32/64 bit?

[HyperFred]

Initially I saw that lots of people were having major problems with Windows 7 64bit. Is it now safe to go with 64bit if I am building a new PC? Or are there still issues?

 

[tkrl26]

I had more issues with vista 32 bit than Win7 64 bit... They pretty much have all the main x64 drivers nailed down now. Plus, you can install 32 apps on a 64 bit system, all the ones I have ran, I have yet to run into an issue...

I love Win 7 64 bit... I don't know what 8 has to offer, but I might just skip that OS...

 

[Deleted member 217926]

There are no issues anymore nor were there really ever any major ones. Windows XP x64 had driver issues but those have long been fixed.

 

[HyperFred]

I had more issues with vista 32 bit than Win7 64 bit... They pretty much have all the main x64 drivers nailed down now. Plus, you can install 32 apps on a 64 bit system, all the ones I have ran, I have yet to run into an issue...

I love Win 7 64 bit... I don't know what 8 has to offer, but I might just skip that OS...

Thanks for the reply. I'm only just about to upgrade from XP. My current PC isn't really quite fast enough to have gone to Vista or 7 yet, but now that I am finally upgrading to a new machine I figured it's about time to put XP behind me.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

For a new build go with Windows 7 x64 for sure. 32bit OS is limited to 3.25GB of memory and DDR3 is cheap so for that reason alone it's worth it.

I have run Windows 7 x64 since the early betas ( over a year before retail release) and never had a 32/64bit issue.

 

[HyperFred]

For a new build go with Windows 7 x64 for sure. 32bit OS is limited to 3.25GB of memory and DDR3 is cheap so for that reason alone it's worth it.

I have run Windows 7 x64 since the early betas ( over a year before retail release) and never had a 32/64bit issue.

Thanks. x64 it is then.

Now I just need to work out if I should go for 8Gb of memory instead of 4GB and if I should get 1333 or 1600.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

4GB for a gaming machine or 8GB if you use photo/video editing programs alot. 1333/1600 depends on the rest of your build but you might as well get the 1600. The price is not much different.

 

[HyperFred]

4GB for a gaming machine or 8GB if you use photo/video editing programs alot. 1333/1600 depends on the rest of your build but you might as well get the 1600. The price is not much different.

I think I'll go with 8GB, as I'll be using the iGPU of the 2500K. It's probably sensible to go with 2x4GB now, rather than find out that 2x2GB isn't quite enough and have to use 4 DIMM's.

 

[palladin9479]

Another big reason to move from NTx86 to NTx64 is that when they rebuilt the windows kernel for x64 they decided to drop support for all the old 16-bit DLL's and system hooks calls. These were left overs from the Win 3.11 / Win98 days when a user had administrative rights by default and every problem was run with the expectation that it would have full access to the system. Carrying these around has caused my system instability's and security holes then can ever be enumerated.

NTx64 also introduced a form of sand-boxing and environmental visualization with how WoW64 works. 32-bit applications are run inside their own memory space with their own registry and application folder, they are not allowed to do anything outside this space and thus they can never directly crash the system. I've been using NTx64 since Windows XP x64 (really server 2003 x64 desktop edition) and never regretted it, all the issues with XP x64 were manufactures not making proper drivers.