Windows 32bit vs 64bit

[Da Luniz]

Ive gotten tired of looking so Ill just ask here
Whats the difference in using the 32bit vista over the 64bit version?

 

[Mark]

32bit has less compatibility issues. 64bit supports a lot more RAM and
should run a little quicker but not much.

 

[D Luniz]

so, its not worth the work it woud take to install it on my laptop and
reloading everything
well thanks for the help

 

[iNexxFear]

Basically this is a huge increase but once again like the old dos and windows
days, we are not quite ready for the huge conversion!

basically the 64 bit Windows OS, besides supporting larger amounts of memory
and running quicker comes down to how the system handles its computing
processes... As the description mentions it can handle twice the amount of
programming instructions in the processor at one CPU cycle, thus the
increase.... And since you now have double the amount of bits processing
data it can handle twice the size of memory..

32 bit windows supports 4GB
64 bit windwos supports 8GB

However, as Mark mentions support for getting all 64 bit drives is very
limited... Thus alot of folks still run the 32 bit.... Possibly the next
version of windows coming out next year will get us moving on a true 64bit
exclusive backbone without the need to worry about which version to run!

Hope that helps describe a little bit better for you!

 

[Steve Drake]

Double bits give far more than double memory.

One more bit, would double the memory, so 32 more bits doubles it for each
extra bit.

Its about the address pointer.

32bit pointers address up to 4GB (4,294,967,295 bytes).
64bit pointers can address around 17.2 billion GB, yes, I did say billion.

But, most OSes wont support that, a Mac pro can support around 32GB, vista
supports around 128GB.

Windows 2008 will support 2TB, now that's allot.

Also... in the old days, the bits in the CPU did not always map to memory.
most 8bit CPU supported 16bit memory addresses.

Steve

 

[John]

32bit pointers address up to 4GB (4,294,967,295 bytes).
64bit pointers can address around 17.2 billion GB, yes, I did say billion.

But, most OSes wont support that, a Mac pro can support around 32GB, vista
supports around 128GB.

Windows 2008 will support 2TB, now that's allot.

Just FYI. Windows XP x64 is limited to 128 GB of physical memory and
16 terabytes of virtual memory. Unfortunately my system is limited to
8GB.

JD