Quick! 64-bit or 32-bit

[Uscooper]

I have a core 2 duo, 2 gigs pc 6400 ram, ati x1950pro. I have xp on one of my (3) 250gb hdds in the system. I'v got a copy of Vista ultimate with 32 and 64 bit. Should I load the 64 or 32 bit? I can only activate one, and I DO have the 64 bit drivers for all of my hardware... so it it worth the 64 since i can only activate once and I have xp too if i need it?

 

[moose64]

I installed 64 bit and have no problems.

 

[muss08]

Installed vista ultimate 64bit about a week ago and love it! Unfortunately could not carry over my virus protection becasue Mcafee does not support 64bit and certain software wont run becasue it does not have a digital driver signature. You can easily download a program to turn off the UAC though which can get annoying. Download the 64bit. MUCH better than xp!

 

[vLm]

64 was the right choice.

 

[joke]

64 was the right choice.

Norton Anti-virus doesn't work on 64-bit - they say it does but it doesn't. I had it running on 32bit vista just fine but on 64bit, the license manager hangs right after the install.

You can't use viiv... It's only available in 32-bits.

Also, regarding viiv - even on the 32bit version, it has to be installed before you upgrade to Vista as intel doesn't have a clean-install, only an upgrade version.

That being said, I went 64-bit and it's great. Everything else has loaded and run just fine. I started out with 32-bit and reinstalled the 64bit version after I verified that I had all of the HW drivers. I picked up an additional .75G ram (went from 3.25 to 4!). Also my raid drives are much faster, average access went from 13.7ms to 10.2ms... YMMV, depending on the rest of your HW.

Good luck.

Update on Norton - Of all of the vendors in my system... Norton executes out of the data area. This was causing a DEP vioation and Vista just shut it down. Hooray for MS; shame on Norton. However, it would have been nice if one of them had mentioned why before just shutting down the DEP problem - oh well, Norton 360 does run on a 64bit system (I've got good virus and firewall prtection - one less major concern).

 

[joke]

I can only activate one, and I DO have the 64 bit drivers for all of my hardware... so it it worth the 64 since i can only activate once and I have xp too if i need it?

You don't have to activate for 30 days. On one of the opening screens you have the option of not activating until later. Also, you can unactivate and change to the other version if you need - after a period of time I think you need to contact MS on a web-site and let them know but you can move or change it if you want.

Also for a short period you can buy up to 2 Home Premium licenses for $50 each and then load them off your same dvd (dig around in the ms vista site for special offers). I bought two additional licenses and will install one on my htpc when I build it and probably set my wifes PC - and then I'll put the 64bit vista on my next 16G, 4cpu toy when the 45nm cpus arrive at the end of the summer!

Joe

 

[african_leopard]

64 was the right choice.

I started out with 32-bit and reinstalled the 64bit version after I verified that I had all of the HW drivers. I picked up an additional .75G ram (went from 3.25 to 4!). Also my raid drives are much faster, average access went from 13.7ms to 10.2ms... YMMV, depending on the rest of your HW.



This is a prob a dumb question - but how were you able to reformat your drive. I installed 32-bit, and want to switch to 64-bit. In days of old I would go into DOS prompt and run fdisk. How does one do it now?

Thanks

 

[joke]

I am not sure what you don't understand... There is no difference in drive formats or operation with 32 or 64 bit systems or really much changing since original dos-days (now there is ntfs).

Windows does the HD thing just like it has done if from Windows 3.1. In my case (full install), I booted from the dvd and it loads in all of its drivers. At a certain point it pops up a screen with all of the drive space it can find, including partitioned and non-partitioned space.

I have 4 500G Segate 7200.10 drives hooked up to an Intel ich7r controller. During the initial post I set them up as two volumes, 500G as vol0 (raid 0) and 1022G as vol1 (raid 5). So when Vista came up it found two drives with all of the space unpartitioned. At this point I told Vista to grab the 500G space as my primary partition (just like you would with fdisk) and then to format it. Use the quick format unless you want to sit around for a couple of hours (or if you don't know your drives).

After that, it took about an hr to install everything and it came up running, without any issues. Vista had drivers for almost everything I have in my system... which is another big plus for going with my Intel badaxe2 MB.

The only thing I don't have a driver for at this time is my Creative Voice, Live web-cam and Creative is saying Q2 before they get around to supplying a driver (32bit) for their most successful webcam (go figure). So I don't have skype at this point. I may FINALLY give up on creative and find a different solution.

 

[african_leopard]

Well, for some reason I can't set the DVD as default boot drive in the BIOS. So I can't boot from the DVD to reformat that way. I haven't done reformatting etc for years (about 5 or 6 years ago). So I have a clean install of Vista 32 - with no idea of how to reformat it so that I can install the 64 bit version.

But it's a moot point now - iTunes won't install on 64 bit Vista so I've heard.

It's great that you have no issues - the general recommendation on the Internet is to wait for a while with 64 bit version. Many folks appear to have driver issues.

 

[joke]

If you can't boot from a dvd, lan, or cd then you can't do a clean install <period> Have you checked to see if your MB manufacturer has a rom update to allow you to boot from something besides a HD? Maybe its time for you to get an updated MB as most of the ones I've seen for the last couple of years could boot from almost anything including usb devices...

If you have a somewhat clean 32 bit install (i.e. upgrade) and don't have more than 3G of ram then there really isn't much reason to go 64bit at this time. But there isn't much reason to not go 64bit if you can get the drivers for your system and want more memory. I think my raid software runs faster but I'm not going to reload a 32 bit version just to document if 32 or 64 bit is faster. I absolutely see that my 64 bit system is faster than it used to be, by a LARGE margin.

I have just finished reinstalling all of the rest of my software and most everything seems to run just fine too. I did mention the crappy creative stuff and that the Intel viiv run-around doesn't run in Vista, yes?

Good luck

 

[african_leopard]

I am building a PC with the new GA-P965-DS3 MB rev 2. It was a brand new HDD - so when I started the machine it booted until it found the DVD drive as the drive was unformatted. Now I want to reformat - but the BIOS choices were not obvious for boot sequence - I was very tired and may have overlooked the obvious like CD-ROM and was thinking DVD.

Since I'm a heavy iPod user - I won't be able to go to the 64 bit . Apple has clearly stated that iTunes will not run in the 64 bit version of Vista. Os wars..... :x

 

[elite_sleepwalker]

plus there working on a ps2 and gamecube emulater in the 64 bit version that will gain you higher fps during game play.thats why i got it.