Can My PC Run 64bit?

[Wayne Smith]

Hi everyone,
I've recently bought a new Acer Aspire desktop PC which came preinstalled with Vista Home Premium 32bit but I have a Windows Server running at home which I use to manage my home network through a Windows Domain Controller, Vista Home Premium obviously won't allow me to connect to a Domain Controller, so I also purchased a retail upgrade of Vista Ultimate.

My question is this, is there a way to tell if my new Acer PC is capable of running the Vista Ultimate 64bit version. The reason I ask is because everything I've read since I bought my new PC indicates that the 64bit addition of Vista would be more appropriate for the tasks I perform regularly with my PC - Acer haven't been much use to be honest, I did email their support desk and the response I got was that they couldn't tell me if it's capable of running 64bit editions as it has not been tested with it.

From everything I've read about 64bit Windows so far, it seems to suggest that a PC running 3GB or less of RAM is more suited to 32bit while anything above that is more geared towards 64bit, my Acer PC came from new with 4GB RAM which leads to be think it may be capable of running the 64bit edition. Also as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it depends almost entirely on the processor installed in the PC if it can run the 64bit version. My PC came with an AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core 2.2GHz Processor but I can't even find a matching model processor listed on AMD's website to know if it will run the 64bit version or not.

Can anyone suggest a way to check of my PC is capable of running the 64bit edition without physically attempting to install it from the DVD, are there any applications available for download or anything I can check through my current installation that might give me a clue?

I greatly appreciate any help, pointers or suggestions.

Many thanks
Wayne

 

[Chad Harris]

Hi Wayne--

Load your 64 bit OS and enjoy.

AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core 2.2GHz Processor --that's the key.

You can run 64 bit XP, Vista, or Win 7 on that box and run it well. The processor is your key.

Roughly speaking and in anecdotal reports, 64 bit Vista or Windows 7 runs about 10% faster. This is of course dependent on a number of factors, not the least of which are your CPU architecture and the amount and quality/type of RAM ,and the quality of your hardware in general.

"From everything I've read about 64bit Windows so far, it seems to suggest that a PC running 3GB or less of RAM is more suited to 32bit while anything above that is more geared towards 64bit, my Acer PC came from new with 4GB RAM which leads to be think it may be capable of running the 64bit edition. Also as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it depends almost entirely on the processor installed in the PC if it can run the 64bit version. My PC came with an AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core 2.2GHz Processor but I can't even find a matching model processor listed on AMD's website to know if it will run the 64bit version or not."

I would trash "everything you've read" that intimates a requirement for greater than 3 gb of RAM to run 64 bit Windows OS's be they XP, Vista, or Win 7 because it's pure nonsense.

Many people run 64 bit Windows OS's with less RAM than 3GB and it runs extreemely fast on duo core processor architecture in general.

It seems like you have nice specs on your box. Enjoy.

CH
Hi everyone,
I've recently bought a new Acer Aspire desktop PC which came preinstalled with Vista Home Premium 32bit but I have a Windows Server running at home which I use to manage my home network through a Windows Domain Controller, Vista Home Premium obviously won't allow me to connect to a Domain Controller, so I also purchased a retail upgrade of Vista Ultimate.

My question is this, is there a way to tell if my new Acer PC is capable of running the Vista Ultimate 64bit version. The reason I ask is because everything I've read since I bought my new PC indicates that the 64bit addition of Vista would be more appropriate for the tasks I perform regularly with my PC - Acer haven't been much use to be honest, I did email their support desk and the response I got was that they couldn't tell me if it's capable of running 64bit editions as it has not been tested with it.

From everything I've read about 64bit Windows so far, it seems to suggest that a PC running 3GB or less of RAM is more suited to 32bit while anything above that is more geared towards 64bit, my Acer PC came from new with 4GB RAM which leads to be think it may be capable of running the 64bit edition. Also as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it depends almost entirely on the processor installed in the PC if it can run the 64bit version. My PC came with an AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core 2.2GHz Processor but I can't even find a matching model processor listed on AMD's website to know if it will run the 64bit version or not.

Can anyone suggest a way to check of my PC is capable of running the 64bit edition without physically attempting to install it from the DVD, are there any applications available for download or anything I can check through my current installation that might give me a clue?

I greatly appreciate any help, pointers or suggestions.

