Windows 7 - Forced back to Win 7 RC 32bit from 64bit

This laptop, Acer Aspire 5720Z. Intel GMA X3100 (gm965), 1.6ghz dual core, 2gb ram.

On 64 bit windows, video was slow and would not run games at all. New drivers did nothing, games would show no video. Only by setting depth buffer bit depth to 16 could I could make Quake 1(with the Darkplaces engine) show video. Even then it played at 2fps.

I have no idea why it doesn't work at 64bit. Overall otherwise it seemed about the same as 32 bit, but video performance seemed reduced for everything.

i was wondering this. is it possible to have better game performance in 32 bit rather than 64 bit? because games that ran smooth for me in 32 bit xp are kinda sluggish in 64 bit windows 7.

hi there
did you also add the CHIPSET drivers - these are important as they often contain the Video accelerators necessary to get proper video performance. You need these in addition to video drivers.

You might have found that they are available as standard in the 32 bit version but you need to download from Intel / Acer etc for the 64 bit versions.The GMA 965 chipset (mobile accelerator drivers) are available from the INTEL site.

cheers
jimbo

I updated every driver the horrid intel website download search( that thing is CRAP and among the worst search tools I've used) showed for 64bit. I also used Drivermax which showed some chipset drivers that I installed with no benefit. Acer site is worthless for drivers as those are all from 2008 for 32bit vista.

2GB of RAM is the minimum amount for Windows 7 x64.

Edit: Also, how much hard drive space is being used? That can affect performance.

I have more than enough hard drive space. I'm not worried about space.

Could still be a RAM issue.

The RAM is quite probably the issue. Windows 7 x64 has as a minimum requirement 2GB of RAM while x32 only requires 1GB of RAM. It is also recommended that you have 15% hard disk space free (for automated recovery files) and in addition at least twice the amount of disk space free as you have physical memory for pagefile usage.
Check your memory and pagefile usage when you are running the game that is running slowly. You can do this by clicking on the Windows orb or pressing the Windows key, then typing "Performance Monitor" and pressing enter. Click on Data Collection Sets > User Defined, then right-click in the pane and create a new Data Collector Set for System Performance with default settings. Let it start when it is configured, close the window, and go ahead and launch the game. When you're done, go back to Performance monitor > Data collection Sets > User Defined and stop your data collector. Then go to Reports on the same page and view your report.
I am also assuming the game runs fine in 32-bit windows on the same hardware. That graphics card is not exactly optimal for 3d gaming.