32-bit or 64-bit Windows Vista for gaming?

[Morton]

Would it be better to get 32-bit or 64-bit Windows Vista for gaming? Which of these two versions causes (or is likely to cause) less crashes and other problems when starting or running games? I'm mainly interested in the performance of Crysis, Dead Space, Neverwinter Nights 2, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Assassin's Creed, and Bioshock.

 

[Alex The PC Gamer]

Easy answer: 64-bit.

- Windows will be able to read more RAM on your system (The limit is much greater than 32-bit)

- If 64-bit version of...say Crysis fails, you can play 32-bit version not problem. Though, your OS would still read as much RAM.

- You`ll also be futureproof for more demanding videogames.
----------------

I have Vista 64-bit and It runs very well...no problems.

***The only problem I ever had was with Hellgate:London (64-bit version), but who didn't???***

 

[Morton]

Thanks for the quick answer. I was worried that games have more problems with 64-bit Vista than with 32-bit. Did you get 32-bit version of Hellgate:London to work on 64-bit Vista?

 

[Kraynor]

I've had no problems with Vista 64-bit in games stretching back as far as the early 90s (had to get a DOS emulator for some of my even older ones but they worked once I got that). 64-bit is the way to go, you can slap in more RAM, and more is always better. Also, as time goes on companies are going to focus more and more on providing native 64-bit support for games, applications, etc.

There's a tiny drop in performance when running 32-bit games but it's not noticible (~1% drop in FPS) because it's running on 32-bit emulation in a 64-bit environment, this will be less and less of a problem as time goes on.

Still, that 1% in 32-bit apps is more than made up in overall system performance by putting in 8 GB of RAM, letting you fully disable the windows page file.

Haven't any experience with Hellgate: London as I didn't like it when I got the demo back when I had XP 32-bit, so can't comment on that. Google can though.

 

[SiriusStarr]

I run 64-bit Vista and have had absolutely no problems with any software or games, including the following: Crysis, Crysis Warhead, CoD 4, Halo 2, Bioshock, STALKER:SoC, NFS Carbon, any of the Orange Box games, and several more that I can't think of off the top of my head. If you have more than 3 GB of RAM, go 64-bit. It's future-proof, and you can address all of your memory.

 

[Morton]

Thanks for all the replies. I forgot to ask whether there is a big difference between Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium from the viewpoint of stability in games. Is Vista Home Premium worth extra money compared with Vista Home Basic?

 

[Alex The PC Gamer]

I got Premium but that's because I wanted the nice interface...I think Ultimate is not worth it unless you're big on security. Basic would be like Premium without the nice switch key features and so on... I think its worth going to Premium for a 20-30 dollar difference.

 

[Lan]

I'm running 64 bit Ultimate and haven't had many issues. The only one I've run into so far is with MYST V End of Ages, and many others got that game to run just fine too. Go for 64bit. Driver support is finnally getting there to where its not much of an issue anymore, and with the upgradability in RAM, you'll be ready for when more games have native 64bit support.

 

[Cuddles]

I have had a few problems with some of the really old games with Vista 64.
Freespace 2, Fallout 1, Max Payne, Red Alert, C & C, and Resident Evil just to name a couple. I did try using the compatability and though I could kind of get them to run they just didn't run right or they had massive problems.

Which is OK because that forces me to run them on my son's XP machine which runs them really well. There are a few other older games I haven't yet tried like Warcraft, Homeworld, etc. but I can keep this post updated if you want or if you got a peculiar game you are wondering about I can probably give it a go (yeah my library is that extensive and then some) and tell you the results.

 

[Morton]

I am mainly interested in the performance of modern games on Vista. However, since you mentioned older games, there is one I am curious about. Does Neverwinter Nights 1 run on 64-bit Vista without any problems?

 

[Lan]

I haven't tried that one, but I enjoyed the game, so I'll try it (depends on time) and try to get back to you in a day or two.

 

[Cuddles]

I'll give it a shot along with Lan and see. Give me about a week as it's in a box in the garage which is with many other boxes that all look alike.

 

[Lan]

Installed just fine for me. I had to manually tell it to go to the 32 bit Program Files folder (Program Files (x86)), but that was it. The first time I tried to patch it didn't work right, but I tried again and the rest of the update worked extremely smooth. I didn't load the expansion packs, but if the regular game went that well, I wouldn't expect much of an issue with the xpacs. It was kinda cool seeing 1100 FPS on the menu screen though. lol.

 

[Morton]

I've heard that NWN 1 has some issues with double core CPUs and maybe even some modern graphics cards, so it might be hard to tell whether a problem is caused by hardware or Vista. It's nice to know that the game launched and updated normally on Vista. I'm interested in the game because NWN 2 still has different bugs and inconvenient solutions for multiplayer game, while NWN 1 has been polished really well during the last six years, especially after the big final patch 1.69 released several months ago. They've finally added "Ride" skill, "Mounted Combat" and "Mounted Archery" feats as well as many nice looking horsies, fixed many of the remaining bugs. It's possible to play NWN 1 as a free mini MMORPG, except that it probably has greater depth than any existing MMORPG in terms of gameplay and features. All in all, it seems worth keeping even after switching to Vista.

 

[Lan]

Well I'm running a dual core AMD, and SLI 8800's. So rest easy.

