Vista: 64-Bit or 32-Bit?

[foolfromhell]

I use my computer for primarily Gaming.

Here are my specs
C2D e6600
2GB DDR2-800 RAM (I might get 2 more GB soon)
X-Fi soundcard
8800GTX
eVGA 680i Motherboard

Its a custom-built computer by my own hands, and I have XP MCE 05. I want Vista, and the question boils down to this.

Will 32-Bit Vista really screw up my computer if I have a total of 4GB RAM? What will the repercussions be?

 

[mechBgon]

If you want it to be able to use all the RAM, you want 64-bit.

 

[jonmcc33]

Why do you want Vista? Are you wanting all the pain and suffering?

 

[foolfromhell]

I like the Superfetch, the search, the DX10, the Gadgets and a lot more on Vista.

 

[Griffinhart]

I'd go Vista 64 too. Actually, I just did go to Vista 64.

Vista won't screw up your computer at all, so no worries there. But, 64 bit will be the only version of windows that will see all 4GB of RAM. Just make sure that you can find drivers for all of your hardware before hand. Everythign you listed has drivers, but double check your printer and other hardware to be on the safe side.

you can use this web site to double check compatibility.
http://winqual.microsoft.com/hcl/

I found it very useful. I'm using the linksys Wireless N board and found no drivers listed at their site. I even found posts about there not being one. But the link confirmed that they are included on the Vista install disks and the drivers are working.

 

[foolfromhell]

Originally posted by: Griffinhart
I'd go Vista 64 too. Actually, I just did go to Vista 64.

Vista won't screw up your computer at all, so no worries there. But, 64 bit will be the only version of windows that will see all 4GB of RAM. Just make sure that you can find drivers for all of your hardware before hand. Everythign you listed has drivers, but double check your printer and other hardware to be on the safe side.

you can use this web site to double check compatibility.
http://winqual.microsoft.com/hcl/

I found it very useful. I'm using the linksys Wireless N board and found no drivers listed at their site. I even found posts about there not being one. But the link confirmed that they are included on the Vista install disks and the drivers are working.

Thanks there.

My printer and stuff says "Certified for Windows Vista" but doesnt have "Works on Windows Vista" checked. But, the same goes for my videocard, which definitely has drivers... Wtf

 

[stevty2889]

Yep, 64bit is the better option. It will let you use 4gig+ RAM. And although I was finaly getting equal gaming performance to XP in vista wth the latest beat Nvidia drivers, they also managed to screw up my Vista and XP as well as my roomates (169.04) so I would avoid those for now. Also using DX9 mode over DX10 mode can give a boost to performance in some games, if you don't need all the extra eye candy, and make sure windows defender isn't set to real time scanning it can hurt gaming performance as well.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: jonmcc33
Why do you want Vista? Are you wanting all the pain and suffering?

Maybe he wants better memory handling,better security,DX10 for gaming,updated OS that is not 7 years old,able to use all of 4GB with Vista x64 etc...,personally I find nothing wrong with Vista x64 for gaming or general use,I have been using it since Jan,my advice like always is always check what 64 bit drivers you can get for your hardware and what software you want or need to be able to run in Vista x64,if you can answer yes to all of those then go for it.

Here are my specs
C2D e6600
2GB DDR2-800 RAM (I might get 2 more GB soon)
X-Fi soundcard
8800GTX
eVGA 680i Motherboard

You have no problem getting Vista x64 drivers for above,so just check the rest of your hardware etc...

 

[balane]

No regrets with my V64. I have nothing but praise for it. XP systems seem ancient to me now.

 

[Noema]

I'm very happy with Vista 64-bit. My only issue is my Line 6 guitar hardware has no 64-bit drivers...but I was aware of that before upgrading.

Other than that I'd never go back to XP.

 

[Griffinhart]

Originally posted by: foolfromhell


Thanks there.

My printer and stuff says "Certified for Windows Vista" but doesnt have "Works on Windows Vista" checked. But, the same goes for my videocard, which definitely has drivers... Wtf

I know, I was confused by that as well. To make sure, click link to the device on the list. It will say what drivers are there and where they are available. For example, My WMP300N wireless N OCI adapter. Here is its entry: http://tinyurl.com/323c2j

It says Certified for Windows Vista, but not works on Windows Vista. If you look to the section on Windows Vista Driver Availability it says that X64 drivers are available as a part of Vista and through Windows Update. So, if your device says the same, you will have the drivers.

