the difference between 32 and 64bit

Hi All
I am still a little confused about the difference between 32 and 64bit.
I have a go at installing 64bit and to be honest there was no difference. I have a 64bit compatible laptop with 4GB of RAM.
However, I could only find a handful of 64bit programs such as iTunes etc.. All the rest were 32bit, such as OPen Office, VLC etc..
I did notice that there were two seperate program file folders. One called programs and one called programs x86.
Does this mean that all the 32bit programs will run ok on the 64bit OS or do I need to get 64bit compatible programs....
Very confusing

optimistique1 said:

Hi All
I am still a little confused about the difference between 32 and 64bit.
I have a go at installing 64bit and to be honest there was no difference. I have a 64bit compatible laptop with 4GB of RAM.
However, I could only find a handful of 64bit programs such as iTunes etc.. All the rest were 32bit, such as OPen Office, VLC etc..
I did notice that there were two seperate program file folders. One called programs and one called programs x86.
Does this mean that all the 32bit programs will run ok on the 64bit OS or do I need to get 64bit compatible programs....
Very confusing

You're not really supposed to notice a difference. The whole purpose of having a 64 bit version of windows is because the 32 bit one can't recognize more than 4gb of ram. And you don't need to install 64 bit programs. 32 bit ones work just fine :) however, if there is a 32 and 64 bit version of a program, you should get the 64 since it's more optimized for the architechure your running on.

optimistique1 said:

Hi All
I am still a little confused about the difference between 32 and 64bit.
I have a go at installing 64bit and to be honest there was no difference. I have a 64bit compatible laptop with 4GB of RAM.
However, I could only find a handful of 64bit programs such as iTunes etc.. All the rest were 32bit, such as OPen Office, VLC etc..
I did notice that there were two seperate program file folders. One called programs and one called programs x86.
Does this mean that all the 32bit programs will run ok on the 64bit OS or do I need to get 64bit compatible programs....
Very confusing

hi\

64 bit with 4 gigs of ram usually will be faster. It depends what you are using the computer for. Most 32 bits will run on 64 bit but slower and less efiecntly. and there are more drivers availible for 32 bit.

64 bit is the future. Use it if you can

Hope this helps

ken

Cool thanks for that guys, starting to make more sense now!:)

Hi all - I was wondering. I am running 32 bit Win 7 ver 7100 as my OS. I have a fast quad core machine and 4 gig of ram. Can I install the 64 bit versionstraight over the existing 32 bit version? And if so will it need a new key or run using the existing key?

Thanks Brink. Great to be here.

If I upgrade for 32 to 64 bit will I see any improvemnt or is it really not nescessary?

regards

Mark

V8307 said:

If I upgrade for 32 to 64 bit will I see any improvemnt

Normally, I would advise anyone with the gear and drivers to go 64. No question. This guy suggests that you can't on that machine (since you have 2 vid cards). I am not sure what he means and he seems to be confused, but...

"ATI CrossFire support is tied to Dell's 32-bit Vista driver software, preventing them from using Windows XP in this mode, or even 64-bit versions of Windows Vista"

I did not read anything else on your system. Check with Dell on this issue.