Many thanks
Wayne

 

[pupick]

I strongly endorse Vista 64 for your machine, but make sure there are Vista 64 drivers for your peripherals. If so Vista 64 is a superior performer to Vista 32.
My humble advice: stay away from the Beta of Win 7, and even the shipping version, until Microsoft guarantees that Vista drivers will work with Win 7.
Win 7 is mostly Vista with a different GUI but the beta, at least the 64 bit, is simply not compatible with a wide variety of current Vista 64 drivers for common hardware.
My humble experience, which includes a swath of Canon, Epson, Dlink, Linksys, Spyder et al peripherals with very functional Vista 64 drivers finds that few run or install on the current public Win 7 beta. That is a fact, as compared to the froth you will read in Microsoft supported media, which also reported zilch about how utterly incompatible Vista would prove to be with existing XP hardware and software.

 

[Wayne Smith]

Chad and pupick,
Thank you both very much for your input .. I greatly appreciate your advice and obviously I'm thrilled to learn I can run the 64bit OS on my PC. I do have quite a bit of external hardware that I purchased a few years ago while running XP Professional on an old HP box and I will do quite a lot of sensible research beforehand to ensure that Vista 64bit drivers are available before I take the plunge and install the 64bit OS.

I'm not quite ready to jump over to Windows 7 just yet, the furthest I've got with it to-date is to install it through Microsoft Virtual PC and if I'm really honest I didn't think a great deal of it, that said it would probably demonstrate itself more to the hardware of my new PC so it may be worth taking another look, but again only through Virtual PC .... it's taken me this long to move over to Vista, I've been running XP Professional for years and have been very happy with it, I hated Vista when it first came out but it has grown on me more over the years, so perhaps if past experience is anything to go by, I'll probably be upgrading to Windows 7 when the version after Windows 7 hits the shops.

Thanks again for your help guys, it really is appreciated.

Kind Regards,
Wayne

I strongly endorse Vista 64 for your machine, but make sure there are Vista 64 drivers for your peripherals. If so Vista 64 is a superior performer to Vista 32.
My humble advice: stay away from the Beta of Win 7, and even the shipping version, until Microsoft guarantees that Vista drivers will work with Win 7.
Win 7 is mostly Vista with a different GUI but the beta, at least the 64 bit, is simply not compatible with a wide variety of current Vista 64 drivers for common hardware.
My humble experience, which includes a swath of Canon, Epson, Dlink, Linksys, Spyder et al peripherals with very functional Vista 64 drivers finds that few run or install on the current public Win 7 beta. That is a fact, as compared to the froth you will read in Microsoft supported media, which also reported zilch about how utterly incompatible Vista would prove to be with existing XP hardware and software.

 

[Chad Harris]

Wayne--

Sensible research is good. My version of sensible has been to install the OS and beat the box like hell if it dares to refuse to run my peripheral.

Here's an "up thing" for you to look forward to when you install 64 bit Vista on that Acer as far as your peripherals working. **On your Acer, you're going to find that your peripherals will be up and running with the drivers in ready to go as soon as the install finishes.** That's unless you have an usual peripheral. That's my experience with Windows 7 and Vista on a newer notebook. The only peripheral I had to spend all of ten seconds with was my bluetooth mouse, and it's driver was already present and recognized by Vista but I had to go to the bluetooth entry and press a button on the bottom of it for a few seconds and then it was recognized and working perfectly. Every other peripheral including my two printers were recognized the second the setup for both OS's was finished. Now granted, if we take all the peripherals on the planet, there are going to be some where drivers may be problematic--but it's been my experience that the bell shaped curve of peripherals will be picked up imediately by your install. Let me know.

I've been comparing Vista and Windows 7 by running multi boots on different boxes. One of my boxes is my 2001 Dell P4. I have had to install only two drivers on my older Dell box with both Vista and Windows 7. Those were for my Nic Card (3 com) and my sound card (an oldie but goodie Turtle Beach). Without question, there are hundreds of new sound cards that have better technology available as I type this but it still sounds good and when Vista was in Beta some sound card manufacturer muckety mucks proclaimed I'd never get it to work on one of the groups and of course they were wrong. So much for being a sound card muckety muck. Since I've known they might be a problem, I always have those two drivers downloaded, in a folder labeled "Drivers", ready to setup on an external HD or on a drive I use for data/storage so I don't have to hunt around on the older PC without access to the web

At this point, although I don't track this and a lot of very bright people do track this on their sites, most "mainstream" peripherals are running quite well on 64 bit and the drivers are available. I think what hurt MSFT Vista sales if they weren't up to expectations IMHO was that many driver manufacturers dragged their feet in getting drivers available for Vista and particularly for 64 bit Vista. MSFT could only do so much to speed this up since they didn't make drivers for every conceivable peripheral. I remember Jim Allchin blogging a few months before Vista RTM'd that it was shipping with 19,000 plus drivers out of the box on the Vista team blog.