 

[jonmcc33]

Originally posted by: foolfromhell
I like the Superfetch, the search, the DX10, the Gadgets and a lot more on Vista.

I hate Superfetch, it slows things down more because it loads programs into RAM. No need for search if you learn to properly manage files and folders properly. DX10 is useless right now, even current DX10 video cards aren't capable of pushing DX10 with maxed out settings. I don't know what gadgets in Vista are useful at all...

 

[jonmcc33]

Originally posted by: Griffinhart
I'd go Vista 64 too. Actually, I just did go to Vista 64.

Vista won't screw up your computer at all, so no worries there. But, 64 bit will be the only version of windows that will see all 4GB of RAM. Just make sure that you can find drivers for all of your hardware before hand. Everythign you listed has drivers, but double check your printer and other hardware to be on the safe side.

you can use this web site to double check compatibility.
http://winqual.microsoft.com/hcl/

I found it very useful. I'm using the linksys Wireless N board and found no drivers listed at their site. I even found posts about there not being one. But the link confirmed that they are included on the Vista install disks and the drivers are working.

Are you sure no 32-bit Server version will see it all?

Seeing 4GB RAM is useless because you're still limited to what the 32-bit applications you run can use. I see this 4GB RAM thing all the time and it's a giant pile of crap in my book. Nobody is even running 64-bit applications on x64 and Vista 64...

 

[Heinrich]

My Vista-64 setup was so problematic and randomly unreliable that I started to suspect hardware.

I suffered for about a month...then in late August Nvidia posted driver 163.44 which was a huge improvement in stability, then Microsoft released 3-4 hotfixes specifically dealing with Vista 64 memory addressing and SLI mode, etc. Life has been AS STABLE as on XP ever since! there's no going back. vista still suffers from 7 months of instability reputation though.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: jonmcc33

Originally posted by: Griffinhart
I'd go Vista 64 too. Actually, I just did go to Vista 64.

Vista won't screw up your computer at all, so no worries there. But, 64 bit will be the only version of windows that will see all 4GB of RAM. Just make sure that you can find drivers for all of your hardware before hand. Everythign you listed has drivers, but double check your printer and other hardware to be on the safe side.

you can use this web site to double check compatibility.
http://winqual.microsoft.com/hcl/

I found it very useful. I'm using the linksys Wireless N board and found no drivers listed at their site. I even found posts about there not being one. But the link confirmed that they are included on the Vista install disks and the drivers are working.

Are you sure no 32-bit Server version will see it all?

Seeing 4GB RAM is useless because you're still limited to what the 32-bit applications you run can use. I see this 4GB RAM thing all the time and it's a giant pile of crap in my book. Nobody is even running 64-bit applications on x64 and Vista 64...

I could definitely use 4GB or more, just for multiple 32-bit apps alone. Four to six WinXP virtual machines in Virtual PC 2007 would be nice for some of my purposes; there goes 2-3GB of RAM if I give them each 512MB to play in. In gaming, the word from the Crysis developers is that >2GB will pay dividends. I use a 64-bit app every day, too (64-bit IE7, as it happens).

Keep the big picture in mind: Vista has a forward lifespan of ~5-10 years. People may not want to paint themselves into a 32-bit corner any more, and if they buy 4GB or more of RAM, they probably DO want to have access to all of it, which seems to be what the OP wants to know about here.

 

[stash]

I hate Superfetch, it slows things down more because it loads programs into RAM

This doesn't make any sense. Your frequently used apps are available in RAM, so this is somehow slower? You prefer loading apps off the ~million times slower disk? Ok...

No need for search if you learn to properly manage files and folders properly

Right. Can your file management skills help you find every instance of a particular word in every Word file on your system? Or find emails with a particular subject? Or items that have attachments containing a particular word? Or items that are attachments containing a particluar word? Or items that were authored by a particular person, before or after a certain date?

People who say that indexing is useless clearly don't have a lot of data that they need to search through. Which is fine, but to call it useless because you don't have a need for it is asinine.

Seeing 4GB RAM is useless because you're still limited to what the 32-bit applications you run can use.

A 32 bit app using /LARGEADDRESSAWARE running on 64 bit Vista will get 4GB of virtual memory. On 32 bit Vista it could get a max of 3GB. Not to mention the max 128GB page pool size on x64 (compared to 470MB), the max 128GB non-paged pool (compared to 256MB), and the 1TB max system cache (compared to 1GB). When your system starts running low on paged and/or non-paged pool, you will notice it.

