64 bit or 32 bit?

[Wombat]

I'm contemplating being an early adopter of Windows 7, in contrast to my usual habit of adopting an OS 5 years after everybody else.  My motivation?  Well its Vista, innit.  Quite unremittingly crap.  I am going to upgrade my PC's guts, maybe a Intel Quad core Q8400 as here:  Motherboard Bundle Intel Quad Core Q8400 2048MB 800Mhz DDR2 Heatsink And Fan P43 Motherboard
so, when I go brave/stupid and get Windows 7, do I go for the 32 bit version, or the 64 bit version?  Yes, I'd like to be able to use more RAM, it seems to help generally, specifically when opening several large graphics files, and at other times, but is the difficulty of getting specific 64 bit drivers for peripherals a big problem?  Should by first step be to check for 64 bit drivers for the peripherals I want to keep?  I had to buy a new TV card to replace the 9 month old one, thanks to Vista, I really don't want to replace it again...  I do have a fairly old HP Deskjet 1220c printer, which has been rendered far less useful thanks to Vista removing most of its abilities, but my Canon ip4500 printer hopefully has 64 bit drivers (i'll check, though!)   Not looking forward to another new set of drivers for my digital voice recorder, though...

What's the verdict, is 64bit worth the extra hassle?

[rusky]

We have a PC running XP 64bit. The guy who bought it thought it would be good to try it out & not a lot works on it. Firefox for one!

Personally. I don't think I would bother.

[Lucky]

For most PC users, the only real advantage of a 64-bit OS is the removal of the 4GB memory restriction.

I've been using 64-bit Linux for some time, and for 99.99% of what I do, there is no measurable performance difference between 32 or 64 bits.

If you need more than 4GB of RAM, or if you write programs that do lots of integer maths on very large numbers, go 64-bit. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother.

[Greenbank]

It's also a faff having to install the 32-bit versions of many commonly used libraries for 32-bit applications that link against them.

[valkyrie]

We have a PC running XP 64bit. The guy who bought it thought it would be good to try it out & not a lot works on it. Firefox for one!

Personally. I don't think I would bother.

I run Vista 64-bit on my PC and last night I installed Firefox 3.5 - it works fine  I think 64-bit drivers are pretty widely available for most things now.

OTOH, most of my experience with Vista has been terrible, wished I'd got XP on my new PC. I may also be an early adopter of Windows 7, even though it sucks big time to be paying someone to fix a problem they made.

[BrianI]

64bit Debian 5.02 is rather nice.  All my hardware works, even my 8 year old tv tuner card!   

[Tewdric]

I've been running Windows 7 for a bit now on a quad core 8 gig system.  Nothing that I've tried hasn't worked, 64 bit drivers seem to be available for most common periphs now, and Vista 64 bt drivers seem to be happy on Windows 7.  Photoshop flies!  It's been no drama at all, in stark contrast to what I was expecting.

[rae]

Unless you have a real need for 64 bit (> 4 GB application limit), and the software to use it, don't bother, especially in Wintel land - 64 bit isn't really there yet.   64-bit has been working for a while on Linux, and it is fine, but I'd second the comments about there being no material difference in performance.  Indeed, I think that 64 bit is meant to be slightly slower overall.

[andym]

The CPUs on most modern PC are all fully 64-bit (have been for some time).  A typical PC probably ships with RAM fairly close to the (approx) 3.3Gb limit for 32bit now, so if spending £££ now on an OS which you want to last 4-5 years, I'd be going for 64bit.  Or I'd be running the current 32bit in to the ground.  I would not be buying a replacement 32bit upgrade, unless it was essential for critical support for some time.

OSX, Solaris, VMS are all 64bit, and Linux there's a choice, but no financial penalty to try both.

[Greenbank]

A typical PC probably ships with RAM fairly close to the (approx) 3.3Gb limit for 32bit now

Most 32bit PCs ship with 3GB of RAM for that very reason.

(For those that think the above "3.3GB limit" might be a typo, it's not. With Windows, most of the memory between 3GB and 4GB is cordoned off for use by drivers and other guff. This all harks back to the original 640KB of base memory with everything else added via the horrible extended memory drivers. For example, if you've got a 512MB graphics card then that 512MB is mapped somewhere between 3GB and 4GB. If there's real memory there then it's wasted. A pair of 1GB NVidia GeForce 7950 GX2 graphics cards will reduce you to under 2GB of actual usable memory.)

[DuncanM]

You could run PAE, but it's a bit of a faff.  I currently have 3.5GB of my 4GB of RAM visible in 32 bit Vista (and all 4GB in 64 bit Ubuntu). 

[Jaded]

I believe that OSX isn't fully 64bit yet, but will be when Snow Leopard comes out. Leopard happily manages my 12GB RAM. All of it is visible.

[Wombat]

I hadn't realised till now, that W7 comes with both 32 and 64 bit versions when you buy it.  Just ordered the pro version of it (enables an "XP mode" apparently), and Whoopee, it doesn't come with Internet friggin' Explorer!   Its available from amazon for £179, or from PCworld for £89-99.  Much I am not a fan of PCworld, you can guess who I ordered it from...  there are deffo 64 bit drivers for my Canon printer, as for the rest of it, we shall see.  Luckily I already have a spare SATA hard disk...

[Wendy]

I'm running 64bit Vista here, on a new i7 920 build with 6GB of RAM.

[CommuteTooFar]

My opinion as a device driver writer is choose 64bit.  We are required to write in a more rigourous manner when we write for 32 and 64 bit.  We also have to test on both platforms. Drivers that are 64bit are mostly using the modern interfaces so everything works a little better. We must sign our drivers on 64bit taking responsibilty for our work.

On the other hand running 64bit can be a little slower running many applications.  When was the last time a tiny change in speed was an issue? Some applications really benefit from 64bit addressing.