Install both x86/x64 on different partition.

[maxson]

I wonder what happen if I install Windows 7 x86 as main OS (C and create another partition to install Windows 7 x64. Will they have compatibility problem? I plan to install more than 4GB ram on my pc, but as I stated, my main OS is Windows 7 x86, and it will only recognized/read my ram capacity to 4GB, right. If I want to play games, I just restart my pc and boot to Windows 7 x64. Is it a good idea? Or any software or tricks that I can use (while I am using/active on Windows 7 x86, and switch to x64 mode without restarting the pc)?

And, if I install more than 4GB (ex: 8 - 12GB) on x86, it will only recognize 4GB max. Is it just the reading of x86 about the capacity of ram, but the fact is my pc performance has improved? Hope you understand.

 

[buzznut]

Hi
I don't see the point of running both. There isn't anything you can't do in WIN7 64 bit, so there really is no reason to run a dual boot on the same OS. Now if you were running an XP/Win7 dual boot I could see why you might want to do that. But in this case having the 32 bit version of WIN7 won't gain you anything.

 

[hydroment]

There should be no real issues with having the two for a dual boot setup. For the most part I agree with buzznut. Virtually all current software and hardware will have both x86 and x64 versions and drivers. A year or two ago this may not have been the case. If you are trying to keep older non-updated hardware alive you may need to do this. Or if trying to host multiple VM's you may want to create them as x86 machines to keep some of the overhead down.

Other than that, go ahead and install them. It wont hurt anything.

 

[maxson]

If I install more than 4GB on x86 (ex: 12GB), windows will only recognize/read 4GB max even I have 12GB ram installed. In terms of performance, 12GB is faster than 4GB, right. So, even windows (x86) only recognize 4GB from 12GB of ram, the performance will be better than just installing 4GB ram.

 

[hydroment]

No. Windows x86 will totally disregard the additional ram, though the machine will be powering it, thus creating additional heat.

under computer properties page in win 7 the installed ram will show the full and total amount of ram installed in the machine but will also add the note alerting you it is only using 4 GB.

12GB is not necessarily faster than 4GB. It only allows you to run more apps and have more open or larger files open at the same time before it starts to use the pagefile.sys. If you use the x64 bit installation with 12 GB available, identical to the x86 installation with 4 GB available, the x64 installation will be faster because of fewer memory swaps to the slow (read slow) harddrive.

The problem is that we install x64 and 12+GB of memory and then like in the x86 installation, push it to the limit of what it can do efficiently.

Speed up the x86 with 4 GB ram with a sata3 SSD and move the pagefile.sys to the SSD. Set the max swap size of the pagefile.sys to about 90% of the drive and you can effectively give an x86 installation 84GB of ram with little noticeable speed reduction than that of an x64 installation.

 

[runswindows95]

Okay, if you got 12GB of RAM, just go with 64-bit. There is no point in running 32-bit unless you got older software that doesn't run on 64-bit. Also, Any 32-bit OS, rather it be Windows or Linux, will not run faster with only 4GB of RAM installed versus 12GB of RAM installed. They will only see, in reality, 3.5GB or less.

 

[maxson]

Best answer selected by maxson.