pros and cons of 64bit over 32bit????

paulcos

would like to hear from anyone with an opinion on compatibility issues also will 64 ever become widespread or the norm,
thank you

estreetb

i dont know much about either but ive been told that you need the 64bit system so you can use the full 3-4gb ram that is standard on a lot of the machines now

Alanstrainor

64bit is becoming the norm with Windows 7. Most Dell machines come with it as standard. Win 7 64 even performs better than it's 32bit equivalent.
Anyway, this forum isn't the right place for this so i'm going to move it over to the Windows Forum.

ejmaztec

It also makes more use of a 64 bit enabled cpu, as I discovered on an HP DV6599ea laptop, that previously ran on 32bit Vista Home Premium. It never reached its potential until W7 64 bit came along.

I managed to track down all of the relevant drivers and original programs without too much hassle.

On a desktop that had W7 64 bit installed, the only problem that I had, and still have, is that Creative hasn't come up with a driver for a webcam that I bought a couple of years ago. Creative seems to have been caught on the hop, and there seems to be a lot of abuse on their support forum.

Flin

Last time I checked Flash doesnt support any 64 bit browsers, so if you want to use the likes of youtube, you'll need to use a 32 bit browser. But I'm sure that after a few months, everything will be 64 bit, and 32 will be a thing of the past

paulcos

thats the big question Flin! I`ve a fairly basic grasp of comp skills and am buying a laptop so just want to get something thats not totally outdated in 3 yrs time! I`ve been reading up on it and it seems like apart from teething problems like drivers etc its the new wave but then i have a friend who`re computer wiz and he`s not so sure but seeing how the 64bit will perform plus its a whole new market i think it is.

Flin

Well now that the iPad is out, we're all going to throw our laptops, desktops, phones, mp3 players out. The iPad is all we need...All hail Steve Jobs! hahaa

Pshemko

You can use any 32bit program on the 64bit OS. There is no problem at all. On 64bit OS you can use more than 4GB of RAM and 64bit OS is more stable and flexible.

matt-dublin

ipad doesn't support flash and has no phone in it,

its an over priced, over sized i touch with 3g built in!

estreetb

Flin wrote: »

Last time I checked Flash doesnt support any 64 bit browsers, so if you want to use the likes of youtube, you'll need to use a 32 bit browser. But I'm sure that after a few months, everything will be 64 bit, and 32 will be a thing of the past

is this correct. will flash sites like youtube not work on it

Auvers

The main advantage with 64bit over 32bit, is that if data path is 64bit so that means twice as much data can be loaded per cycle.

The only other advantage of going over to 64bit is the memory addressing, i.e elminiating the 4Gb physical limiton with 32bit

Fysh

estreetb wrote: »

is this correct. will flash sites like youtube not work on it

This is the relevant article from Adobe concerning 64-bit Flash player support.

There is no native 64-bit Flash player.

However, within an installation of a 64-bit OS you can launch a 32-bit instance of your browser (with a corresponding 32-bit version of Flash player installed) and view Flash content to your heart's content.

It's not an ideal situation, but it's certainly not the deal-breaker some people seem to think.

ejmaztec

I'm using the 64 bit IE8 on W7 Ultimate and have had no problems so far with any sites, flash or whatever.

Codpeas

estreetb wrote: »

is this correct. will flash sites like youtube not work on it

The default version of IE that is used on 64-bit Win7 is the 32-bit one so you will be fine.

muggyog

In theory 64 bit is of course better than 32 but there is an issue if applications/drivers is not written to take benefit of bigger chunks of data. Good example is XP 64 bit which has a great lack of drivers also a lot of OS 10.6 apps dont run 64 bit natively. Assume Win7 will have similar problems in the early stages.

Flin

Codpeas wrote: »

The default version of IE that is used on 64-bit Win7 is the 32-bit one so you will be fine.

But the problem with doing that is that your essentially buying a ferrari, and dont have a drivers licence.

64 bit processors run much faster and more efficiently than 32 bit ones, but only if they're running 64 bit software.

Adobe need to get off their lazy butts and sort flash out. Although it may no matter, with HTML5 on the way, Flash may be redundant fairly soon

Big Lar

Flin wrote: »

But the problem with doing that is that your essentially buying a ferrari, and dont have a drivers licence.

64 bit processors run much faster and more efficiently than 32 bit ones, but only if they're running 64 bit software.

Adobe need to get off their lazy butts and sort flash out. Although it may no matter, with HTML5 on the way, Flash may be redundant fairly soon

Yes I was of the same opinion also, But most PC manufacturers are selling machines with a 64bit OS, So this Will/Should force the software developers to get the finger out.

Its an awful pity Microsoft themselves haven't a 64Bit version of Office to compliment all the versions of 64bit Win 7 that they are selling.

