64bit OS is it worth it and Windows 7 what do you think?
 

Ok so I am looking for some advice on moving to a 64 bit OS. I got a new PC over the holidays an E8400 which I quickly overclocked to 3.84ghz. So far I love it. I am only running 2gb of ram, and from what I have read when I up it to 4gb I am going to need to move to a 64bit OS. I have not even looked into a 64bit in a couple of years so I have no idea how the driver foundation has picked up.
I am running 32 bit version of XP Pro, Vista Ultimate and Windows 7 on a few machines and am really happy with Windows 7, personally I think it is the best OS Microsoft has released bar none.
Aside from the boost in ram allowed what are the pros and cons of running a 64bit OS. All of my hardware is new, as I moved from a S478 P4 2.8C Northwood to the new S775 E8400 on a Biostar motherboard. Moved from an AGP Video card to a PCI-E Video card, 2 single sticks of 1gb Crucial Ram, and all my HD’s are now Sata. If I make the jump I am going to go to Vista Ultimate 64.

Is it even worth the jump to a 64bit OS?

On a side note, who else is playing around with Windows 7? In my opinion, it takes the best of XP and the few good parts of Vista and throws the rest out. It’s faster than Vista, even in beta; it is less buggy than Vista. I think when MS releases it fully, if they don’t screw it up between now and then, it’s going to be the best OS they have ever released. For the record I am running Beta Build 7000.

Main con of a 64-bit OS is driver AND SOFTWARE support. There's a pretty wide range of software that won't run, or won't run properly, on 64-bit Windows.

So driver support really hasn't improved much. The main things I do with my computer are

Work writing websites

Word and Play doing video compression and encoding (industrial equipment videos and Car Club rallies.)

Play Racing Games and First Person Shooters like Need for Speed stuff and Unreal Tournament.

I plan to toss in a 7950GT Video card which should have decent 64bit support, but am a little worried about my video compression and editing software.

i'm using vista ultima 64bit and so far i havnt run into any problems yet (touch wood).
the only driver problem that i heard of is theres no wireless drivers for 64bit os, so if u connect to the internet via wireless then thats not possible. but yea other than that i dont have any problems with the 64bit os so far.

Driver problems aren't much of an issue now, I find. Then again, my laptop did ship with 64-bit Vista Home Premium, and luckily all of my periphials have 64-bit versions of the drivers. If you want to play racing games, good luck finding proper support for a racing wheel. I bought the Logitech Momo one because it was the only one at the time that I saw had 64-bit support...but it doesn't quite work properly. :p

whatever u heard is wrong then

there is nothing wrong with 64bit Vista, I havn't run into a single compatibility problem with 64bit. anything mainstream will have 64bit support nowadays

and ram is cheap, might as well go 8GB while u are at it ;)

tbh, i don't see vista buggy at all.

Drivers for NEW hardware shouldn't be a problem... drivers for older hardware, though, especially abandoned, cheap, or off-brand hardware, is another matter. Major manufacturers have been writing 64-bit drivers since XP-64 was in beta, and even most minor ones got into the fray when Vista was announced.

Same deal with software, some older 32-bit stuff especially may have issues... mostly non-mainstream stuff, especially since more mainstream stuff will have updates or patches available, but there is a fair bit of older stuff out there that will have problems.

Never had a driver issue with Vista when it first came out, and up to now. The only thing that I disliked was when I had a WiFi card, I couldn't turn off the service where it checks for new networks every so often causing a spike (compared to XP, where you can). Besides that, I love it. No issues with x64 as well.

64 bit isn't worth it at this point. 3GB of ram is the limit of 32 bit, and that is plenty

I would stick with XP 32 bit on my main rig, because it is test and proven, and has the best driver support. Like Vista, Windows 7 offers no great improvements. If you want to increase your RAM, go to 4GB with 32 bit and see if there is any improvement for your application. I went looking for Vista driver for my Linksys wireless adapters, and found no Vista drivers (32 and 64 bit) available, even for current products. There are no wireless adapters on this list.
http://www-ca.linksys.com/servlet/Sa...=8871512855B02
I would have expected more from a reputable company like Linksys/Cisco.

I also found some bugs in Windows 7, but what do you expect, they told me it was Beta. I play with Windows 7 on a fourth computer I have. It has an SIS chipset on it, and when I installed it, the onboard network and sound did not work. I got the sound to work, but I doubt if I will ever get the LAN to work.

