Should i change my OS to 64 bit?

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somkereki

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Feb 27, 2016
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I just discovered my old pc's CPU is capable of 64 bit windows. My specs are:
AMD Phenom Quad core 9650
ATI Radeon HD 3600 Series (512 Mb)
4GB RAM (it says 3GB usable)
2 HDDs 640GB each SATA II
I am a bit worried if my computer will perform any worse, could you give me any information about if it would or not and why (basically to understand a bit better these 64-bit systems)?
Thank you in advance.
 
Solution
Solandri
Unless you're planning to add more RAM, it's probably not worth switching to 64-bit Windows

- The speedup is very small, mostly having to do with operations involving double floats. They're 64-bits in length, and a 64-bit OS can deal with them in a single instruction. A 32-bit OS has to split them. Double floats are rarely used outside of scientific applications. Even most games use single floats (they try to use ints if possible, but sometimes they have to use floats) because they already provide enough precision.

- The little bit of extra memory you gain will mostly be wiped out by extra memory used by the OS. A 64-bit OS stores 32-bit floats and long ints in 64 bits of RAM. A 32-bit OS stores them in 32 bits of RAM.

- Most...
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somkereki

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Feb 27, 2016
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Yes, i know that, however my doubt is whether that 1GB would actually mean something for my pc's performance
 
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Spotnick

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Apr 10, 2016
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An x64 will speed up your system as more memory can be use at the same time (double the size of relocation pointer) but your HDD's are at 80 MB/s an SSD drive is at 550 Mbyte/s read and write and you need it if you like to see a big difference.
 
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Solandri

Solandri

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Jan 4, 2012
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Unless you're planning to add more RAM, it's probably not worth switching to 64-bit Windows

- The speedup is very small, mostly having to do with operations involving double floats. They're 64-bits in length, and a 64-bit OS can deal with them in a single instruction. A 32-bit OS has to split them. Double floats are rarely used outside of scientific applications. Even most games use single floats (they try to use ints if possible, but sometimes they have to use floats) because they already provide enough precision.

- The little bit of extra memory you gain will mostly be wiped out by extra memory used by the OS. A 64-bit OS stores 32-bit floats and long ints in 64 bits of RAM. A 32-bit OS stores them in 32 bits of RAM.

- Most importantly, there is no upgrade path from 32-bit Windows to 64-bit Windows. You have to do a clean install, then reinstall all your apps and restore your data from a backup. The time you spend doing this will far, far exceed any cumulative time savings you gain becuse the 64-bit OS is slightly faster over the next 3-4 years you use the computer.

The main reason to upgrade to a 64-bit OS, arguably the only reason to upgrade, is if you've got more than 4 GB of RAM.
 
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Solution
geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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With 4gb, there is no good reason to change to a 64 bit os.
Moreover, a 64 bit os takes up more ram to run.
Do not worry about seeing 3.5 gb available.
The extra is carved out of your 4gb for dedicated hardware buffers that a 32 bit os requires.

And... if you are running some old 16 bit programs or games like civilization 2.42, it will no longer run on a 64 bit os.
 
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