32bit vs 64bit

[Andy]

Hi

Just getting ready to setup my new Vista machine, but I'm a bit uncertain
about if I'm going for 32bit or 64bit. I actually have access to both
versions. I've heard that there are issues with 64 bit, such as antivirus,
games and so on. Are there actually any real benefits for 64bit at the
moment, besides support for more memory.
I'm very happy for arguments for both options.

/A.

 

[Ian Betts]

Hi

Just getting ready to setup my new Vista machine, but I'm a bit uncertain
about if I'm going for 32bit or 64bit. I actually have access to both
versions. I've heard that there are issues with 64 bit, such as antivirus,
games and so on. Are there actually any real benefits for 64bit at the
moment, besides support for more memory.
I'm very happy for arguments for both options.

/A.

Pay your money and take your choice. You need 64bit motherboard, processor
and 2gb Ram to make the 64 worth while of course.

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Yes, there are issues. What you have heard is correct. Unless you have to
run mission critical 64bit apps requiring greater than 4gb, you are best to
stay with the 32bit OS..

Hi

Just getting ready to setup my new Vista machine, but I'm a bit uncertain
about if I'm going for 32bit or 64bit. I actually have access to both
versions. I've heard that there are issues with 64 bit, such as antivirus,
games and so on. Are there actually any real benefits for 64bit at the
moment, besides support for more memory.
I'm very happy for arguments for both options.

/A.

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

 

[Adam Albright]

Hi

Just getting ready to setup my new Vista machine, but I'm a bit uncertain
about if I'm going for 32bit or 64bit. I actually have access to both
versions. I've heard that there are issues with 64 bit, such as antivirus,
games and so on. Are there actually any real benefits for 64bit at the
moment, besides support for more memory.
I'm very happy for arguments for both options.

/A.

The only advantage to using 64 bit at THIS TIME is if you have both
the hardware and it's drivers plus software that actually take
advantage of it. For most people that isn't a reality...yet.

A pretty good analogy would be if you could, buying a hydrogen
car now. Likely it would stay in your garage since there are few
places to buy hydrogen fuel. A good idea and the future, but too
early. Ditto for 64 bit.

 

[Noddy]

Yes, there are issues. What you have heard is correct. Unless you have to
run mission critical 64bit apps requiring greater than 4gb, you are best
to stay with the 32bit OS..

I'm running Vista64 and AVG antivirus works fine and so do the games I have
installed so far. I have 4gb of ram and want the OS to have full access to
it.

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Noddy

This is part of a new finding.. I would give the rest, but the server on
which the information resides appears to be down temporarily..

"Anti virus software for the 64-bit version of Windows Vista is struggling
to properly protect the operating system, according to a new test by the
Virus Bulletin security certification body. Of the 20 anti-virus product
tested, 35 per cent failed to meet the test's criteria. Six of the failing
grades were caused by so called false positives, legitimate files that are
incorrectly flagged as malware."

The OS may well take full advantage of 4gb, but do the games?

I'm running Vista64 and AVG antivirus works fine and so do the games I
have installed so far. I have 4gb of ram and want the OS to have full
access to it.

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

 

[Andy]

"> Pay your money and take your choice. You need 64bit motherboard,
processor

and 2gb Ram to make the 64 worth while of course.

Hi

The new machine is a Core 2 Quad CPU (Q6600) with a motherboard supporting
it so it will support 64 bit just fine, but since there will (at the current
time) be issues with appliactions and AV software with 64 bit OS I might as
well continue with 32 bit. My main applications are visualstudio (32 bit)
Vmware (32 bit) and some games. As long as I only have 2gb ram the limit of
ram that the OS can adresse is well within the boundries of my setup.

/A.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Pay your money and take your choice. You need 64bit motherboard, processor
and 2gb Ram to make the 64 worth while of course.

Over and above what hardware you have, you need 64-bit drivers for all
your hardware (and there are many cases where the drivers aren't
available) to make it work at all.

Then, to make it worthwhile, you need 64-bit applications, of which
there are presently very few. Without the 64-bit applications, any
performance improvement will be so small as to be almost unnoticeable.

A few years from now, almost everybody will be running 64-bit Windows.
But for the present, it's a rare person for whom it makes sense, even
if you have the hardware to support it.

 

[Guest]

If you're doing VMWare, I suggest going with 64 bit. That is the main reason
I built my new dual quad-core Xeon PC that I run Vista Ultimate X64 on.

Virtual PC hosts, either from Microsoft tools or VMWare tools, require a lot
of memory. My 8GB, so far, allow me to run as many as a dozen or more
virtual PC/Servers at the same time - and I still have 4 empty memory slots
for another 8GB when I need it.

