Windows 7 64-bit Creeping Up on 32-bit Installs

I'm not really surprised, nowadays you need more and more memory and 4 GB is I would think is standard in a 2009/2010 mainstream computer, and for 4 GB you'd need 64-bit.

Typo, should be '17.2 billion GB of RAM!', not or.

because we dont have that kind of money

I installed Windows-7 64 bit 6 months ago as a dual boot alternative to 32-bit Windows Xp. I am still not using it on a regular base. Many reasons are there, from BAD Windows Explorer (removed many usable features from Xp and Vista) to 64-bit driver lack. I am not interested in buying new sound card, TV card, printer and DVI PVA monitor (which works only on VGA with Windows 7).

Strictly speaking you don't need a 64bit OS to address more than 4 GB of RAM, even Microsofts own server OS's could address more than 4 GB in their 32bit incarnations.

I'll go out on a limb and say that 64bit versions of Windows are, currently, pointless. While I still use a 64bit version myself the binary compatibility between 32bit and 64bit versions of the OS means we're never going to see any real amount of 64bit software as developers have no incentive to maintain multiple versions if they're not forced to do so.

There shouldn't even have been a 32bit version on Windows 7 and I can only hope that Windows 8 rectifies that problem while moving legacy (32bit) support into a VM.

The main reason behind this is that Windows 7 is the most stable 64 bit release yet from Microsoft.

It also increases the amount of virtual memory addressable by each application from 1.5GB aswell and makes all that graphics card ram fully addressable in your expensive multi card setups

have to remember all memory in your system is limited by the bit depth of the address space

7 64bit definitely worth the buy

Quite simple. We STILL don't have a lot of 64-bit apps out. However, I am one of the 46% that DO have the 64-bit version of Windows 7. I decided there finally was a need for it, however, I don't have 4 GB of RAM (only 2 GB). I will upgrade when need be. With the kind of RAM I got, the upgrade is only $60 or so. Can you imagine how much 2GB of DDR2 ram would've costed 3 years ago? It's obviously cheaper now and I STILL don't need it. They need to discontinue 32-bit OS's. At this point, though, 128-bit OS's might be a waste.

my reason is simple, i have 3gb ddr3 1600mhz dominatrix ram, currently 64bit is useless to me.

I have 32-bit, my laptop only has 3GB...

i bought a new copy of window 7 and installed the 64bit version, it worked fine for two days but later i started getting this irritating blue screen problem which causes immediate restart. This started happening every 10 minutes. I think its mainly due to the incompatibility of windows 7 64bit with my X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro Series creative sound card. So i tried to reinstall 64bit and got the same problem. Then i installed 32bit windows 7 and the problem was solved.

You need applications too that make use of memory configuration above 4 GB.
With the exception of Adobe CS5, there aren't many software that a normal user would use that benefit from 64-bit architecture.
It has been more than 3 years & i am happy with my 32-bit Vista & 4 GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM .

arokia I would say you have a RAM issue more so than a soundcard issue as I know the X-Fi cards are 100% 64bit compatible.

If that includes upgrades, then it could well be that more than half of fresh installs are 64-bit.

Yea, not really surprised either,now a days basic desktops/mainstream desktops have the standard of 4gbs+ of ram.

The average user (lite user) with a 2GB machine will see more benefits with 64-bit version with a clean system (no bloatware) because of its low latency nature.

I did an experiment a year ago with my sisters computer (2GB, Athlon x2) and ran 64-bit first, then secretly switched to 32-bit later (about 2 weeks). She came to me about a week after the switch and told me why her computer seemed slower since i "took a look at it" (FYI she never shuts down, only sleep). Since then i instal 64-bit on all my clients PC's with 2GB+

FYI 64-bit also runs on 1GB using about 640MB with active antivirus, with about 300MB "stand by" and 80MB "free" if you need to run 64-bit.

During Vista launch there was still too many problems with drivers that either didn't exist for 64bit or were in buggy beta stage.
Now most of devices except really few specialized old ones (used mostly in industry) support both 32 and 64 bit and all except few rare 32 bit applications can run in 64bit windows. They still are limited in use to 2GB memory space, but none say there cant be running more of them utilizing all of ram.

I have both 64 bit 7 and Vista. I am glad to report I have had very few problems with it. I have had more issues with the release of dual core then 64-bit Vista/7. 64-bit XP on the other hand was just plain bad.

I like others went 64-bit for more ram(in a consumer version on windows.).

2 gb RAM and 64bit OS - that's just simply stupid!

FYI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physi [...] ft_Windows

"However, "client" versions of 32-bit Windows (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7) limit physical address space to the first 4 GB for driver compatibility [2] and licensing[14] reasons, even though these versions do run in PAE mode if NX support is enabled."

The memory ceiling in 32bit Windows has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it's a 32bit OS, assuming the OS in question supports PAE... and I would assume Win7 32bit does.

They should've never released a 32-bit version of Windows 7. Sometimes you just got to cut the cord on older systems. I hope they finally do this for Windows 8 in the future.

I'm using 32bit windows 7 because I only have a 32bit processor (P4 2.53ghz northwood), with 3gb of DDR-266 RAM.

Runs like a charm after you disable %90 of the services you don't need, and make sure not to overload it with unneeded background proccesses.

dacman61 if they never released a 32bit version, they would of lost %54 of their sales.

I'm only running it because it was preloaded on my new machine. The machine only has 2gb of RAM. It is visibly faster in all regards running 64 bit apps. Runs like a rocket. I am running 32 bit Chrome; but it doesn't seem to be bothered.

