Win XP 32 bit or 64 bit

[kep55]

I've just about finished my new PC. It's based on a AM2 / AM2+ mobo, AMD 64 X2 Dual-core Brisbane 5400 Black Edition, and 4GB RAM. My big question is whether to use XP Pro 32 or XP Pro 64. No, I do NOT want to even think about Vista. So, which would be better?

 

[aford10]

32 bit, without a doubt. XP32 can still recognize ~3.25G of RAM, so you aren't losing much. XP64 is pretty flaky because the efforts went into fixing vista instead. Vista was the newer 64bit platform, so that's where the money went. There is some lack of software support for xp64 as well that can cause some problems. I tried it for about a week, and then formatted and went back to xp32.

 

[kep55]

32 bit, without a doubt. XP32 can still recognize ~3.25G of RAM, so you aren't losing much. XP64 is pretty flaky because the efforts went into fixing vista instead. Vista was the newer 64bit platform, so that's where the money went. There is some lack of software support for xp64 as well that can cause some problems. I tried it for about a week, and then formatted and went back to xp32.

Does this hold true for Vista 32 bit vs 64 bit?

 

[aford10]

XP is more buggy because it was the first real attempt at the 64bit platform. Vista32 and 64 bit are both pretty stable platforms. I would go with xp 32bit over vista 32bit, but if you want a stable 64 bit system with driver and software support, go with vista 64bit. Although the best option may be the coming release of windows7, which is a more polished version of vista64.

 

[Scotteq]

If you make the decision to go 64bit, then I'd recommend either going with Vista, or using the Win 7 64 RC. Then transitioning to Win 7 (production) when that becomes available later this year. For 32 bit, please feel free to use whatever you like.