did I install the wrong windows?

Does anybody have any controlled benchmarks comparing 32 vs 64-bit? I run x64 because of having 8GB of memory, but to say that 64-bit is unequivalently better isn't the whole truth. All the benchmarks I've seen only show single digit differences either way depending on memory size, and personally I think having incompatible apps isn't worth that tradeoff. Onenote 2007 can't use the printer driver and some of the OCR stuff I believe on x64, gadgets that use flash break because sidebar runs as x64 by default, and as I mentioned my ti-89 calculator doesn't have the drivers to sync. Though I've gotten around these issues: onenote 2010 fixes the issue, you can just replace the sidebar executable with the x32 version, and I have another x32 pc to occasionally sync the calculator, and there are tons of other little incompatibilities that exist that may or may not affect you. I've yet to see any evidence that switching to 64-bit on 3gb or less has any benefit at the moment.

I can appreciate wanting to move the computing world up to a better standard, but I think that reality bites and it's a lot easier to stick with the theoretically inferior 32-bit if it doesn't give you problems. Why risk incompatibilities when there's nothing really to gain?

Give it a year or so though, and I'd imagine there will be even fewer manufacturers not putting out 64-bit drivers since even cheapo laptops are running up against the memory barrier. I mean onenote 2007 is recent software (by Microsoft to boot!) and ti-89 calculators are top of the ti line, and both have very serious problems with 64-bit. I consider either of those very good reasons to use 32-bit.

You just quoted it 15 minutes ago:

Just from my upgrading to 64-bit: Onenote 2007 can't use the printer driver and some of the OCR stuff I believe on x64, gadgets that use flash break because sidebar runs as x64 by default, ti-89 calculator doesn't have the drivers to sync

Maybe I'm particularly unlucky, but these are all up-to-date common applications that many people use. And I haven't even tested that many programs, there's a good chance every person will run into their own set of issues.

Having run both 32 bit and 64 bit, all I can say is that there is virtually no difference unless you are doing multimedia stuff and have a minimum of 4 gb ram then yeah why not go with x64 so you can access all your ram.

x64 DOES indeed use more resources than 32 bit and a simple example is because it has to support both 32 bit and 64 bit applications and also because the pointers used in the OS are well 64 bit vs 32 bit hence more memory usage but it wont matter if you are running 4 gigs :)

I think the main difference if you were running XP 32 vs XP 64 then yes the performance difference would be quite evident because the 64 bit version besides having 64 bitness well it was written off of a very good rock solid server OS. So any perceived performance difference between those 2 versions is simply that the 64 bit version was written using a more rock solid OS.

That is not the case with 64 bit Windows 7. Its your preference but like I said once you are at 4 gb there really is no reason to NOT use 64 bit. There are no more lack of drivers as it used to be once though some things like SLR cameras and so on you may have a bit of a hard time finding drivers for.

My 2 cents.

digitalrurouni said:

Having run both 32 bit and 64 bit, all I can say is that there is virtually no difference unless you are doing multimedia stuff and have a minimum of 4 gb ram then yeah why not go with x64 so you can access all your ram.

Why do you not just patch the x86 for ability to use 4GB Ram.

fakeasdf said:

Check out my signature. It is true that it's difficult to do clean comparisons of 32 bit versus 64 bit when using 64 bit CPU's. Intel 64 (formerly EMT64) and AMD64. If you have a 64 bit CPU, both 64 bit and 32 bit software generally run better on a 64 bit OS than on a 32 bit OS.

Thanks for the link, but just two points:
1. Saying "Always Yes" simply isn't true. When to comes down to critical apps, it doesn't matter if everything runs 10% faster or whatever. Heck, I don't care if everything runs 150% faster, if I couldn't get onenote working properly, because that's critical software for me, and without it, I couldn't work. Luckily onenote 2010 fixed the issue, or otherwise I'd be selling my extra ram and going back to 32-bit.

2. Personally I would have set the intercepts of those graphs at 0. It's a bit misleading to look at the graph that exaggerates the 10% gain. And on say a 2gb system, the extra memory footprint of 64-bit would cause more paging out and probably kill that advantage.

jw12345 said:

I mean onenote 2007 is recent software (by Microsoft to boot!) and ti-89 calculators are top of the ti line, and both have very serious problems with 64-bit. I consider either of those very good reasons to use 32-bit.

That's why you should use HP calculators ... unless you can't hack RPN of course .

The only benchmark I have between 32-bit and 64-bit, and I'll grant it's not a common one and originally 32-bit XP vs. 64-bit XP, but for me a real deal-breaker/maker, is my image backup. 32-bit XP times for the 500GB data volume was a little over 2 hours. For 64-bit it went down to 54 minutes, same hardware and backup program (Paragon's Drive Backup 2008 Server Express). My XP vs. Win 7 times are fairly equivalent in 64-bit. I imagine a lot of it is how the buffering is handled, but you can't dismiss a 100% improvement on a common and important long process.

In general things are noticeably snappier in x64 for me to a lesser and larger extent, the afore-mentioned image backup being on the extreme side of "good". I do have a substantial workstation which can take full advantage, and my Lenovo tablet has 4GB and a snappy SSD, so YMMV.

Either way, there's no "wrong" version of Win 7 here, just try them both. You could do x64 and see if you have any pain points, and if so then try x86.

One thing I do recommend regardless is a good backup / restore process you can rely on that works under both x64 and x86.

DJ