I didn't like the start menu in Windows 7 (and Vista), and I noticed that there was no option to revert back to "Classic".

I think the only real reason to upgrade from XP is for a change in scenery. You can decide how important that is to you.

do you need 4gb ram when using Win7???

Nope I have 2gb on my windows 7 box, and it runs faster than XP. Don't know why or what MS did, but it is faster and more stable than Vista too.


Now back to the original topic, Vista 64 Ultimate. I have been reading on several different forums, and the consensus is, if you got a chip that can run it, and want to upgrade your ram, there is nothing really wrong with 64bit. Just a bit more work to get all the correct drivers. I run hard wired gig Ethernet and 10/100 Ethernet so I don't need wireless drivers on my local machines. All of my wireless machines are still running XP Pro. Looks like I will start backing everything up tonight and tomorrow and format the rig over the next couple days. This is going to get interesting.

Thanks again for all the info guys. You Rock.

I doubt Vista64 has a problem with wireless *per se*... more likely that certain wireless devices or common chipsets have an issue with proper driver support. My son's new Sony VAIO laptop, with Vista Home Premium 64-bit, has no problems at all with its onboard draft-N wireless.

Unfortunately there are only a few wifi chipsets that are commonly used by most manufacturers, and if the makers of those chipsets don't provide proper drivers and/or SDKs, their users (the end device makers) are starting at a disadvantage.

eww 64 bit..

i was running 64 bit vista for about 4 months... i hated it! also coupled with the fact that i hated vista! i went from 32bit xp --> 64bit vista --> 32bit xp again.

maybe about 1/3rd of the software i regularly use was incompatible with 64 bit, or did not have a 64bit offering. also im not sure why (prob not a 64bit issue) but 64bit vista ran extremely slow on my computer after about a month. i have an e8400 w/ 2GB ram so it should be a fast enough system to handle vista np... now that im back on 32bit XP SP3 im pretty darn happy, and im definitely not touching vista again (or 64bit for now). 64 bit for me, did not offer any noticeable performance gains and therefore no noticeable benefits.

i went from using windows XP to vista 64 bit.

i must say anyone who bitches about vista just doesn't know how to use a computer

my vista 64 bit has been faster and way more stable than my windows XP.

NO FUCKING PROBLEMS for a few months now, all is smooth, i fucking love it.

i run vista in pure classic mode (so it looks like windows 98).

i am running 6 gigs of ram and a core i7 though. but i mean if your system can handle it, go for it, i have no regrets, and i love it. there has not been one crash, or any problems at all.

oh i am running a legit version of 64bit vista if that makes any difference.

modern computers actually runs faster in Vista then XP. at least vista supports AHCI and the ability to use the large amount of ram you have in the system.

for those that say Vista uses a lot of resource, think again. even on my systems with over 4GB ram, vista loads up a lot of stuff on the ram. instead of just using 20% of my total ram, it tries to allocate and make use 70-80% to increase performance (vista leaves about 1.5GB free for other use). such as firefox would cache all the pages and photos on to the ram for fast access. if you have 2GB or less ram, vista can't allocate the extra memory for other usage. browsing the twanger thread has never been as smooth with 2GB compare to 8GB LOL

Well Vista seems to be pretty happy on the kid's VAIO laptop... on the other hand, a buddy walked into BestBuy a few months ago, ask for "the best computer you have", got a fully-loaded-to-the-tits HP media desktop, and within about the first week started having endless problems with Vista... and then had the machine puke all over him and brick itself when he tried to reformat it to install XP.

Well I'm back. All backed up, formated, re-installed Vista 64. So far so good, everything has installed perfect, computer even seems faster. (could just be my imagination) Now for the long task of tweaking everything to be happy and get all the network configurations right.

I am really happy so far, I even setup an extra partition so I can install Windows 7 64bit to play with at a later date. Because my motherboard is so new, the install CD included all the motherboard/network and SATA drivers for 64bit.

Thanks again for all the advice guys.

its a HP, enough said

^i work extensively with hp, dell, and lenovo high end workstations and hps are actually really damn good and super well built. dont spew shit... oh wait.. you're hyde.

HP consumer line suck shit, only their business side products work well.

I just bought a Emachines single core laptop with one gig of ram and it runs vista basic fine. In fact I'm using it right now.

Vista Basic != Vista, IMHO. It's liked really stripped down, eh?

running legit copy of 64bit vista as well. running 6gb ram like ulic and it runs fine for me.