 

[Ryland]

Vista64 cannot run any 16bit applications which I found out the hard way...

 

[nerp]

Originally posted by: jonmcc33

Originally posted by: foolfromhell
I like the Superfetch, the search, the DX10, the Gadgets and a lot more on Vista.

I hate Superfetch, it slows things down more because it loads programs into RAM. No need for search if you learn to properly manage files and folders properly. DX10 is useless right now, even current DX10 video cards aren't capable of pushing DX10 with maxed out settings. I don't know what gadgets in Vista are useful at all...

Wow. First of all, you must have done absolutley no research on Superfetch to make such claims. The only difference between Superfetch on or off is that Superfetch is faster and should always be on. Simple as that. Stash explained the nuts and bolts and some simple googling will clear up your confusion.

And like stash said, you must not have much data to manage or just have some warez/movie/music collection in folders as opposed to me, a writer with tens of thousands of word documents from nearly a decade of being a reporter and freelancer. I have a full career's worth of notes, ideas, thoughts, published stories, references, contacts and phone numbers buried in a folder heiarchy that would make even a 200GB mp3 collection look tame. Tell me what's better -- spending 4 hours sifting through 25,000 documents for a small reference or spending 5 seconds typing part of it into the start menu and having it appearing?

You sound like someone with a two system peer-to-peer network in your house proclaiming that domains are stupid because "it's easy to share files just by right clicking on folders" and "just get a hotmail account" in resonse to someone's request for company-wide email solution.

Just because you havent' figured out how to exploit a key feature in Vista doesn't make it useless for the rest of us.

 

[foolfromhell]

Thank you all. Someone mentioned that some installers use 16-bit code. Does anyone know how widespread this use is? Hope Freespace2 SCP doesnt use anything 16bit...

I will most likely get 64-bit and a RAM upgrade now, but that 16-bit thing is really scary...

 

[Scarpozzi]

I suggest getting Vista64 and bumping up your RAM to at least 4GB.

If you have any old games or applications or devices that require 3D graphics cards, sink a few hundred bucks into a second box to run XP on and a KVM switch.... No need to waste time trying to virtualize XP to run old applications. Virtual machines don't do 3D graphics....

For me, I'm still on XP Media Center 2005 and XP Home for my second box. I won't go to Vista until they work the bugs out. I'm giving them another year or more. Who knows, maybe by then the hardware will catch up to the bloat.

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

FYI:

Certified for Vista > Works with Vista


All "works with" means is that you'll be able to get some basic level of functionality without too much headache.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: foolfromhell
Thank you all. Someone mentioned that some installers use 16-bit code. Does anyone know how widespread this use is? Hope Freespace2 SCP doesnt use anything 16bit...

I will most likely get 64-bit and a RAM upgrade now, but that 16-bit thing is really scary...

It's not scarey,16 bit software at least in my case is useless,I only had one really old paint software program that I upgraded to the newer 32 bit version,as to games that are 16 bit they will be very old (again not really important),you can always dual boot or use something like Virtual PC 2007,oldest game I have installed is Might & Magic 8(32 bit game released in March 2000).
My last game count in Vista x64 was 40 plus games installed all working fine from classics like Baldur's Gate,KOTOR,UT2004 etc..

Seeing 4GB RAM is useless because you're still limited to what the 32-bit applications you run can use. I see this 4GB RAM thing all the time and it's a giant pile of crap in my book. Nobody is even running 64-bit applications on x64 and Vista 64...

Speak for yourself only,I'm running both 32 bit and 64 bit software(Thunderbird 64 bit email client,O&O Defrag etc ),also you think we'll stay on 32 bit software and 2-3GB limited forever?....Personally I like 4GB for gaming and I hate to think how much games will need in a few years time especially when 1GB video cards will probably be very common.Remember XP started with 256mb ram(I remember using XP with 256mb) and when I moved over to Vista this year 1GB-2GB is quite common to find in XP.

 

[Energizer Bunny]

I suggest you get Vista 64

I upgraded to it a month or so ago from XP and it has blown me away. Ultra stable, great performance, all devices work, excellent gaming performance. I don't even know what the hell superfetch is, but as a noob I can tell you it ticks all the boxes for me.

 

[Timecop1967]

I play Freespace 2 SCP also.....would like to know if Vista 64 will run it. If not may stick with XP pro.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: Timecop1967
I play Freespace 2 SCP also.....would like to know if Vista 64 will run it. If not may stick with XP pro.

Some info here on Freespace 2 and here .