My 64bit works as well if not better than my 32bit. I gave my mother and father 64bit versions of windows, and it's safe to say they can't tell the difference. IF you believe that going 64bit will give you a gaming boost, then i say go for it...Nothing wrong with 64bit at all these days.

Yes but not for the reasons your thinking. If your looking for a huge performance boost out of using x64, then you are probably not going to find it, aside from it being able to use 4gigs of ram, as opposed to however much it is using right now.

x64 bit operating systems are not "faster" than 32 bit operating systems until you start using all of those 64 bits.

wait whut? yeah alot of people get confused by this, myself included before i checked it out. Using large numbers 64 bit OS's are faster, because they are 64 bits as opposed to 32, but before you get to the point where you need 64 bits (as in video encoding, encryption, etc) you won't really see a performance increase.

That said, your 4 gigs will work now which could help, and all the driver complaints people say are usually because of XP x64, which was ..... a bastard child of windows to say the least.

from what i have heard, x64 Vista is supported very well, some say even better than 32.

XP64 (XP Professional X64 Edition) was not intended for general use, but more for CG/VFX in the motion picture and television production industry. The advantage of 64 bit, is when using 64 bit applications: all that RAM is available to the application, instead of 2 to 3GB.

quadcore
4 gig ram
8800 gt

been running windows 64bit for months and months now, runs great and I play all those games you mentioned above. Crysis runs on ultra high great, better then on 32bit.

I've only encountered one problem with 64bit so far and that was a application that overlays information from Teamspeak on games which was some dodgy 3rd party program.

Had a issue with drivers for my wirless when I first installed 64bit now I think about it. Other then those two everythings been fine. There seems to be a misconception that 32 bit apps wont run on a 64bit system. They run fine and install fine.

You basically get two install directories one called program files (86) for 32bit apps and Program files for 62 bit apps. In truth I dont think it matter what directory you put them in I've varied them. If in doubt, stick to what you know - put 64bit apps in the program files directory, and everything else in the program files (x86) dir.

all in all 64bit has been far superior.

Have been running Vista 64 for about 6 months.

I still find there are troubles with driver support. 3 devices: bluetooth dongle, wifi dongle, TV tuner card, two bought this year, the TV card a few years old. The manufacturers did not provide 64-bit support, but I was able to find alternative drivers from other manufacturers who used the same chipset.

You won't see much in the way performance benefits yet, optimisation still needs to be done.

You can address up to 3GB on a 32-bit machine (don't know why the odd number). You probably wouldn't see benefit from more than this, but 3GB would be a strange amount to install. I think you will see benefit from having more than 2GB now.

System has been very reliable though.

Sounds good, but im still an avid vista hater. In fact i hate everthing about microsoft and windows.

Microsoft is requiring 64 bit support for their logo program, so compatibility is becoming less of a problem. However, it still remains that some devices don't have drivers - so look for either Microsoft's certification logo, or even better it should specifically say it supports 64 bits.

The biggest, most obvious benefit is access to more memory. If you're pushing the limits of your memory, yes 64 bit will help.

There are some additional benefits, such as access to extra registers, that help, but nothing quire as drastic as the increased amount if memory.



You will benefit from more memory right away - 32 bit Windows only sees about 3.5 gigs of it, so you'll get an extra half gig just by going to 64 bit. If your motherboard supports it, you may be able to put more memory on it. My own motherboard supports up to 8 gigs, and I currently have 6 gigs on it.

The biggest benefit of going 64 bit is breaking the 4 GB barrier. Windows (in fact any OS) cannot use more than 4 gigs with 32 bits, and has to be 64 bits to use more than 4 gigs.

I've had three 64 bit machines for awhile.

First off, ALOT erasier to run games using a nvidia card then ati.

I only have problems with one important game: max payne. I can run games as far back as 1995 (diablo 1)

@JWest08:
Since you are running a laptop, I wouldn't bother. Running Vista 64-bit would be a great choice for a gaming system using at least a 8800GT/HD3870. Although if your laptop manufacturer has drivers and applications support for your model in 64-bit, I'd say go for it. Otherwise there's a very good chance your manufacturer doesn't have them so you would be stuck. 32-bit is great for a laptop, especially when you intend to keep it for a while.

If you ever build a gaming system within the next year or two, don't go with anything other than 64-bit.

He's running 4 gigs of memory. He'd benefit from it, laptop or not. The specs look like they're 64 bit compatible (Core 2 Duo is a 64 bit chip), although being a laptop I'd be a bit worried about drivers for devices specialized for laptops.



I would agree. Many people think it's just the extra memory, but a deep dive into microchip architecture, you'll find it's a lot more than that. Ars Technica has a section about the internal architecture of CPUs that is a good read - a lot of the older articles especially explain how CPUs work in detail.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu.ars



Drivers need 64 bit support since that's how Windows works - but applications do not need 64 bit support unless the application itself is going to push the 4 gig barrier single handedly, which is usually not the case. Both XP and Vista fully support 32 bit applications.

There are rare exceptions in security applications such as firewalls and antivirus that need 64 bit, but they are available.

Games and regular applications, however, do not need to be 64 bit. The support for 32 bit applications is practically perfect; I have yet to come across a regular application that does not work in 64 bit Windows.



Agreed. Many games are already pushing the 4 gig barrier, and they want to go further. GalCiv 2 itself pushes the barrier on the largest maps, and the company has repeatedly switched methods to use less memory with their textures.

Deinumite has the right idea (reply #4).

OP, you wont see a huge performance boost in games swopping to an x64 version of Windows, unless that game is specifically designed to take advantage of a 64bit system. I'm not aware of any games that do.

I don't that you'll notice any difference in performance being able to use 4gigs of RAM rather than 3.5gigs, at least not with current games. Maybe a few years down the line, you would.

Driver support for Vista x64 is actually pretty good now, I don't belive that it's really an issue any more unless you're running older bits of hardware (which you won't if you're building a new system).

Go with 64bit unless it'll cost you more.

If the game is big enough that it's filling the 32 bit addressing space, then it's big enough to start knocking other applications and even the OS itself back to the page file. The more you prevent sending stuff to the page file, the faster your system will be.



While 64 bit addressing does indeed increase the size of the pointers, I doubt it's going to be a whole half a gig worth of bloat.