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LanceGoss47

Honorable
May 28, 2012
6
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10,510
Hi,

I'm wondering to some this may come as an obvious answer but need to be assured my self.

I'm currently now running with these specs now I have upgraded CPU

GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB
AMD Athlon II 250 3ghz
DDR 3 5gb 1066mhz
Running Windows 8 RC / Win7 32bit

Running these specs from a gaming prospect would I gain in speed running 64Bit other than the extra Ram would I see a greater benefit. if anyone can help please.

Thanks in advance.
 
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WR2

WR2

Polypheme
Nov 18, 2005
27,923
6
61,960
Hello LanceGoss47;

It would depend more on what programs you run, and how you use the computer.
Photoshop and very large images with multiple filters? 64bit and extra RAM comes in very handy.

Running some older 32bit software that's important to you? Maybe some with 16bit installer or copy protection routines? It might be more important for you to stick with 32bit (x86) installs.

Curious? No reason you can try both and judge for yourself.
 
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WR2

WR2

Polypheme
Nov 18, 2005
27,923
6
61,960
Unless you do have a lot of old software - go with 64bit option.


(or do what I do - learn to do a multi-boot option - an older screenshot here)

100611023.jpg
 
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RetiredChief

RetiredChief

Judicious
Feb 22, 2007
8,528
0
32,960
I noticed you stated you have 5 gigs of DDR3, how is that configured?
1) 32 Bit OS will only see 4 gigs (use), How much diff would 1 gig make, probably not much. If going with 4 gigs of ram - it's a toss-up, If more than 4 gigs need 64 bit.
2) Usallly an odd amount of Ram resualts in running single channel mode. The preferred mode is Dual channel which normally requires 2 sets (or 4 sets) of equall sized ram (preferably same timing) or If on a MB that can run triple mode, requires 3 Modules of same specs.

You can download CPUID CPU-z and open it up and select the tab at the top and it will show what speed and # channels that you are running.
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
 
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Pinhedd

Champion
Aug 7, 2007
10,342
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56,965


32 bit systems have a 32 bit virtual address space. The physical address space is actually much higher, usually a minimum of 36 bits. This means that while the size of a virtual memory space is limited to 32 bits, the size of the physical address space is much larger. Installing a video card or other PCI peripheral with its own memory will result in that memory having to be mapped in to the same 32 bit virtual memory space. This means that it will occupy a chunk of the virtual address space that would otherwise be used by RAM. It does not however occupy any of the physical address space. Thus, since PAE can make the additional memory virtually addressable by using a segment this allows all 36 bits to be used in a 32 bit OS and thus the OS can actually see up to 64GiB of physical memory with any particular virtual address space having up to 4GiB (including shared and reserved) of which an application can use up to 3GiB. It's important to realize the difference between a physical address space and a virtual one.

So why do 32 bit versions of Windows XP, Vista and 7 only show 4GB? They're software limited for marketing purposes.

The 32 bit server versions which are Windows Server 2003, 2003 R2 (Windows NT 5.1 and 5.2 which are two different versions of XP), and Windows Server 2008 (NT 6.0 aka Vista) can all support up to 64GB (theoretically the support is higher but most chipsets only run 36 physical address lanes).

I hate it when people say that 32 bit Windows can only see 3.5GB of RAM because that's an erroneous way of putting it. The exact amount of "usable" RAM will be something less than 4GB but not necessarily 3.5, it depends on the size of the various memory mapped peripherals

There even exist patches which break the 4GB software limitation for 32 bit versions of XP, Vista and Windows 7 but they can be somewhat unstable
 
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