McBlzr - remember those days quite well. Glad to see you were using the all time best floppy disk reader (1541). Would you believe me if I told you that I traded my C64 and all the goodies (plus about a zillion games) for a Mac Plus (the guy couldn't get it to do anything (didn't know he had to buy software to get it to work).
the amount of ram you have is completely irrelevant when determining your os bits, if you have at least the minimum for the os to install (i'd really like to know how some people have managed to get it working on systems with 512mb of ram >.>)
and frankly, if anything the x86 version will choke just a bit more (not a lot, mind you) than the x64 version on the same machine.
rule of thumb however, is 2+gigs for either, when dealing with vista+ oses
3+gigs of ram is the 'sweet' spot when it comes to system memory and performance. anything higher is only useful if you have applications that load things into memory like photos, videos, 3d rendering. games? 3gigs is fine. you won't notice _any_ difference, really, between 3gigs and 4, if you don't do professional quality video/audio/art.
don't game? don't do professional quality visual/audio work? 2gigs would probably be fine. perhaps not as snappy as 3, but i doubt the average user would notice anyway.
as a side note; if you do any sort of professional quality work as mentioned above, max your ram out on what you can afford/get your computer to recognize, it'll let you have more open/loaded without issues.
2gb worked well enough here for XP and Vista both(32bit) for working with video and some plans on CAD as well. The big boost was seen with XP when moving up on one build from 1gb to 2gb there seeing XP become more stable at that time.
Unlike the first issues seen with over 2gb installed with the 64bit Vista running into installation problems the 64bit 7 has been going on and working well with 4gb for both kernels. Despite the 420mb immediate drop realized for the x86 platform the ram hasn't totally gone to waste here like it would for those simply cheching their email and some browsing, shopping online, etc. there.
The big advantage now being seen with both platforms with 7 is not seeing the weight that Vista saw for those running older systems with some actually being pleased running only 512mb! Obviously those are simply running 7 on basic setups and nothing demanding is seen there.
You should almost always choose 64 bit over 32 bit if all of the drivers are available for your machine in 64 bit. There are more security features that your 64 bit OS can take advantage of that your 32 bit OS can't...
@Kenabi Thanks for stating this, most people think that their 64 bit OS needs more RAM or something like unto. Yes you need to be running a 64 bit OS in order to access memory more than 4 GB RAM, but you don't need to limit yourself to a 32 bit OS just cause you don't have 4 GB+ RAM.
You'll find a good number of people out there running 64bit editions of XP, Vista, and now the 7 builds with only 2gb. Some are running 64bit editions on systems with only 1gb installed!
Once you pass the 512mb to 1gb of free memory available even while gaming you have gone over to some degree what you will use. For multitasking and running demanding games and programs then you consider having some extra onhand to prevent system locks and others problems when running out.
32bit vs 64bit is not just about memory usage, there are other things as well like code execution etc. As it was already said, you should always use 64bit OS on 64bit processor, as long as the programs and drivers you need are available.
For the time being most cpus are 32bit ready, 64bit supported not dedicated 64bit processors seen on desktops. As for actual performance results you have to look at a variety things when actual benchmarks are available. Performance Results Comparing 32bit and 64bit Development Environments - MOSS Blog
Another one is from 2004 regarding 64bit computing in general. 64BIT Computing
WRONG WRONG WRONG
If you have a 64 bit CPU then it's 100% better to install the 64 bit OS even with 1GB of RAM only. - One exception -- I'll explain later.
I've posted elsewhere how these OS'es work and what happens when you run a 32 bit OS using a 64 bit CPU.
No argument if your CPU is a 32 bit one.
The exception -- some early 64 bit CPU's or Mobo's didn't have VT or the possibility to enable it. (Also for the AMD equivalent -- not sure wht it's called as I only have INTEL CPU's).
In this case the jury is still out on the 64 bit OS question but there aren't a huge number of these left.
You can always add RAM -- most laptops these days have 2 memory slots so 4GB shouldn't be a problem and with Affordable 4GB modules beginning to appear 8GB laptops aren't far off either.
Driver and other issues will be solved very quickly as most people go over to 64 bit.
Cheers
jimbo
Why is it everyone thinks you need xxxx amount of gigs to run any 64bit Windows? The 64bit edition of XP ran on far less when that came out! Have a look at the old 128mb, 356mb, 512mb, rigs running that at the time(2005)!
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