit OS is needed to use it ALL.

If you read the thread from my first post you'll know that I already know that as a fact. When I said I want to upgrade to 64-bit I mean upgrade to 64-bit OS, I just didn't think it was necessary to give details again.

And to correct that statement, I think even with the fact of being separate worlds (64-bit and 4GB RAM) they are extremely related since in normal daily use of a personal computer you need an OS able to process 64-bit to use all 4GB of ram.

Thanks LNCPapa, your game list give me an idea of exactly what I need to know, because I'll mainly run games on the system I want to upgrade to 64-bit (Operating system to avoid confusions) and install 4 GB of RAM

Well I'll be upgrading soon and will let you know and post my working software in case anybody looks for something like that in the future, Thanks!
 
Your post #5 actually stated you have considered upgrading to 4Mg and without moving to Vista was implied. That is what my response is about. I see no point in moving to Vista, only to move again very shortly to Windows 7, but there is point in upgrading to 4Gb whilst staying with XP-32
 
Care to elaborate on your post rapz? I've been using Vista64 for some time now... and if you're familiar with WoW (windows on windows) then you'll know that most 32 bit apps will function just fine in Vista64. For some reason, though, I didn't have as much luck with XP64... but that was mostly a lack of 64 bit drivers for XP.
 
Your post #5 actually stated you have considered upgrading to 4Mg and without moving to Vista was implied. That is what my response is about. I see no point in moving to Vista, only to move again very shortly to Windows 7, but there is point in upgrading to 4Gb whilst staying with XP-32

Please quote me where did I said I considered moving to 4GB without changing OS. What I said was, I've stayed away from the 4GB because to do that I need to upgrade to a 64-bit OS, and when I say "I need" is because I want my system to see all 4GB of RAM

I don't know what technical or personal reasons could exist for someone to install 4GB under a 32-bit OS that will recognize only 3.25GB, first I consider a waste of money and resources second I can state that from personal experience, I used to have 4GB (4x1GB) on my system and everybody (on this forums) recommend to leave only 2x1GB and run SANDRA to benchmark and they were right, my memory speed improve a lot, my system worked faster with 2GB paired correctly than with 4GB recognized as 3.25GB, couldn't believe it but the benckmarks were there.

Now, talking about moving to OS, windows 7 is supposed to be released 2010-2011, that's 2-3years from now and no I won't move right away when it comes out, I didn't move to XP on the release date, since all the problems with drivers and stuff I learned the lesson from Windows Millenium, and when XP come out I wait a while for it to become stable, right now Windows Vista is been out for almost two years, I think the OS is getting mature and driver compatible with a huge list of software/devices and everybody will move on eventually, nobody can disagree on that, or tell me how many people still use Windows 98? how many 200/ME? the few still using those OS will eventually move too, so upgrading is a must, the timing to do it is according to every person needs.
 
Hay lncpapa , i tried the xp 64 bit and some apps will not work but that was a long time ago, so they probably will work now.
 
Well - if they didn't work back then I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to work now. Thing is there isn't much upkeep with XP64 anymore - it was a bit ahead of its time. A big reason Vista64 is doing so much better than XP64 is that 4 GB of RAM is cheap - it can be had easily for under $100. That drives demand for companies to release drivers that are Vista 64 compatible.

When I get some time I'll try to put a list of the PC games I play on Vista 64 up in this thread. Just as a heads up I don't usually play very far into my games - a couple of kids will keep you from finishing all the games you get your hands on so make sure you get all of that out of your system first.
 
Here's what I've used personally on my machine in Vista 64 and works fine:

Crysis (I can only play this one in 32 bit even though there is a 64 bit exe)
Call of Duty 4
Portal
Half-Life 2 (plus expansions)
Team Fortress 2
GRAW2
Combat Arms
glQuake
Tenebrae
Quake II (plus expansions)
Quake III
Shogo
UT2K4
F.E.A.R.
Tribes (the original)
Doom 3
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament III (demo works so full game should work too)
Mass Effect
Enemy Territory Quake Wars
Fable
Hellgate London
The Witcher
Company of Heroes
Bioshock
Gears of War
Dungeon Siege (the original)
The Battle for Middle Earth
World in Conflict
Homeworld 2
Sins of a Solar Empire
Oblivion (including Shivering Isle)
Fiesta
Warhammer Online
World of Warcraft
Devil May Cry 4
Chaos Legion
Kung Fu Panda (demo runs so full game should work too)
Star Wars Empire at War
Neverwinter Nights 2
Assassin's Creed
Spore
Peggle Extreme
Every Extend
GRID
Need for Speed ProStreet
Need for Speed Most Wanted
rFactor (trial works so full game should too)
 
Vista 64-bit runs everything, including even old stuff like Day of the Tentacle (in compatibility mode of course). I had some trouble running Blood Money on it, but by tweaking the compatibility options, it now runs flawlessly. I've been using it for one year now and have no major issues with it.
 
I am going to ask another question here, will 4 gig of mem with vista 64bit do any faster than 2 gig with a 32bit operating system?
 
Yes, 4 gigs should be significantly faster than 2 (mainly in games). With 64 bit there will also be increased handling of multiple programs running at once.
 
Games don't run faster as such with more RAM, but loading times are improved and choppiness is reduced, mainly because more textures are loaded into the RAM, so the HDD does not need to be accessed very frequently. As for 32-bit vs 64-bit, I don't think it'd make much of a difference.
 
I used to have 4GB (4x1GB) on my system and everybody (on this forums) recommend to leave only 2x1GB and run SANDRA to benchmark and they were right, my memory speed improve a lot, my system worked faster with 2GB paired correctly than with 4GB recognized as 3.25GB, couldn't believe it but the benckmarks were there.

Never heard of that, and I would like to see others comment on it. I suspect it might have been more to do with whether or not the system cache was adjusted.
 
I believe I was able to replicate that a while back - where 2 paired DIMMs gave me better synthetic performance than when I had 4 in. I don't remember the reason for it (timing issues maybe?) but having double the RAM just proved more beneficial for me than having half running a little faster.
 
Maybe your motherboard had only one pair of slots running in dual-channel? That might explain your results.
 
Not mine - 2 pairs of dual channel. I was also able to replicate it using Sisoft Sandra on multiple machines with this setup (different mobos and RAM.)
 
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