 

[aydllan]

Thanks for posting about this everyone!

I'm wondering the same thing. I have answers now, thank you!

I have questions about specific games that I still play...
will these run on 64-bit Vista?

Heroes of Might & Magic III [Complete] (most important!)
Starcraft
Warcraft III
Diablo II (though I'll be getting D3)
Industry Giant II (ha!)


thanks!

 

[razor512]

remember, 32 bit apps run slower in a 64bit os as the 32bit environment needs to be emulated and this causes a performance overhead


64 bit os also have poor driver support mainly due to many companies either dying out before the new os came out, or just not putting any manpower towards it as most of their customers are 32 bit users

 

[Lan]

64 bit os also have poor driver support mainly due to many companies either dying out before the new os came out, or just not putting any manpower towards it as most of their customers are 32 bit users

As I said above, this is largely no longer an issue. It would really only be an issue with hardware and/or drivers that aren't that well known anyway.

 

[Lan]

Thanks for posting about this everyone!

I'm wondering the same thing. I have answers now, thank you!

I have questions about specific games that I still play...
will these run on 64-bit Vista?

Heroes of Might & Magic III [Complete] (most important!)
Starcraft
Warcraft III
Diablo II (though I'll be getting D3)
Industry Giant II (ha!)


thanks!

Truthfully, I haven't tried loading any of those. I do own Starcraft, Warcraft III, and Diablo II. I seem to remember installing Diablo II, and then remembering I lost my expansion for it, so uninstalled it, but if I recall I think it ran fine. Based on my experiance I, wouldn't expect an issue with the Blizzard games. I couldn't say anything about the other 2 though.

 

[Transsive]

Vista ultimate 64bit.
Diablo 2 works, warcraft 3 works, heroes 2 works (I guess 3 would as well).

The only game I can't play is Thief 3. (I think I would have to disable DEP).
Also couldn't install red alert 1 (16 bit installer).

 

[aydllan]

thank you SO MUCH for the reply!

You are all making this hard decision easier for me!!

 

[cliffro]

my experience has been pretty good so far in the 7 months I've been running 64bit Vista.

<long winded rant Off Topic>
With 1 exception and its totally my fault for being cheap, My Wireless NIC is a cheap model by cheap I mean really cheap(paid 16.99 for it)

It ran flawlessly on XP, but I had to hunt down a 64bit driver for the chip it uses since Aopen hasn't released a driver for this specific model in quite some time. I obviously found one but it has some serious issues that while they can be avoided makes its use tedious.

Example 1: If i try to send an attachment via Windows Live Mail my computer freezes.(tried it with multiple types of attachments) However doing the same using Outlook 2007 works fine.

Example 2: Using uTorrent/Azureus(Vuze) results in a Freeze as well, the time it takes to freeze varies but in the end it always freezes. However using Bit Tornado and limiting my max connections to 30 works fine(tried it in utorrent with no success).


At first I blamed uTorrent since it was the first to present the freeze, but after moving to Azureus/Vuze after it working for a while problem free started doing the same. I started to question the source of the problem.

Then a while later I tried to send a pic in an email to a friend(3DMark score) using WLM it locked up...thought it was a fluke tried again same result. So I tried a simple empty zip file again same result.

So prepared for another freeze I used Outlook and WTF? no freeze?

So in conclusion to my rant, I can only send attachments via Outlook, and I am forced to use an old BT client to prevent the crappy (and only available driver for my card) driver from locking up my PC.
</long winded rant Off Topic>


On the game front however the only issues ive ran into are MOH:Airborne Demo refused to install. And I had to force Star Trek Armada 1 to use both cores or else I had horrendous mouse lag.

And in my experience with games that have both 64bit and 32bit Versions using the 32bit exe(in Vista64) results in slightly higher performance so go figure how 32bit performs worse according to other posters.

 

[Morton]

Did you have any problems when downloading stuff or running games in multiplayer mode on 64-bit Vista while using WLAN?

 

[rasmasyean]

Vista ultimate 64bit.
Diablo 2 works, warcraft 3 works, heroes 2 works (I guess 3 would as well).

The only game I can't play is Thief 3. (I think I would have to disable DEP).
Also couldn't install red alert 1 (16 bit installer).

All Blizzard games I checked worked perfectly. I don't think they even needed a patch.

This is a decent Wiki on compatible titles.
http://www.iexbeta.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_Vista_Software_Compatibility_List

You can always google it and chances are someone found a solution. Sometimes you have to download a dll or something or have to turn off anti-aliasing or something like that.

But I don't think you can get 16-bit to work no matter what. But it should be old enough that you can install some sort emulator software of Windows XP or other legacy OS in it and maybe try to run it.

 

[radnor]

Cliffro, it is your WIFI NIC giving you problemas for sure.

I'm using vista 64bits ultimate for 9 months now, my PC has an above the standart use .I'm playing cod, and ma Mrs is watching a movie at the same time, with Vuze, doing some print serving (ma Mrs is a devil multitasker, thus she got the right man, a geek) and some other process i have "hanged" here.

Pretty stable. I just restart it when a new version of Catalyst comes out. Driver issues are almost non existent now. Some old hardware might now work, but hey, that always happen on a new OS.