I don't see the advantage of running x64

whs said:

...But I made the same observation as you have - there is really no perceived performance gain...

I agree to a point. I don't think we'll see any really significant performance differences until 64 bit OS's become more commonplace, making it economically feasible for developers to commit to making tight, optimized code in x64 apps.

I do like one thing about x64 though. Having 8 GB of memory lets Superfetch load up a whack of stuff for quick access, and some video editing and transcoding software will work with the video file in RAM, rather than on the hard drive. There is a discernible difference there. Just for day to day, I have to agree with you. There isn't much of a difference.

Thanks SIW2. I'll try that out. I would not bought 64bit. But I needed an additional laptop and 64bit is all you can buy these days - besides the laptop came with 4GBs.

some video editing and transcoding software will work with the video file in RAM, rather than on the hard drive. There is a discernible difference there

That is probably one of the areas where 64bit makes a lot of sense, especially with a lot of RAM. Quad cores seem to do well in those applications too.

whs said:

That is probably one of the areas where 64bit makes a lot of sense, especially with a lot of RAM. Quad cores seem to do well in those applications too.

Funny thing, I haven't really found a video type program that will use all of my cores. Most will push one to 100% and the others just do the normal thing, and some will use two. But at least I can hang about on the internet while I transcode stuff. :)

Mellon Head said:

whs said:

That is probably one of the areas where 64bit makes a lot of sense, especially with a lot of RAM. Quad cores seem to do well in those applications too.

Funny thing, I haven't really found a video type program that will use all of my cores. Most will push one to 100% and the others just do the normal thing, and some will use two. But at least I can hang about on the internet while I transcode stuff. :)

Try Format Factory - Free media file format converter Also WMM (publishing) makes use of all cores (at least on my Q6600).

Thanks for the tips. I'll give those two a look.