I do have some problems with games, though. I am not a big gamer but I do
like strategy games like Age of Empires, etc. The only game I have tried to
install on my Vista X64 is Age of Empires II and it will not complete the
install.

If you're like me, though, you probably have more than one PC anyway so I
play Age of Empires II on my Core 2 Duo Vista X86 box. But writing this post
gave me the idea to try Age of Empires on a virtual PC running XP Pro.

Dale

 

[Guest]

I didn't have any problem at all with 64-bit drivers for my hardware. With
the exception of Creative Labs, most well-known hardware vendors are
providing working 64-bit Vista drivers for their current hardware.

And I haven't had any problem at all with any of my productivity software;
only with my productivitiy-killer software.

 

[Cal Bear '66]

No problems here with Creative X-Fi and Vista Business x64.

What headaches?

 

[Andy]

Over and above what hardware you have, you need 64-bit drivers for all
your hardware (and there are many cases where the drivers aren't
available) to make it work at all.

Then, to make it worthwhile, you need 64-bit applications, of which
there are presently very few. Without the 64-bit applications, any
performance improvement will be so small as to be almost unnoticeable.

A few years from now, almost everybody will be running 64-bit Windows.
But for the present, it's a rare person for whom it makes sense, even
if you have the hardware to support it.

But how is it with antivirus software on x64. Recently I've read alot about
how there are problems protecting the machine with the current versions
since only very few are truly 64 bit.

/A.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

But how is it with antivirus software on x64. Recently I've read alot about
how there are problems protecting the machine with the current versions
since only very few are truly 64 bit.

There may be few (I'm not sure), but you only need one. My personal
favorite, Avast! supports Vista x64.

That wouldn't be an issue that would keep me from running 64-bit
Vista.

 

[Charlie Tame]

Hi

Just getting ready to setup my new Vista machine, but I'm a bit
uncertain about if I'm going for 32bit or 64bit. I actually have access
to both versions. I've heard that there are issues with 64 bit, such as
antivirus, games and so on. Are there actually any real benefits for
64bit at the moment, besides support for more memory.
I'm very happy for arguments for both options.

/A.

Well, for most things 32 is actually better - faster for games and no
issues with drivers that will actually cause the machine to shut down
and force either a reinstall or some keyboard work. Had that twice.

Having said that this machine normally has a 64 bit version in the drive
and most of my "Steam" games work, including Half Life Two etc, but they
run slower than on 32 or XP. Video drivers are also less well covered
although NVidia have got someting hacked together for 64 and it's been
stable here for a couple of months.

I know it's frustrating not to be getting all you could, but to be
honest it is not there to get yet. As someone said unless you actually
have applications that can use it it's not really an issue, and AV is
not a problem there are several.

Yes it does work okay with Visual Studio 2005 with the huge upgrade,
buut it will be a while yet before anything worthwhile comes out for it.

 

[Verger]

Avoid 64 if you have a creative xfi. No stop headaches.

I have an X-Fo ordered. Was this a mistake?

 

[phypps]

I have not had any problems either, with Vista Ultimate 64.
Drivers all OK, hardly any software issues.

I can actually use all of my 4Gb ram.
If you think that is not too important yet just try counting the number of
threads regarding this very issue.
2Gb is just not enough any more, and if you have 32 bit you are stuffed.

With regard to Creative drivers its not actually Creatives fault that MS
removed the (HAL) Hardware Abstraction Layer from Vista and effectively
disabled EAX and lots of other stuff as well.
ALchemy (using OpenAL) restores some of the function.
This whole sound issue is mainly a Vista rather than Creative problem.

My only concern would be putting 64 bit on anything other than a very recent
machine.
(but that would apply to Vista in general as well, but slightly less so with
32 bit)

Phypps

 

[Oldtech]

I have not had any problems either, with Vista Ultimate 64.
Drivers all OK, hardly any software issues.

I can actually use all of my 4Gb ram.
If you think that is not too important yet just try counting the number of
threads regarding this very issue.
2Gb is just not enough any more, and if you have 32 bit you are stuffed.

With regard to Creative drivers its not actually Creatives fault that MS
removed the (HAL) Hardware Abstraction Layer from Vista and effectively
disabled EAX and lots of other stuff as well.
ALchemy (using OpenAL) restores some of the function.
This whole sound issue is mainly a Vista rather than Creative problem.

My only concern would be putting 64 bit on anything other than a very recent
machine.
(but that would apply to Vista in general as well, but slightly less so with
32 bit)

Phypps

It sure don't work on DEC Alpha 64 bit machines!

But, for all the 'modern' 64 bit processors, I run Ubuntu, Mepis, BSD,
that actually have the applications that run perfectly, without any
problems. Plus, can access all the RAM the BIOS permits on the
mainboard (Some new systems can host 8GB of RAM!).

