32 bit or 64 bit Windows7?

cconly · Post by **cconly** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 03:38

I plan to build a new system before X Rebirth comes out. It will have Windows 7, an Nvidia graphics card, and an AMD triple- or quad-core CPU. 4 GB ram to start (probably).

Does anyone know of reasons to prefer 64 bit Win7 over 32 bit? Or vice versa?

The computer will only be used for gaming, so compatibility of other software is not a big issue.

Many thanks for any advice.

cc

Treelor · Post by **Treelor** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 06:04

64bit lets you use more than 2gb of RAM. In other words, pretty necessary.

nemesis1982 · Post by **nemesis1982** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 07:18

If you're building a new system 64bit obviously. And don't take the Home edition of Win7 since it misses loads of functionality.

I would advice taking 8 GB of RaM though since Win7 consumes quite a bit of it and you'll have a matched pair. Especially if it's a gaming rig and that RAm doesn't cost anything really.

Something else to consider is compatibility of hardware. As far as I know NVidia goes best with Intel (I'd go for the 2600K it's a very nice proc) and ATI(AMD) goes best with AMD.

Chris0132 · Post by **Chris0132** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 07:18

There's also really no reason not to use 64 bit, it runs 32 bit applications perfectly well, and you won't own an 32 bit processor unless your computer is extremely old.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 08:15

nemesis1982 wrote:If you're building a new system 64bit obviously. And don't take the Home edition of Win7 since it misses loads of functionality.

None of that functionality is really relevant to playing games, though, is it? I mean, we're talking stuff like Bitlocker drive encryption and the ability to join a domain! The only non-Home feature I can see being *possibly* useful is XP mode for games that don't work under W7, but since XP mode is basically running a full copy of Windows XP in Virtual PC, I doubt it's set up to make use of 3D acceleration, so it wouldn't be that useful there either.

xeon_1 · Post by **xeon_1** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 11:16

pjknibbs wrote:
nemesis1982 wrote:If you're building a new system 64bit obviously. And don't take the Home edition of Win7 since it misses loads of functionality.
None of that functionality is really relevant to playing games, though, is it? I mean, we're talking stuff like Bitlocker drive encryption and the ability to join a domain! The only non-Home feature I can see being *possibly* useful is XP mode for games that don't work under W7, but since XP mode is basically running a full copy of Windows XP in Virtual PC, I doubt it's set up to make use of 3D acceleration, so it wouldn't be that useful there either.

Last i checked with vista anywayes suspect its the same witn win 7
Home editions can't properly share folders over a network
Don't have build in backup software (the one in win7 is pretty good btw)
printer sharing is also a mess in home.

usealy when somebody ask me to look in to a non critical problem they have it comes down to on off those three and win home.

BugMeister · Post by **BugMeister** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 12:58

go with 64-bit
it all works perfectly..

larsig · Post by **larsig** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 14:46

nemesis1982 wrote:If you're building a new system 64bit obviously. And don't take the Home edition of Win7 since it misses loads of functionality.

I would advice taking 8 GB of RaM though since Win7 consumes quite a bit of it and you'll have a matched pair. Especially if it's a gaming rig and that RAM doesn't cost anything really. It will release the memory if other programs need it

Something else to consider is compatibility of hardware. As far as I know NVidia goes best with Intel (I'd go for the 2600K it's a very nice proc) and ATI(AMD) goes best with AMD.

False, win 7 64bit can function pretty well with even 2 gigs of ram (even though the min is 4). What the control panel reports isn't what the OS really "needs" to work. The OS will fill half the available memory for various uses, regardless of how much you actually have. For example my 16gig server/gaming rig win7 will fill up approx 8 gigs of ram by itself.

Alsol nvidia works just fine with amd chips, and amd cards work just fine with intel chips. The main thing is the chipset on the mobo. I typically use an amd chipset with amd cards and nvidia chipsets with nvidia cards simply because the features the chipsets provide work with the cards. They'll still work if you mix em - the components follow the same standards. But you might end up missing out on some things.

Anyway, there's no reason to use 64bit win7 over 32bit given how cheap memory is. 4gig kits are pretty much standard now. (also, 32bit is restricted to 3.5gigs of ram since 0.5gigs is reserved for other uses in windows).

Samuel Creshal · Post by **Samuel Creshal** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 16:40

larsig wrote:(also, 32bit is restricted to 3.5gigs of ram since 0.5gigs is reserved for other uses in windows).

Sorta. It has 4 GiB for everything. Including, for example, video RAM.
So, if you stick a gfx card with 3 GiB of video RAM into a 32-Bit system…

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 18:19

Samuel Creshal wrote: So, if you stick a gfx card with 3 GiB of video RAM into a 32-Bit system…

It'll work just fine, because the entire 3Gb of RAM on the card doesn't map itself into the 4Gb address space--it will map parts of it in as required. Back in the days of AGP you could even change how much space it would use to do this (this was the "AGP Aperture" setting you could find in the BIOS), but that seems to have disappeared with PCI-Express.

