32 bit vs 64 bit Comparison

zenplace4 said:

PS. What do you know about CPU's?

It has been a while since I have looked into CPUs overall, but the thing you have to concern yourself with gaming machines will be 'How multi-processor friendly the game is.'

Most of the newer games will be expecting at the very least, a Core2 Duo processor, however not many games will take into account multi-core processors or a lot of cores. Some games will also not make use of multiple cores, so you will not see a major improvement on games with processors having 4+ cores.

The reason why you probably want to have a 4 core processor though is if you are doing MORE than one thing with the system, namely not just gaming, but also having something running in the background that might also be CPU intensive. VOIP programs like Teamspeak and Ventrilo are designed not to impact too heavily on the processor, so that would not be your big problem. However, if you were looking at using FRAPS or wanting to play a game while your system is cooking a video or a picture process, more cores would be preferable as higher CPU processing will impact your gaming fun, and thus, you want more cores to divvy up the tasks, provided you segregate your OS, your App and Game drives (IE: OS is on its own drive, Apps are on its own drive and Games running on its own drive) to avoid Read/write conflict delays.

The only other thing would definitely look at x64 OS if you plan on doing lots of process juggling. Reason - Memory. From experience with XP, as you start juggling more and more things, like leaving a web browser open to Gmail/Facebook, a Feedreader program, miscellaneous other programs running... Memory is eaten up rather quickly within the 3 to 3.5 gig range, especially with database based programs leaking memory over time. While Win7 should be aggressively freeing up memory, the biggest slowdown for games will be Mem Swapping. With x64 and more than 6 gigs of ram, the mem swapping is impacts your gaming less as there is less of a need to do virtual mem over all. There is still Virtual Ram swaps, but there isn't nearly as much of a large chunk of it happening.

I upgraded 3 xp boxes at work to W7 32 Home Pre and one to 64bit W7Pro. I bought two more Dell boxes both running 64 bit Home Premium. Saw some issues today that made me wonder if there are issues with inter office compatibility, either with the 64 ver 32 bit, or with Home Pre versus Pro. Spent a lot of time trying to figure out why some boxes were reacting differently to programs and printer drivers.

Also, we have a 6 station office with a nas. there is some inter office file sharing. do I set the network to an Office envir or the Home Network. It seems that the HOme Network opens up the media sharing and streaming, not that important in the office.

Some are connected to "Network" and some to Network2 or 3. What's up with that. I am pretty sure they all have the same workgroup name.

Gosh, if I can get some direction with these three topics it would be most helpful. thanks

Plus the fact is that there are differences between Home Version and Professional with regards to networking that has nothing to do with 32 vs 64 bit OS handling. Home Version lacks business type security that Professional/Enterprise/Ultimate version has, hence why it is different. In any business Environment, you never want to use Home Versions for the reasons of network security as well as just making sure people are following policy.

so, i should update those 3 homes to Pro as soon as possible?

rickharp said:

so, i should update those 3 homes to Pro as soon as possible?

As Lordbob pointed out, this should be asked in another thread and forum. When done so, I, or others can reply there. Sorry.

I think all is ok. is there a way i can remove my posts here.