X64 or x86?

which version should i install? x64 or x86?

my pc:
c2d e4500@2.31ghz
2gb ram
ati radeon x1550
320gb wd harddrive

i plan to upgrade the gpu and the rams soon..

thank you very much !

thank you for your answer!
i want to install windows 7 x64 but i am not sure i have enough memory because i heard x64 windows "eats" more ram .is it true ?

ok.thank you very much !

thanks for the answers !

i will install x64 version !

am i going to be able to use it properly?

x64 uses roughly 20% more space.

If you can add the extra 2GB do it (read your motherboard manual).

1) 2GB -> 32-bit Windows
2) 3GB or 4GB -> 64-bit Windows

There are other advantages to 64-bit. Software compatibility and drivers are generally a non-issue but double check.

64-bit is the future. Windows 8 is confirmed to be 64-bit only but that's not a reason to switch now.

There is generally no performance advantage to 64-bit as 99.9% of programs are actually running on 64-bit Windows in a 32-bit emulation mode. 64-bit programs are starting to appear though, but it's likely we won't see a huge surge until Windows 8 approaches in 3 years.

If you run 32-bit software in a 64-bit environment it will use twice as much memory. As a 64-bit OS uses 64-bit words, when you run a 32-bit program, there is some emulation of course, the OS reserves 64 bits for every 32-bit word that the application is using. An app that would use 20MB in a 32-bit OS would use 40MB in a 64-bit OS (even though it was technically only using half of that the OS would reserve 40 for it).

The rate isn't exactly double as some parts of the app are native windows code (make the window, buttons, help, etc.), but the memory that the app is reserving itself(it's variables) would take up twice as much space.

Just to clarify - each 32-bit program has access to 2GB of virtual space. Programs that don't need 2GB of space won't actually use 2GB of physical RAM, and even a program that uses 2GB of virtual space will run (albeit slowly) on a system with only 1GB of memory because the overflow is put into the page file.

If the install ran without complaining you should be fine. You wouldn't be able to get vary far installing 64-bit Windows on a system that wasn't compatible with it.

Since this thread was brought back to life, I would like to correct this statement

"If you run 32-bit software in a 64-bit environment it will use twice as much memory. As a 64-bit OS uses 64-bit words, when you run a 32-bit program, there is some emulation of course, the OS reserves 64 bits for every 32-bit word that the application is using. An app that would use 20MB in a 32-bit OS would use 40MB in a 64-bit OS"

The only thing that's forced from 32bit to 64bit is memory pointers.

Lets say you have an array of data that's 128k in size. You need a pointer to "point" to the location in memory where this array is. In a 32bit machine, this pointer would consume 32bits, in a 64bit machine, it would be 64bits, but the actual data is still 128K.

So, it's not a strait up 2xs memory used.