Hello, Recently I've bought a new Packard Bell Laptop. when installing, it (sadly) only contained a x86 version of Windows Vista. Now I've upgraded to Windows 7 x86 Professional. The laptop does have a 64 bits processor and 4Gb ram, so I reckon an x64 OS would be recommendable. I would like to install Windows 7 x64, but, of course, I'm going to have to do a fresh install. This might involve many problems, like finding the right drivers, installing everything anew etc. So I was wondering, since I've never used a x64 bits OS, do you really notice a significant difference? I know you are going to need x64 software, such as the x64 flavour of iTunes, Office etc. What would you recommend, fresh install with x64 or lack it? Cheers.
if you want to use you 4gb then you should install x64, now it's only using a bit more than 3gb. And windows x64 can run almost all x86 programm's, only for anti virus, tweaking tools etc. you should use x64 versions
Fresh install, of course. You will get all the necessary drivers with the install and updates. For me it is different to use x64, much better.
I have used 64 and 32 and have not seen a significant performance difference. However, I don't run large apps either. Be sure that you research audio, graphics and external devices drivers and have the x64 versions before you start. That is the biggest problem.
So I've read. I'm afraid I turn up with a system without internet due to a wireless x64 driver. I should definitely look into that!
Unless you have some stone-age computer, you don't really have anything to worry about. Let me give you my example. I have a Dell XPS 1530 Laptop, I formatted my whole drive and installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 64-bit. Windows found all the drivers automatically for me save for one (I forgot what it was... maybe audio). That one driver I had to search for it on the net and install it manually. Now, as for the programs, most software designed for 32-bit work for 64-bit also. As for the advantages of 64-bit over 32-bit, that's what google is for.
I've used both 64bit and 32 bit Windows 7 and there really is no performance difference. However, the main advantage is being able to install more than 4Gb of RAM which can help some memory hungry applications.
Well, I've been using 64-bit system since XP x64... and quite frankly, I think the 64-bit system will make a huge difference if you use 64-bit optimised programs and hardware. More than 50% of the programs we use even of a 64-bit system are not pure 64-bit applications... most of the time, at the most the core drivers are 64-bit but the applications themselves are still 32-bit...But, yeah, when the day of pure 64-bit programs & hardware arrives.... we will see a nice performace boost...
The main advantage of x64 is that you can use more than 4Gb of RAM, and with 64-bit apps, you can feel the difference. Main disadvantage is that you need 64-bit drivers to run your devices, which generally seemed suckier than 32-bit ones. This is changing though. Another hiccup may be that you can't run very old apps/games that are 8-bit or 16-bit in a 64-bit OS. This might be solved by emulation, but it's not a guarantee.
I found windows runs faster using the 32 bit version than 64 bit version with 4 gb ram. Generally there were less hiccups and random pauses. However if you have 6 gb or more ram, 64 bit will take advantage of the additional ram and should run faster.
Cheers! I think I'll stick to x86, since I have 4Gb RAM and don't use all of it. I'll just wait till Windows 8 and install the x128 version
Why not be able to use all of your 4GB? Sorry don't mean to argue but I've run the x86 version for about a month since RTM and x64 thereafter and I have seen a slight improvement in performance and a very noticeable improvement in stability. Windows Explorer crashes less than half as often in x64 than x86. Just be sure that your chipset can recognize more than 3 GB of RAM. The Intel 945GM, for example, cannot, which is a bummer on my mom's computer.
I'll consider it. I believe my AMD X2 Dual Core QL-64 can recognize more, somewhere I saw my system showing the whole of the 4Gigs of RAM, but of course, a x86 can't use all of it. Overall, my x86 is very stable, apart from some annoying Wireless adapter problems, but that is merely a general 7/Vista case I found out.
64 bit applications are coming, MS office 2010 will be released in x86 and in x64. In addition windows x64 is more secure than x86.
Windows x64 today is really not that much more secure anymore because a lot of ppl use it. Back when XP x64 was released it was like that but it is not like that anymore. The reason why XP x64 was so secure was because nobody used it so no hacker cared about it because it was not important. Microsoft changed that though when they first released Vista x64. As for my personal experience. I noticed that my pc ran better on x32 then x64. I noticed that my pc was using about 10% more RAM then x32 did. I was able to get x32 windows 7 to only use roughly 550-600 MB RAM idleing but x64 windows 7 used around 800-950 MB RAM on the same exact settings and services disabled. Other then that x64 is good. It is really good if you have more then 4 GB of ram because x32 cannot see all that. Some x64 applications that are x64 seem to appear faster like Photoshop CS4. Older programs that support x64 like HL2 however seem to have a lot of crash errors in there so it is more like experimental to use X64. You also have to worry about x64 drivers on older machines. It is also a lot more difficult to share a network printer if one pc is x32 and the other is x64 so my advise is that if you have a network share use the same arcitecture on all systems so you do not have to worry about it. That is just my sence though guys.
64bit could give u some noticeable performance increase on disk access and antivirus(64iit) scanning as well as the gain of >4G memory usage, especially when using native 64bit appz, u'd see the difference would be more than twice better than what 32bit does for those memory hungry appz.
U could try a dualboot. x86 AND x64 That way you can try and get your x64 up and running, and in case of setbacks, you can allways fall back to your x86 win7 to do your research and fix possible issues, without worrying to lose the ability to go online etc... Once you have your x64 up and running, and don't need the x86 version anymore, you just remove it from the dualboot. Simple and elegant solution imho
That's not the reason. Try to find a rootkit running on x64! Google for Kernel Patch Protection (aka Patchguard).