As I said before, what strikes me about Win 7 which will probably have their RC1 available as CPP next month or early June so you could wait for that and put it on another partition on your Acer if you chose to, is that it is significantly more CPU efficient and faster than Vista on every box I have. Their was enough difference from my old Dell and my newer laptop even running 32 bit Vista and 32 bit Win 7 and comparing those two boxes to make me prefer to use the laptop. Now even though I can only run 32 bit on the older Dell it is fast enough with Win 7 so that it is in the "ballpark" although not as fast as the 64 bit Win 7 on a newer notebook.

I used to have sites handy that updated what peripherals had 64 bit drivers. They're available if you search around on the web.

CH
Chad and pupick,
Thank you both very much for your input .. I greatly appreciate your advice and obviously I'm thrilled to learn I can run the 64bit OS on my PC. I do have quite a bit of external hardware that I purchased a few years ago while running XP Professional on an old HP box and I will do quite a lot of sensible research beforehand to ensure that Vista 64bit drivers are available before I take the plunge and install the 64bit OS.

I'm not quite ready to jump over to Windows 7 just yet, the furthest I've got with it to-date is to install it through Microsoft Virtual PC and if I'm really honest I didn't think a great deal of it, that said it would probably demonstrate itself more to the hardware of my new PC so it may be worth taking another look, but again only through Virtual PC .... it's taken me this long to move over to Vista, I've been running XP Professional for years and have been very happy with it, I hated Vista when it first came out but it has grown on me more over the years, so perhaps if past experience is anything to go by, I'll probably be upgrading to Windows 7 when the version after Windows 7 hits the shops.

Thanks again for your help guys, it really is appreciated.

Kind Regards,
Wayne

I strongly endorse Vista 64 for your machine, but make sure there are Vista 64 drivers for your peripherals. If so Vista 64 is a superior performer to Vista 32.
My humble advice: stay away from the Beta of Win 7, and even the shipping version, until Microsoft guarantees that Vista drivers will work with Win 7.
Win 7 is mostly Vista with a different GUI but the beta, at least the 64 bit, is simply not compatible with a wide variety of current Vista 64 drivers for common hardware.
My humble experience, which includes a swath of Canon, Epson, Dlink, Linksys, Spyder et al peripherals with very functional Vista 64 drivers finds that few run or install on the current public Win 7 beta. That is a fact, as compared to the froth you will read in Microsoft supported media, which also reported zilch about how utterly incompatible Vista would prove to be with existing XP hardware and software.

 

[Wayne Smith]

Hi Chad,
Just a quick follow up from our conversation yesterday, patience was never my strong point and I took the leap of faith last night and installed Vista Ultimate 64bit, and spend much of today reinstalling all of my applications and hardware - and as you predicted, every peripheral attached the the computer has installed the 64bit drivers automatically, with the exception of two bits of hardware - one being a Pinnacle DVD Recorder which I use to transfer footage from a video camera to the PC, Vista 64bit didn't recognise that and all I had to do was search Pinnacle's website for Vista 64bit drivers and hey presto job done. The second piece of hardware is an Epson colour laser printer, which at the moment I'm waiting for a new toner cartridge to arrive in the post so I haven't even switched it on yet but no doubt when I fit the new toner cartridge and click the on button, I am expecting Vista 64bit to recognise it straight away - so all of my fears about relevant drivers have been laid to rest.

Other than that everything else seems to be running fine so I'm very happy and very grateful for your advice yesterday.

Thanks again
Wayne





Wayne--

Sensible research is good. My version of sensible has been to install the OS and beat the box like hell if it dares to refuse to run my peripheral.