I had no problem locating 64 bit drivers for my 3 year old laptop printer; and 2 year old desktop printer. I located a 64 bit driver for my fax program with no problem. Same w/ 64 bit Itunes & Quicktime.

"Installing 64bit OS is stupid. No one needs more than 4gb of RAM except people who suffer from a chronic lack of sex."

How many of us remember why the first PC's were DESIGNED for only ONE MB of memory? It was times as much memory as the first consumer computers (64K) and they thought that would be more than anyone would ever need....

As memory gets cheaper, programmers concentrate more on adding features than minimizing code requirements...

Yes, my last build about 6 months ago used ASUS P6T deluxe, I7 CPU@2.66Ghz running @3Ghz, 12gigs ram, and 256G-SSD in Raid0 with two 500G for data. With the Win7 64bit its the fastest thing I have used to date.

I started using 64 bit with Vista on all five of the machines in my house with 4GB of memory on four and 8GB on my game machine. I've done a W7 upgrade on all the machine with no problems at all. In my opinion W7 is by far the best OS out there for the money.

I am still behind the 4Gb max ... reasoning being my asus motherboard only supports a max of 1Gb per slot ddr2 and my single core amd64... well i'd ratehr put money when i have it into the system than a new os that i can't really utilize

Wait... you haven't had $80 for months? Wow, I must be rich.

Why is Windows always the last OS to adopt technologies like this? My IRIX desktop has been 64 bit since 2001, my Compaq Alpha desktop dates from 1999 and is fully 64-bit. Our HP-UX servers at work have been 64-bit since the late 90's. Heck, even my OSX laptop at home has been running a 64 bit OS since 2007. Why is Windows still stuck in 32-bit land? 64-bit Windows is available. You'd think Microsoft would just stop selling the 32-bit version, either that or consumers would just stop buying it.

Ok STOP. The primary reason to use a NT x64 kernel OS (Windows XP x64 / Vista x 64 / Windows 7 x64) has nothing to do with address space, although that is a good side benefit.

The #1 biggest reason is that the NT x64 kernel was built from the ground up, its completely 100% done from scratch. The NT x86 kernel has much code left laying around from the Win 98 / 2K / XP era, even a few 16-bit DLL's are in there. This is a requirement for the NT x86 kernel to be backwards compatible with software made for previous windows OS's, both 16 and 32 bit. This legacy code and support for undocumented features is what lead to the famous "windlblowz" and blue screen nightmares. It also led to the huge security flaws because the older NT kernels allowed applications access to kernel space memory.

The NT x64 kernel was built from scratch with a better security model in mind, sand-boxing of kernel vs user processes and preventing user mode programs from accessing kernel memory or otherwise interfering with kernel mode drivers. A NT x64 system is very hard to crash from an application point of view. The application can crash but it won't take the system down with it. A buggy x64 driver can still cause a BSoD or unstable behavior, but that is why MS went nuts with requiring signed kernel drivers and such. Everything in kernel mode must be x64 code, you can't naively load a 32 bit piece of code into the NT x64 kernel, it just won't work. Because of that lots of older HW drivers don't work in Windows 7 and there isn't much you can do about it. They sacrificed backwards compatibility for system stability.

32-bit applications are executed inside a virtualized system environment. There is a system component called Windows on Windows 64 (WoW64) that creates a virtual environment to execute the 32 bit code in. This includes 32-bit DLL's for DirectX, a different program files folder, and a completely different registry. 32-bit programs are rooted in the WoW64Node section of the registry instead of the main software section. If a 32-bit program crash's all it can do is take down its own bubble, all other programs remain unharmed.

-That- is the reason you use Windows x64. Not for the memory addressing (2gb application space vs near infinite) but for the system stability and security.

You are getting thumbs down for telling the truth about MS. This site is full of MS fanboys who don't want to hear the truth. Kinda like the idiots who follow the Al Gore cult. When you tell them facts they stick their fingers in their ears and say, "la la la'. This goes for Apple fanboys too.

PAE mode is ridiculously slow. It requires that the OS keep a section of address space set aside as a page frame. Then when it wants to access memory above 4gb it alters the location of the page frame and rereads it. The CPU is basically doing virtual memory mapping for the OS because the OS can't keep track of address space above 2^32. It was used as a work-around for when NT 4.0 / 5.0 x86 servers needed more memory then what was physically possible. Also each application can only access up to 2gb of memory. This is because the NT x86 kernel reserves the last address bit to separate user mode from kernel mode memory. Then again it also reserves the final 512MB of address space (within the kernel mode range) for mapping hardware devices. This includes GFX card memory and any shared memory (onboard IGM and what not). Literally every piece of HW is your system must have a memory address associated with it. If you want to see it then open device manager and set view to "resource by type" and look at memory. You will see a bunch of stuff mapped to a really high address FFFFF000+ type locations.

The NT x64 kernel did away with all the limitations. The new theoretical limitations are insane, we won't hit those anytime in the next decade or so.

In recap, 32-bit means a direct limitation to 2^32 total bits of addressable memory. With 2^31 being addressable by applications and the rest being dedicated to the kernel. A system can not directly address more then that, but they can have the CPU indirectly re-map sections of the address space to area's of memory that are otherwise non-addressable. This requires the CPU / MB / OS to all support this, very few consumer systems can do this. Look in your BIOS for a "PAE MODE" setting, if its there then your MB can use PAE (if your CPU supports it) if its not then your MB can't.