Purchase 32 or 64 windows 7

ADD TO ABOVE. I don't do what a lot of you do as no video, not much music, and only have maybe 4 windows open at any one time. I have been happy with this system but if 64 bit will make it better that is what I trying to find out. I have read the differences and read all the many post on here but just not sure if I need it.

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 ?

Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer sound card, 22" wide screen monitor and 2 hard drives a 320 Seagate and a 1TB seagate. I do have a TV card but don't use it anymore as I'm alone not since my wife passed away in May and just don't need to watch any TV on here. I have the other normal things like Optical drives, etc. Just trying to find out if it will be better for me going with 64 as I know the 4GB of memory won't be enough.

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

All the drives will have drivers available, as will printers in last 4 years, it will run like a dream on 4 Gb. I think you will be fine and with an extra Gig approx available than the 32 bit can use. Search the sites of your peripherals to make sure drivers available if you are worried.

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 thought Win7 discs came with both versions?  You should be able format and try again if the 64-bit version gives you issues.  64-bit is preferable, even without 4GB of RAM.  32-bit programs run fine, while software optimized for 64-bit will run quite a bit better.  Only ancient drivers with 16-bit install packages tend to cause issues.  Vista 64-bit has been out long enough now that any serious hardware company will have 64-bit drivers for any supported product by now.  Plus if you ever add more RAM, you won't need to format the OS to make use of it.  The only real x-factor is Win7 itself, as some drivers may not work on it 32 or 64 bit.

The Sound Blaster is the only thing I'd be concerned with, but if it worked in 32-bit Win7 you shouldn't have a problem.

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.

Unless you need to use some old 16-bit application or other applications that do not run on a WoW32 and unless you have to use hardware for which no 64-bit drivers are availalbe, you should always go for the x64 version.

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

Hmmm... Please look below:

I've used this already on Vista x86. And now I made the same changes with my Windows-7 x86. The system see 4GB ram and all programs are working perfect...

Several words about x64. I've tested Win-7 x64 during 1 week and I'm really like it. However some of my programs which I use every day does not support the x64 Windows. So I returned back to x86.

And finally. The results of Performance Tests and WEI are approximately equal for these both systems... At least on my PC.

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.

It may list the 4gig but it won't be able to address all 4.  It is a physical limitation of 32bit...which must address system ram as well as GPU ram.

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....;)

There isn't any single good reason to keep buying a 32 bit OS today.

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

nice information here. useful!

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. 

I have a netbook with an Atom.

But, other than that, you're right.

Well, and apparently people with Photoshop:

humm, strange, but okay, Photoshop must be doing something at low levels of the CPU (at the register level) for something like that to be affected. I guess they're probably doing oprimizations in ASM or something.

I've been using the GIMP, seems to be fine. Not as powerful as Photoshop, but it'll perform conversions fine. Although I'm not sure if you're talking 32 bits overall (8 bits/color, RGBA) or 32 bits/color?

The GIMP, unfortunately, doesn't support HDR yet .

In your situation, yeah, that makes sense.

That's likely to change in the near future. Stardock is pushing hard to bring their stuff up to 64 bit.

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

64 FTW!

 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).

I'm talking about RGBA png files...

Perfect news which makes me happy! This will move DesktopX to the next level and make it more usable.

 I use it sometimes to download large files (more than 3GB). Is this Illegally?

About banchmarks. No doubt I've tried. But I can't post the results here because my HDD was reformatted at least two times and I have no this data. However I may tell you that I saw some differences only for CPU performance. The other parameters was approximately equal on x86 and x64. So I cannot confirm that PC productivity was essentially increased after installing x64 Windows.

May be my computer is too old?   Hmmm... It has the last version of bios that supported win-7... 

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

There are a lot of other places in the internet where we can find illegal software or the other forbidden things which can be downloaded through Internet Explorer without any problems.    So I'm sure that the ways of usage uTorrent (or any other download clients/managers/accelerators) are depends only from the level of education of people who uses them.