Faster, also. But, it is a world of Free choices.

I have run liveCDroms in tri-weekly demonstrations on 64 bit HP/Compaq,
Dell, Acer, and white box systems at Costco, Best Buy, CompUSA and some
of the local PC stores, and have yet to find hardware that doesn't work
well in Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mepis 32bit and 64 bit liveCDroms. You can
have them free, at http://livecdlist.com

Most machines on display only have 1 Gb of RAM, and lots of our
customers seem to have been mis-informed about how that is minimal, not
recommended. But, that amount is overkill for the 'Nixes. In testing
on the bench, almost 256 MB of RAM is idle, on a machine having 768MB
total RAM, in the 'Nixes.

So, we popped out some RAM and ran them with a total of 512Mb and noted
no problems or slowdowns until we invoked some heavy programs which
started using 'virtual' or Swap memory (hard drive storage space).

Also, really neat is the 20 concurrent desktops, and the 4,000
concurrent processes that can be handled. The alternative Beryl cube
desktop is fun, running different Microsoft OSes on each face of the
cube, as is demonstrated at YouTube in any search "linux" or "Beryl".

I haven't mentioned the lack of DRM. but, I don't want to get flamed...
Most competent technicians see computers as a tool and then decide the
proper OS and applications to get that tool to function best for the
task at hand.

Hope you all have seen that with Microsoft running Aruba Linux routers
at all Corporate networks, plus, the leasing of the 15,000 Akamai Linux
Servers for MS.com, MSN.com, and, the running of Hotmail.com on FreeBSD
servers since purchased in 1997, because those tools and applications
work best for the task, and Microsoft employs intelligent technicians.

I also boot the LiveCDroms and run ClamAV to fix the infected Vista or
XP machines of our customers. There are 315 LiveCDroms for free at
http://livecdlist.com

Your free choice awaits you, and any true friend would not hold you up
for ridicule for making your own decisions.

 

[Ian Betts]

It sure don't work on DEC Alpha 64 bit machines!

But, for all the 'modern' 64 bit processors, I run Ubuntu, Mepis, BSD,
that actually have the applications that run perfectly, without any
problems. Plus, can access all the RAM the BIOS permits on the
mainboard (Some new systems can host 8GB of RAM!).

Faster, also. But, it is a world of Free choices.

I have run liveCDroms in tri-weekly demonstrations on 64 bit HP/Compaq,
Dell, Acer, and white box systems at Costco, Best Buy, CompUSA and some
of the local PC stores, and have yet to find hardware that doesn't work
well in Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mepis 32bit and 64 bit liveCDroms. You can
have them free, at http://livecdlist.com

Most machines on display only have 1 Gb of RAM, and lots of our
customers seem to have been mis-informed about how that is minimal, not
recommended. But, that amount is overkill for the 'Nixes. In testing
on the bench, almost 256 MB of RAM is idle, on a machine having 768MB
total RAM, in the 'Nixes.

So, we popped out some RAM and ran them with a total of 512Mb and noted
no problems or slowdowns until we invoked some heavy programs which
started using 'virtual' or Swap memory (hard drive storage space).

Also, really neat is the 20 concurrent desktops, and the 4,000
concurrent processes that can be handled. The alternative Beryl cube
desktop is fun, running different Microsoft OSes on each face of the
cube, as is demonstrated at YouTube in any search "linux" or "Beryl".

I haven't mentioned the lack of DRM. but, I don't want to get flamed...
Most competent technicians see computers as a tool and then decide the
proper OS and applications to get that tool to function best for the
task at hand.

Hope you all have seen that with Microsoft running Aruba Linux routers
at all Corporate networks, plus, the leasing of the 15,000 Akamai Linux
Servers for MS.com, MSN.com, and, the running of Hotmail.com on FreeBSD
servers since purchased in 1997, because those tools and applications
work best for the task, and Microsoft employs intelligent technicians.

I also boot the LiveCDroms and run ClamAV to fix the infected Vista or
XP machines of our customers. There are 315 LiveCDroms for free at
http://livecdlist.com

Your free choice awaits you, and any true friend would not hold you up
for ridicule for making your own decisions.

I go along with all you say. Unfortunately or fortunately we get a mixture
of absolute beginners and every shade up to and including so called experts,
if anyone can every archive that with computers on these NGs and need to
help in less technical language very often, something that the computer geek
often finds difficult.

I use Ubuntu on laptops for exhibitions of the system and XP and Vista on
Desktops for teaching

They all have their joys and their vices, so a bunch of live Boot CDs with
all the necessary tools is never far from hand.
--
Ian

With patience there is always a way.

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