[Starman01]

Hey there,

short Question :

The gaming industry has finally forced to forfeit my beloved XP and Install W7 on my machine However, I'm unsure which one I should use. Does 64 makes any sense for me, or do I run better with 32 ?

Important Info about my rig :

Intel Core Duo E8400 @3,0 GhZ
Ati Radeon HD 5670 with 1GB
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
4 GB Ram
A few Sata disks and one external USB harddisk.

What would you Computer Pro's out there recommend ?

Cheers
Starman

[FreeSpaceFreak]

From a moderately reliable source, I heard that with 4GB and above RAM you should use 64-bit, else your computer's capacities won't be used to the fullest.

[Starman01]

Yes, I heard that also before, but I thought that was just a limitation from XP. Is also the bit system blocking ? Generally it's clear that 64 bit is faster, but from the few things i heard in the last few years (and I do not spent much time with such technical stuff), i had the impression there are a lot of driver problems with 64 bit ? I hope not....

[Ghostavo]

Unless you use lots of legacy applications and/or drivers (ie. they use 16 bit code), you should use 64 bit.

The impression you had about driver issues was when the transition to 64 bits was made and most devices manufacturers either didn't have drivers available, or the ones they had, due to less testing, were rather buggy. That time has long since passed.

[The E]

There were, back in the days of the abomination known as XP x64. Not anymore.

And yes, if you have 4 GB of RAM installed, using x64 is the only sane option.

[Starman01]

OK, thank you guys. Then I will install the 64 bit now. Had to backup a lot of stuff first, I;m curious what I miss this time in the backup

[Nuke]

From a moderately reliable source, I heard that with 4GB and above RAM you should use 64-bit, else your computer's capacities won't be used to the fullest.

yea if you have more than 4gb of ram (including video memory and other devices that have memory), you need 64 bit. since you have 4+1 gigs, you should use 64 bit.

even if you didnt have the ram installing 64 bit also gives you the capability of running the 64 bit instructions supported by the cpu. installing 32 bit windows pretty much disables all 64 bit features of the cpu.

the only case id even recommend using 32 bit is if you dont have 64 bit drivers available for all your hardware.

[FlamingCobra]

What if you have lots of old-ass games and lots of new games? Should you have 32 bit or 64bit? Especially when it comes to games as far back as 95 or even DOS.

[T-LoW]

There you have two options:

Don't throw your old rig away so you can use it as a retro-station for older games.

Or you emulate the old games (e.g. with DOS-Box).

[The E]

For games that old, use DosBox, or create a virtual machine emulating their favourite habitats. It's better that way. Note that DOS programs, and most of the really old games are incredibly sloppy when it comes to respecting Microsofts' Standards and Practices, which more often than not will lead to them crashing immediately when they hit something that doesn't react the way they expect the OS to react.

[FlamingCobra]

Tried dosbox. Some games it is really choppy. Sometimes the colors are sporadically weird. The sound is always popping.

[Nuke]

i keep freedos on a flash card plugged into one of my pata controllers,when i want to run dos, i boot to it. i can run most dos games on it. of course dosbox is the way to go. actually i have more trouble running earlier windows games than dos games. especially games under dx5 and 6. nostalgia rig is really the only way to go. for those almost no modern version of windows will work, you need a win98 machine for those and whatever version of direct x was distributed with the game. it ****ing sucks.

installing a 32bit version of windows on your primary rig is essentially crippling the system so that you can maybe run a few old games. you can get old computers anywhere for free, and i play my old games on these throwaway machines.

[Starman01]

Dosbox is great, I also use it. At the beginning it wasn't so great, because it goes nearly 100% on CPU, but with nowadays machines, it's not a problem anymore. I'm curious how I will get the stuff running in W7.

I'm back btw. I'm deeply impressed, how smooth the installation went. I just had to say my timezone, and the rest went well, fast and without any question. I starting to like it

[Klaustrophobia]

i'll be joining you shortly, i just scored win 7 pro 64 bit off ebay for $16.50.  word.


actually, i won't be.  i refuse to pay triple for a hard drive.  i can wait until prices go back down.

[Nuke]

is there like a hard drive shortage or something?

[Angelus]

i did get Win 7 64 myself, but it turned out, my rig is so old, it wouldn't run on it. So i'm stuck with 7 32 which isn't that bad.

And i heard, that 4GB Ram on Win 7 (64) is the (sane) minimum to run the system / games aso.

[pecenipicek]

i did get Win 7 64 myself, but it turned out, my rig is so old, it wouldn't run on it. So i'm stuck with 7 32 which isn't that bad.

And i heard, that 4GB Ram on Win 7 (64) is the (sane) minimum to run the system / games aso.

its not the minimum. its the reccomended. my gf's pc has been running 7 x64 with 3 gigs of ram for over a year now without any significant, discernible performance impact.


(considering how little she multitasks, it tends to overall run 2 times faster than mine, but oh well )

[Klaustrophobia]

is there like a hard drive shortage or something?

flooding in thailand shut down some of the major manufacturer's plants there.  reports vary, but it looks like these manufacturers lost around 15-30% of their capacity, not clear on for how long.  and in true corperate fasion, this is used as an excuse to gouge prices to a rediculous level on existing drive stocks. 

if you need a drive, you'd better look NOW.  i just found and bought one at Best Buy, who has yet to mark up their prices.  I'm betting other physical retailers will be the same.  Won't have the selection of an online retailer and the prices are higher than what you used to get online, but by far beats paying the inflated current prices.

[Klaustrophobia]

i'll be joining you shortly, i just scored win 7 pro 64 bit off ebay for $16.50.  word.

well, figures it was too good to be true.  seller cancelled my order and says they were hacked, real price is 136.50. 

as far as versions go, i'm trying to figure out if i need professional or not.  i can still have a home network without the domain thing right?  and what exactly is 'xp mode'?  is there really no backward compatibility on home premium? 

[KyadCK]

Most people have no need for a domain, home premium will be fine.

XP mode is basicly a windows VM of, you guessed it, XP. You can get about the same effect by installing XP in virtual box or some other VM program.

The only backward compatability problem I have seen is StarCraft 1 doesn't want to behave in Win7, and of cource, XP drivers dont work in 7.