Here's an "up thing" for you to look forward to when you install 64 bit Vista on that Acer as far as your peripherals working. **On your Acer, you're going to find that your peripherals will be up and running with the drivers in ready to go as soon as the install finishes.** That's unless you have an usual peripheral. That's my experience with Windows 7 and Vista on a newer notebook. The only peripheral I had to spend all of ten seconds with was my bluetooth mouse, and it's driver was already present and recognized by Vista but I had to go to the bluetooth entry and press a button on the bottom of it for a few seconds and then it was recognized and working perfectly. Every other peripheral including my two printers were recognized the second the setup for both OS's was finished. Now granted, if we take all the peripherals on the planet, there are going to be some where drivers may be problematic--but it's been my experience that the bell shaped curve of peripherals will be picked up imediately by your install. Let me know.

I've been comparing Vista and Windows 7 by running multi boots on different boxes. One of my boxes is my 2001 Dell P4. I have had to install only two drivers on my older Dell box with both Vista and Windows 7. Those were for my Nic Card (3 com) and my sound card (an oldie but goodie Turtle Beach). Without question, there are hundreds of new sound cards that have better technology available as I type this but it still sounds good and when Vista was in Beta some sound card manufacturer muckety mucks proclaimed I'd never get it to work on one of the groups and of course they were wrong. So much for being a sound card muckety muck. Since I've known they might be a problem, I always have those two drivers downloaded, in a folder labeled "Drivers", ready to setup on an external HD or on a drive I use for data/storage so I don't have to hunt around on the older PC without access to the web

At this point, although I don't track this and a lot of very bright people do track this on their sites, most "mainstream" peripherals are running quite well on 64 bit and the drivers are available. I think what hurt MSFT Vista sales if they weren't up to expectations IMHO was that many driver manufacturers dragged their feet in getting drivers available for Vista and particularly for 64 bit Vista. MSFT could only do so much to speed this up since they didn't make drivers for every conceivable peripheral. I remember Jim Allchin blogging a few months before Vista RTM'd that it was shipping with 19,000 plus drivers out of the box on the Vista team blog.

As I said before, what strikes me about Win 7 which will probably have their RC1 available as CPP next month or early June so you could wait for that and put it on another partition on your Acer if you chose to, is that it is significantly more CPU efficient and faster than Vista on every box I have. Their was enough difference from my old Dell and my newer laptop even running 32 bit Vista and 32 bit Win 7 and comparing those two boxes to make me prefer to use the laptop. Now even though I can only run 32 bit on the older Dell it is fast enough with Win 7 so that it is in the "ballpark" although not as fast as the 64 bit Win 7 on a newer notebook.

I used to have sites handy that updated what peripherals had 64 bit drivers. They're available if you search around on the web.

CH
Chad and pupick,
Thank you both very much for your input .. I greatly appreciate your advice and obviously I'm thrilled to learn I can run the 64bit OS on my PC. I do have quite a bit of external hardware that I purchased a few years ago while running XP Professional on an old HP box and I will do quite a lot of sensible research beforehand to ensure that Vista 64bit drivers are available before I take the plunge and install the 64bit OS.

I'm not quite ready to jump over to Windows 7 just yet, the furthest I've got with it to-date is to install it through Microsoft Virtual PC and if I'm really honest I didn't think a great deal of it, that said it would probably demonstrate itself more to the hardware of my new PC so it may be worth taking another look, but again only through Virtual PC .... it's taken me this long to move over to Vista, I've been running XP Professional for years and have been very happy with it, I hated Vista when it first came out but it has grown on me more over the years, so perhaps if past experience is anything to go by, I'll probably be upgrading to Windows 7 when the version after Windows 7 hits the shops.

Thanks again for your help guys, it really is appreciated.

Kind Regards,
Wayne

I strongly endorse Vista 64 for your machine, but make sure there are Vista 64 drivers for your peripherals. If so Vista 64 is a superior performer to Vista 32.
My humble advice: stay away from the Beta of Win 7, and even the shipping version, until Microsoft guarantees that Vista drivers will work with Win 7.
Win 7 is mostly Vista with a different GUI but the beta, at least the 64 bit, is simply not compatible with a wide variety of current Vista 64 drivers for common hardware.
My humble experience, which includes a swath of Canon, Epson, Dlink, Linksys, Spyder et al peripherals with very functional Vista 64 drivers finds that few run or install on the current public Win 7 beta. That is a fact, as compared to the froth you will read in Microsoft supported media, which also reported zilch about how utterly incompatible Vista would prove to be with existing XP hardware and software.