should I install 32 or 64 bit windows to my bootable usb drive?

kaidemarco · May 30, 2017

The computer it will be used on is 64 bit, But I thought maybe 32 would have some speed imrovements. Thoughts?

Dark Lord of Tech · May 30, 2017

32 bit is a waste , go 64.

King_V · May 30, 2017

I can think of no good reason with any PC made in about the past decade to use the 32 bit version.

joex444 · May 30, 2017

32-bit only supports 4GB RAM.

If you have 4GB RAM or less, you can utilize that memory better by using 32-bit Windows and 32-bit programs.

If you have more than 4GB of RAM, you should install 64-bit since it's the only thing that will let you use the memory.

I wouldn't go so far as to say 32-bit is a waste on systems with small amounts of RAM. The difference is the size of a pointer - a primitive type used to mark locations in memory of data. If you have a 64-bit program then the pointer size is 64 bits (8 bytes) while the 32-bit program uses 32 bit pointers (4 bytes). That savings of 4 bytes is insignificant on its own, but the way many many programs are written is that everything is accessed via pointer which means you can have an incredibly large number of pointers such that the difference is a few MB per program. Taking Chrome for example, I routinely find 32-bit Chrome to use 25-ish MB less per tab. For someone with 10 tabs open, 32-bit vs 64-bit can mean 250MB of RAM for no real reason. And since this only matters for systems with at most 4GB RAM it's at least a 6% difference. The OS itself also uses less memory. Again though, if you have more than 4GB installed then you should use 64-bit because the next step up from 4GB is typically 8GB and even a 10% memory savings won't make up for the fact 4GB is 50% less than 8GB. Even 6GB is enough to benefit from a 64-bit OS. Plus a 64-bit OS can run both 32-bit and 64-bit software but a 32-bit OS can't run 64-bit software. Though a 32-bit OS can run 16-bit software if you for some reason need to run something last compiled in 1988.

D34D M34T · Jun 20, 2017

Don't forget bit count also effects file and directory size, disk format options and performance with 64 bit programs (more and more are getting on the bandwagon).

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should I install 32 or 64 bit windows to my bootable usb drive?

kaidemarco

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