In the next few years games will require far more ram especailly on board the graphics cards (we already have cards with 2gb on board)
Eventually if you wanna play games well you'll need an os that can use more than 3gb of ram (32bit) and that will force people to upgrade to a 64bit os...
For me to switch the benefit of 64 bit OS has to be worth the extra overhead involved with having both 32 bit and 64 bit code running at the same time. For me, it just wasn't.
I would rather see Windows drop the registry over drop 32 bit code support. I mean, if you want to break stuff and start fresh, that's where I'd begin.
The problem is, most people who own pc's don't feel the need for 64 bit features. The extra ram is neglectful because average usage of pc's only need 2 gigs at most. Furthermore the general public doesn't really know the difference between 32 and 64 bit software anyways, and some people still do run on old cpu's.
the adoption of any operating system for widespread use is always based on the software availability for it. look at linux, sure it's neat, and in the right situation will provide everything you would possibly want...unless you actually have to do something, then it's usually back to windows. i do keep one box on ubuntu linux but its more for curiosity and compatability testing than work related purposes.
so we are back to the chicken or the egg ideology. microsoft has attempted to drive hardware specification with varying degrees of success. sometimes good, sometimes not...think vista. software people create software they consistantly argue will run on todays units, just not well..always waiting for the next big technological jump which doesnt always happen.
the gaming requirement argument is moot, gaming on a pc has always been and will continue to be a specialist requirement and i tell people, you want leading edge gaming, hold onto your wallet because we can do that for you, but it is going to be much more expensive than you anticipate. still, reality is, gaming on the pc is a dying breed except among our student and youth market and the consoles are eating away at that hard. these days we deliver more high end solutions to students whom require specialist music or engineering or architecture capabilities than we do for home users trying to run the latest and greatest from EA Sports.
if you don't do anything that requires 64 bit and have software to take advantage of that capability then you are in a technological holding pattern. do we advise client to grab 64 bit processor and motherboards, of course we do. having your next upgrade already in the box is a prudent business strategy but the number of clients taking full advantage of their box i could count on two hands.
Last edited by ittech; 16 Jan 2009 at 15:08. Reason: additional information
The memory requirements for a 32-bit game running on 64-bit operating systems is the same, if not less. You do not result in a frame buffer hit on your GPU, and that is also irrelevant to how much RAM is addressed. Games like Crysis are 64-bit native, and do play a huge performance gain on a 64-bit OS. Applications like Dolphin (a 64-bit GameCube/Wii emulator) only work for a 64-bit OS and are incredibly slow on 32-bit operating systems. Warcraft III is a relatively old game, and is 64-bit native. Proof:
If anything, you're resulting a performance gain while running a 32-bit application in a 64-bit environment, because the OS itself is working on a faster, more efficient 64-bit instruction set and the 32-bit application is running by itself in WOW64 without other 32-bit applications bogging down the performance.
Driver compatibility has hit an all-time high, too. It's mostly old unsupported hardware that isn't compatible with 64-bit OSes.
ADDITIONALLY:
I am not biased. I was BETA testing Windows XP Professional x64 on a standard P4 computer with 2GB of RAM and I did notice a great performance difference (how ever, driver incompatibility did tick me off back then).
The new Intel Atom is a 32-bit processor and there are a lot of new netbooks and HTPC that use it
Also, why do you think a laptop shouldn't be installed with Windows 7? Microsoft has spent a great deal of time to optimize it for laptops. I've been using Windows 7 on my Lenovo S10 netbook since build 6801 - it works a great deal better than both Windows XP and all the different versions of Linux. Windows 7 is both easier on the battery and on the resources than previous operating systems...
No, not the netbook versions. Only the desktop Atoms can run 64-bit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverthorne_(CPU)
Yeah, you cant upgrade the hardware of a laptop very well so there are still a lot of 32 bit based laptops.
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