Capt'n Midnight

Peglegged wrote: »

The main advantage with 64bit over 32bit, is that if data path is 64bit so that means twice as much data can be loaded per cycle.

only really an issue if memory I/O is the limiting factor
most of the time you relying on cache and pipelining

The only other advantage of going over to 64bit is the memory addressing, i.e elminiating the 4Gb physical limiton with 32bit

windows 2000 32 bit versions could address more than 4GB of RAM - just isn't as neat as being able to address memory directly , but it wasn't too much more difficult than the tricks used to address more than 1MB of ram in Dos / Dosmode which still used in windows ME

Windows 2000 Advanced Server 8 GB
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server 32 GB



64 bit Windows won't use 32 bit drivers, so you have to rely on the vendors to produce them or else you won't be able to use some older hardware.

you can argue all day about how fast a 64 bit processor will run 32 bit instructions but a 32 bit processors will run 64 bit instructions at precisely 0Hz -

a 64 bit machine is more future proof but any PC you buy today will be an old clunker in a very short time

Codpeas

Big Lar wrote: »

Its an awful pity Microsoft themselves haven't a 64Bit version of Office to compliment all the versions of 64bit Win 7 that they are selling.

Office 2010 will be available in 64-bit and should be released in the next while.

Dartz

I heard 64-bit Windows is less vulnerable to being rootkitted, and to malware in general. Is this a security by obscurity, since most viruses are designed for W32, or are there more substantial differences in the guts of the thing.

Capt'n Midnight

Dartz wrote: »

I heard 64-bit Windows is less vulnerable to being rootkitted, and to malware in general. Is this a security by obscurity, since most viruses are designed for W32, or are there more substantial differences in the guts of the thing.

W32 code will run on the 64 bit cpu's so it's not obsecurity , even if it was they could just recompile pdq.

Differences in the OS, like the whole signed driver thing so harder for malware to get to ring 0 or whatever they call it , perhaps data execute protection may be better, CPU should be better too , in the past people have done sneaky stuff with the shared cache on dual cores

probe

The only benefit of 64 bit windows is that is supports more than ~4 GB of RAM. Useful for Photoshop and video editing software that supports 64 bits. Photoshop Elements doesn't support 64 bit - only Photoshop CS4.

Creating an MPEG4 video is much faster on a 64 bit machine with lots of RAM compared with a 32 bit machine, providing the software supports the platform.

I can't see any advantage with 64 bit office software or with browsing, unless perhaps you are writing a 10,000+ page book with colour pictures on every page. If you want to speed up your internet browsing experience get a low contention internet connection.

The downside of Win 64 bit is driver compatibility with your legacy stuff (eg your printer might not work with 64 bit windows because the manufacturer doesn't support it etc). In which case you will have to buy a new printer.

probe

Codpeas wrote: »

Office 2010 will be available in 64-bit and should be released in the next while.

It is already available in beta. Free download. Works until some date later in 2010.

I have it running on a 64 bit Win 7 machine. No performance improvement that I notice. Word processing and similar applications are not generally machine limited in terms of performance.

Office 2010 seems to be a "melange" some of it running in 32 bit and some in 64 bits (looking at the installation directories).

I wouldn't recommend using it in a business "production" environment - and don't delete your existing office version during the installation process. eg on one of my machines it won't print envelopes over an Ethernet connection with my printer. I have to use office 2007 to accomplish that task. The product is 99% there, and looks less graphically dysfunctional compared with previous office versions.

It is still lacking basic functionality, like previous versions - eg it can only create a document index showing page numbers. The norm for technical documents in most European countries is that each paragraph is numbered and the index refers to the paragraph number(s) - which saves the reader having to read the entire page.

Dartz

Dartz wrote: »

I heard 64-bit Windows is less vulnerable to being rootkitted, and to malware in general. Is this a security by obscurity, since most viruses are designed for W32, or are there more substantial differences in the guts of the thing.

It's mostly because of three things:

64-bit Windows requires DEP for 64-bit apps. As the kernel can only load 64-bit drivers this requirement applies to all kernel mode code.

Secondly, Microsoft implemented protection to prevent the kernel from being patched in memory, known as Kernel Patch Protection or PatchGuard.

Finally, 64-bit Vista and Windows require signed drivers. Even if a rootkit vendor got a cert, it could be revoked as soon as its intentions were discovered. This does break application compatibility though, I have a couple of programs that work fine on 64-bit XP but don't on Vista or 7 because of this requirement.

colly10

ejmaztec wrote: »

On a desktop that had W7 64 bit installed, the only problem that I had, and still have, is that Creative hasn't come up with a driver for a webcam that I bought a couple of years ago. Creative seems to have been caught on the hop, and there seems to be a lot of abuse on their support forum.

Creative always seems to be "caught on the hop", these things tend to be by choice