32 bit or 64 bit

[Guest]

A little confused as to what I should do. I am running xp Pro 32 bit but I
have Athlon 64 dual core processor. If I upgrade to 64 bit will my old
applications still work or am I better off staying with 32 bit?

 

[Adam Albright]

On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 14:36:00 -0800, Derrell Gore <Derrell

A little confused as to what I should do. I am running xp Pro 32 bit but I
have Athlon 64 dual core processor. If I upgrade to 64 bit will my old
applications still work or am I better off staying with 32 bit?

Most people are probably better off with 32 bit. There just isn't that
much 64 bit software out there... yet. The other issue is vendors
likely will work on 64 bit drivers after 32 bit.

 

[Guest]

So I am right in saying that 32-bit software will not run on 64-bit version?

 

[Jane C]

Most 32 bit software will work on a 64 bit operating system. Device drivers
for x64 must be signed drivers. Any 32 bit software that uses a 16 bit
installer will not install. There is no support at all for 16 bit in x64.

All x64 versions of Vista can only be clean installed. There is no direct
upgrade from 32 bit to 64 bit.

 

[Barry Watzman]

I think that you are not right in saying that "32-bit software will not
run on 64-bit version", but, at the same time, I don't think that you
can do an upgrade from the 32-bit version to the 64-bit version. You
can, I think, do a clean install, but that will mean reinstalling all of
the software, one product at a time.

 

[Guest]

Does both versions come on the install version of Vista?

 

[JW]

Thats not what I think he said. I understand his statement and I agree that
all 32 bit software applications will run on the 64Bit OS. However hardware
drivers for any insalled or connected hardware will require 64 bit drivers.

 

[Mike Hall - MS MVP Windows Shell/User]

Unless you have 64bit mission critical applications or you need to be able
to access more than 4gb RAM, stay with 32bit Vista..

 

[Ted Dawson]

Unless you have 64bit mission critical applications or you need to be able
to access more than 4gb RAM, stay with 32bit Vista..

I've already got Vista Ultimate 64bit OEM... is there a way to install in as
32bit?

 

[JW]

Unless you know that you can't get 64bit drivers yet for some items on your
system I would go ahead and install the 64bit version so that the OS gets
the performace benefit of using 64 bit registers and 64bit instructions even
you do not yet have 64bit versions of your applications at least when they
are released you will be all set.

 

[neillm2001]

I have installed 32 bit Vista Ultimate on my Athlon 63 X2 machine and
find that it operates noticably slower than window XP. I also note
that Ultimate loads a bunch on unnecessary (for me) stuff that I
haven't been able to disable yet. Since I'm having problems
installing the 64 bit system, I will return to XP pro.