win 7 x64 on 3gb memory limit?

If you have a 64bit processor, then you will usually get a slight performance increase by using a 64bit OS with your 64bit processor. It could be just me, but in my experiences 64bit seems more stable to me. However, if you only have 3 gigs of ram, the question becomes a question of personal preference, as well as a question of driver support. It's easier to find 32bit drivers, but unless your using rather old hardware, pretty much everything has 32 & 64bit drivers these days. Until you go above 3.5 gigs or 4.0 gigs, (some systems differ on the exact amount) you can use 32bit or 64bit. For me, with my 16 gigs of ram, 64bit is a necessity! Your results may vary, and the best thing you can do is load the 32bit and 64bit installers for win7 on a flash drive, since flash drives are pretty much the fastest way to install, and try both and see which one works best to your liking & system configuration. I am guessing with 3 gigs of ram, you are using one of the intel I7 boards/chip?

 

Where do you live those days ? under a rock ? All my drivers are 64 bit support (even when vista 64 bit got released).

 

So because you have no problem, no one else should?

x64 drivers are notorious for being unsupported, late, or unstable.

 

I don't agree with that.

 

No, there is no RAM benefit to using x64 over x86 in your case. personal preference only.

I have 8GB and 70% of my RAM is unused, so I create a 5GB RAMDISK with Farstone virtual drive and do video editing from RAM (only have 4GB in my I-RAM, cannot fit 4.3 GB MKV on it)

 

No need to be snide. All my drivers are x64 bit too. Some people have newer systems but may continue to use older hardware. I know of people with brand new systems who have been transferring a old Hauppauge TV tuner & FM radio card from new system to system since 1997. Care to find x64bit drivers for something like that, which has been out of production for over a decade, but is still fully functional?

 

64bit systems run faster then 32bit systems but this will only benefit if your applications are also 64bit

32bit applications actually run slower on 64bit systems so unless you are using 64bit applications or have 4gb or more RAM..stick to 32bit

 

Another good point, thanks for mentioning that! Although, it is rare that you see the difference, I have seen it myself on a few occasions. We've got decent machines so we won't notice it that much!

 

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One of the advantages of 64 bit systems even with 3gb of memory is the upper memory block restriction is removed. With 32 bit programs they can't address any memory spaces above 3gb. Most programs don't have any issues with this because they don't use that much memory. I remember an issue with Supreme Commander which caused it to crash because of that issue.

Drivers really aren't that much of an issue anymore most hardware has 64-bit drivers now, like I said though MOST hardware has 64-bit drivers so you might run into a problem, but if you do your due diligence then it is a non issue.

People talk about performance like you are going to gain or lose 10-15% or more by going or not going 64-bit. The difference is negligible most of the time.

Another advantage of 64-bit is that you will be able to upgrade to Windows 8 (theoretically if it is 64-bit only) where you can't do a cross architecture upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit.

Program wise I have not had any programs that just refuse to run on 64-bit systems.

So in the end it is up to you but I have moved all my systems over to 64-bit and have not had any need in 2.5-3 years for a 32-bit system, workstation or server.

 

Any recent hardware or programmes that don't support x64 is garbage, simple as that. I wouldn't be running a recent programme that doesn't support x64, as it shows extremely poor customer support. As far as hardware goes, I believe to get WHQL these days companies have to support both 32 bit and x64, regardless of how good their 32 bit driver may be.

In terms of using a 12 year old tv tuner, its not as if they're overly expensive these days, it would be a good time to upgrade to a digital tuner Not to mention older tuners would look terrible on a big screen anyway, analogue tuners only came good once the 10 bit processors came out around 2002/2003.

In terms of 64 and 32 bit, just stick with x64, Microsoft should never have made a 32 bit version of Windows 7. Systems that can't run x64 should stick with XP.

 

On even 6GB of RAM after a week of running Win7 64bit and with all messengers running Windows 7 almost barely reaches 2GB of RAM usage. This is to give you a general idea as to how far the OS and a few programs will stretch out if given the chance.

Normally, Windows refrains itself from using more than 50% memory on idle. In other words, for 4GB or more of RAM, Windows stops using more memory, capping out at 2GB. From this point on there is next to no pagefile swapping activity whatsoever, so no more performance can be gained out of adding RAM.

 

Does your bios see all of your ram?

 

When I said support x64 earlier, I meant programmes that can run on x64, not specifically being x64 themselves. In the very rare case, you may have to set compatibility mode. Its unlikely that you come across that issue, the only game I had problems with is the old 'Brothers in Arms - Road to Hill 30'... which you can play simply by download the exe from Brothers in Arms - Earned in Blood, copying it to that folder and running it instead! This problem is due to a 'security' driver that had only 32 bit support, but thats not really a relevant point

 

yeah all MS AMD64 based OS support WOW64 which is 32-bit emulation on 64-bit systems. However any IA64 systems DO NOT support WOW64, but then again they don't make Ithanium processors for desktops

 

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am using win7 64bit with 4gb ram and it running just brill no probs found yet
seams a lot faster and it dont use loads of mem like vista did ....