when should you use 64 bit....?

[Dark Atheist]

is it a case of 64 bit is only advisable when you have more than 4gb in a pc, i know you can use 64 bit with less than 4gb ram in there, but i am deciding if its worth using a 32 bit server or 64 bit server.

If using 64 bit with less than 4gb ins't worth it i know which option to take 🙂

 

[LordOfLA]

not much point if you have 2GB or less. 2GB or more though use 64bit.

 

[zeke_mo]

If you are planning on playing games, I noticed you said server, I would hit 64bit for games like crysis etc 🙂

 

[Dark Atheist]

not much point if you have 2GB or less. 2GB or more though use 64bit.

3gb in that box 🙂 - so looks like 64 bit server it is, thanks all

 

[kcnychief]

I believe 64-bit is more secure too due to the kernel differences.

 

[Dark Atheist]

yes bsd kernel is rather different from windows isnt it 😛

 

[MikeRS]

"32-bit vs 64-bit" has far more to it than simple RAM capacity.

Really, these days the question is probably rather "Why shouldn't I use a 64-bit operating system?" instead of the other way around. The way I see it, if the majority of your applications do not have 64-bit versions available, then there's no point really (btw PAE exists to allow up to 64GB of RAM in 32-bit mode); or if your applications are unoptimized enough that 64-bit versions consume more RAM than the 32-bit versions (eg, they use plain int instead of something more specific like int32).

 

[David_L6]

Tip for the Distributed Computing guys....... 😉

64 bit gives a slight boost in World Community Grid output. I have two pairs of almost identical crunchers running WCG. A QX6700 @ 3.6GHz and a Q6700 @ 3.6GHz plus two Q6600's @ 3.4GHz. The 6700's are running 32 bit XP Pro and 64 bit Vista Ultimate. The 6600's are running 32 bit Vista Business and 64 bit Server 2008. The two with 64 bit operating systems consistently score ~5% more per day than their 32 bit counterparts.

I don't know for sure but 64 bit may give slight a boost to F@H output too.

 

[Basekid]

Personally I wouldn't go to 4Gb yet. Sure it gives you more ram, but more than 3 atm is not really needed anyway. The major problem with it is though, are all the 64 bit drivers you need, and there aren't that many of them....

 

[Geffy]

The state of 64bit drivers is quite good these days, and because they are often newer there should be less legacy odds and sods stuck within them.

I've got 4GB of RAM in my laptop, but then it was a choice of 2GB or 4GB as I've only got two DIMM slots which makes 3GB a rather poor choice if you want to use interleaved RAM.

 

[Lauzyguy]

Mainly people choose 32 bit over 64 bit because of software compatibility. A lot of software is not 64 bit compatible yet right now.

 

[zaroba]

oh please. TONS of stuff is compatible with 64bit.
i've only used 64bit for all PCs in my house since 64bit xp came out and the only thing that i have found to not work is Apple's Quicktime player since they refuse to make it compatible with 64bit windows systems.

 

[melon]

Personally, I went 64-bit, so I could utilize all my RAM (8 GB), and it comes in quite handy with a lot of the media production work I do. I have an XP 32-bit dual boot, however, because not all of my software plays nice with it.

 

[Omnibus]

I've noticed that the 64-bit is catching up with the 32-bit now, in terms of how much support there is from the software companies. It certaintly is the option to go in my opinion if money isn't your problem. Speed wise, I've seen it to be noticeably better, as I do a lot of rendering, calculations, etc. Although RAM isn't everything, nowadays, you are advised to go over 2GB (unless Word is all that you'll be using), so why not 64?

 

[vern]

I use 64bit because I have 8GB of RAM and with Linux, there really is nothing I can't use so far. I am content with XP 32bit and it's ~3GB RAM it detects when I want to play a game. My Vista install however is also 64bit and I haven't had any real problems software or hardware wise.