Most drivers are supported now, TV cards seem to be main problem. I think the install will find all the drivers for you.

Win7 64bit found all drivers for my 4 year old Dell desktop. What other peripherals do you have ?

Keep in mind you aren't getting all 4gb of ram in a 32bit os.

Thanks, I know I don't use 4GB with 32 bit. Just tying to see if I would actually run better than I am which is fine for what I do. going to buy 7 and it's the same price for 32 or 64 that is why I'm asking all you fine people here.

I have 4 GB and a dual-core, so I've been using the 64bit Win7 RC (my preorders haven't arrived yet).  Thus far, I've had little to no trouble from switching to 64 bit.  My biggest issue is that Google Chrome doesn't work for 64 bit Windows, but I usually use FireFox, anyways.

And yes, I think they both come on the same disc.  I'd suggest you just use 64 bit and switch if you have issues.

I agree with Spooky, there's little reason to go with 32 bit unless you Have to use a TV tuner.  The only thing i've had trouble finding 64 bit drivers for is printers. 

Please keep in mind that 32 bit can only address a Total of 4 gigs of ram, that includes your video card. It is recommended that if you have 3 gigs of ram (or more) or plan to add more later then go with 64 bit. You should see performance increases by going with 64 bit.

As far as the ram goes you are best off using only 2 sticks of ram.  Adding more that 2 sticks will result in your ram being "underclocked" as latencies are increased.  Assuming you have (2) 2 gig sticks, the best upgrade path for ram would be (2) 4 gig sticks and removing the originals entirely.  That's a $300 upgrade though so i wouldn't recommend it.

I've been running 64 bit  win7 on my primary system since mid summer without problems and i just installed it on my wifes laptop this past weekend without problems. (well except tracking down that damn printer driver, but i had problems with that for vista 64 bit)

Good luck!

j

I'd be curious to know what they are. My experience is that 32 bit support is excellent in x64 Windows. With the exception of some firewalls and antiviruses, the transition was very smooth. And by now, the antiviruses and firewalls all have 64 bit support.

Well, except maybe Sunbelt, I don't know what's taking them so long when every competitor has already moved. I had to drop them, and moved to COMODO.

I have a Core 2 Quad, runs 64 bit Windows 7 very well .

Every DirectX 10 card I know of supports 64 bit, that's unlikely to be a problem.

The only CPUs I know of that don't have 64 bit support are pre-Core 2 CPUs and Atoms.

. . . and oh, yeah, even though my netbook with its Atom doesn't support 64 bit, it does run Windows 7 very well . I was surprised it even supported Aero (although it has a miserably low Aero score, lol).

And Microsoft has really improved their desktop graphics performance. That thing they did to make it more concurrent, scalable, and use less memory? Paid off in spades IMHO. Even over Windows XP, it feels very responsive. Even on a netbook you notice it.

As an addendum...my Sysmetrix is currently showing 4gig of available...1.58 used...and a swap file of 4.

I hate to tell it but I have 12 of each, whilst running 4 Virtual Machines...2 of XP, 1gig and 2gig, 1 of win98 256meg and 1 of win 7 ultimate of 4gig.

Win 7 64bit sees and addresses it all ...it's just that Nick coded Sysmetrix back when no-one had more than 4gig anyway....

Correct, though not the entry level version, Basic i think its called.

For example my converter for *.tga 32-bit to *.png 32-bit, Photoshop plug-ins, all sidebar gadgets created with DesktopX and several other small but very useful tools and utilities which I uses every day...

This make sense Jafo. However there is one way to bypass the memory limits. I will not talk here about the details because I'm not sure that this way is totally legal... But in brief I made two simple steps:

1. I've modified ntkrnlpa.exe (no comments...)

2. I've increased the user-mode virtual address space (to help applications like Photoshop use more ram): bcdedit /set {current} increaseuserarea 3072 (tipe in the command prompt) LINK: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906211.aspx

Now look at the screenshot abow (Resouce Monitor):

Available Memory: 3054 MB

Cached Memory: 923 MB

Total Memory: 4044 MB (4096 minus 74 MB Hardware Reserved)

Installed Memory: 4096 MB

Now lets calculate: 74 MB (Hardware Reserved) + 901 MB (In Use) + 67 MB (Modified) + 856 MB (Standby) + 2198 MB (Free) = 4096 MB. You may trust me or not but now all of 4GB ram can be used on my Win-7 x86. 

Vad, you should turn off utorrent when sharing pictures of your tasks

Also Vad, that's pretty interesting.   have you tried running any benchmarks comparing 64 versus 32?  Im curious to see what you come up with.

Dave, Here is more info for you:

Pros & cons of 64 bit.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/should_you_upgrade_64bit_windows_7

 I have a Quad Core AMD x64 system with 8 gigs of ram and a 9 hundred series video card with 1 gig memory. I also us the Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer sound card along with it. I am running Win 7 x64 and I have had no problems with drivers. Now that Win 7 is offical many are already producing drivers for it x32 & x64. Sound blaster has a driver to work with Win 7 x64 http://support.creative.com/Downloads/welcome.aspx. The x32 version of Windows has a limit of 3 gigs max while x64 goes up to 125 gigs, MAJOR difference. You will be better off with the x64 version. One bad thing for now is the Adobe Flash player which almost all every web site uses is only availble in x32 bit but they intend to release a 64 bit version with their new player (11).

No. Some people just don't realize that torrent apps aren't used only for illegal torrents.