Virtualaughing · Post by **Virtualaughing** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 18:35

Noob says !

As far as i can tell the 64bit versions operating systems can double the simultaneous processing. In sort, double the speed. That means you need minimum 2GB system memory and minimum dual core CPU. A RAM utilised to the onboard CPU. Don't be confused with VRAM which is on your VGA card which is used by your VGA.
The recommended ammount of memory for:
32bit - 4GB
64bit - 8GB

X2-Eliah · Post by **X2-Eliah** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 18:37

That..

That's so extremely incorrect.

Samuel Creshal · Post by **Samuel Creshal** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 19:39

Virtualaughing wrote:Noob says !

As far as i can tell the 64bit versions operating systems can double the simultaneous processing. In sort, double the speed. That means you need minimum 2GB system memory and minimum dual core CPU. A RAM utilised to the onboard CPU. Don't be confused with VRAM which is on your VGA card which is used by your VGA.
The recommended ammount of memory for:
32bit - 4GB
64bit - 8GB

This is so wrong I don't even know where I should start.

@pjknibbs: Sure about that (esp. for PCIe)? The amount of "unusable" address space correlates pretty well with the VRAM size (though I switched to 64 bit before gfx cards started having more than 1 GiB of RAM).

jlehtone · Post by **jlehtone** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 20:00

I have one dual booting 32-bit XP and 64-bit W7 and its graphics memory for sure doesn't eat addresses by VRAM amount in XP.

@Virtualaughing: What was the meaning of your first sentence?

nemesis1982 · Post by **nemesis1982** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 20:31

@pjknibbs: The Win7 home edition misses some functionality which I would regard as important for gaming PC. For instance backups on folder level (for your save games). But I agree the advise is more general.

@larsig: I never stated that it wouldn't run on 4GB. I just stated that since the low RAM prices going for 8GB would be more prudent since you'd have a matched pair if you plant to upgrade anyway and on top of that you can turn off your pagefile which means no swapping which in turn results in a better performance.

No on to the video cards you kinda agreed with me that hardware compatibility is important if you'd like to get the best from your hardware. I do agree I was mistaken in my choice of words.

@All:
A 64bit system is faster if an application has been compiled for it and it uses address spaces which are larger than 32 bits.

exogenesis · Post by **exogenesis** » Tue, 13. Dec 11, 21:21

If you're going to use it for CPU intensive activities (other than games),
like say video encoding, I've found a real Sea Change in going to 64 bit
commercial programs (on Win7 64) compared to the 32 bit ones,
in terms of speed & efficient memory usage when there's lots of data..

It's like, wow, that really much faster.

Then again you can't get every bit of software you might like in well written 64 bit flavour.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Wed, 14. Dec 11, 08:15

nemesis1982 wrote: @All:
A 64bit system is faster if an application has been compiled for it and it uses address spaces which are larger than 32 bits.

Even then, it's nothing like twice as fast! The main reason it'll be faster is because it can load more stuff into memory and thus be hitting the disk less--the actual processing won't be much different.

nemesis1982 · Post by **nemesis1982** » Wed, 14. Dec 11, 10:07

pjknibbs wrote:
nemesis1982 wrote: @All:
A 64bit system is faster if an application has been compiled for it and it uses address spaces which are larger than 32 bits.
Even then, it's nothing like twice as fast! The main reason it'll be faster is because it can load more stuff into memory and thus be hitting the disk less--the actual processing won't be much different.

Granted it'll definitly not be twice as fast not even close.

However it will be faster in two regards:
- Handling large ammounts of data
- Performing operations on memory which is larger than 32bits adding two int64s for instances

I think I didn't your last statement right. Why would a 64 bit system be able to load more into memory than a 32 bit system (if other wise the system specs are the same)?

Samuel Creshal · Post by **Samuel Creshal** » Wed, 14. Dec 11, 10:54

Actually, AMD64 (and EM64T, which is the same) is more than just 64 bit wide registers – the amount of registers was doubled, relative pointers were added and some other nifty stuff. Programs (compiled to use these features) are faster even when not needing the 64 bit variables/address space.

nemesis1982 · Post by **nemesis1982** » Wed, 14. Dec 11, 12:43

@Samuel Creshal: Wel yes however this has nothing to with it being 64bit. And a 32 bit OS can still use the relative pointers for instance. The discussion wasn't if a 64bit or 32bit cpu is faster but the OS.

The only real advantage you'd have of these features in a 64bit OS oposed to a 32bit OS is that a 64bit OS can handle 2 32bit variables/address spaces in a single operation for the operations which support it(indeed nifty stuff this

) <- this is one of the reasons why handling large ammounts of data (video encoding) is a looooot faster on a proc of this generation and a 64bit OS which supports this feature.

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32 bit or 64 bit Windows7?

32 bit or 64 bit Windows7?