Vista 32 vs 64 bit

The last time I had to ask this question was over a year ago when I built my last desktop and the answer back then was not much software took advantage of 64 bit and it would suck trying to find 64 bit drivers. Since my XPS on order has 4GB of memory I was considering going with 64 so I could make use of all of it. At the current time what are the pitfalls and advantages in general and specifically with the XPS? Am I really going to notice much speed difference? Are all the drivers for everything on the XPS readily available in 64 bit? What do I need to do to get a 64 bit copy of Home Premium. I remember reading somewhere that Microsoft would send you one with a shipping charge. Is it that hard to do a fresh install and not screw up my Media Center, ACHI or anything else? What about software compatibility? Does most software run with it or am I going to find a lot of stuff that won't i.e. games, Photoshop CS3, Sony Vegas 8 Pro, Nero, etc.? Is it worth all the trouble? I don't want to bother with it if I am only going to gain that extra .5mb+ of RAM and 2% increase in everyday performance.

 

XPS : all drivers are available on x64... but u might need to hunt a bit for drivers like fingerprint reader, but they're available on this forum

x64 copy of home premium... microsoft site, pay a little shipping.... ask a friend for his retail x64 media, use ur CDKey under laptop

if u want x64, i used about 10 hours making everything right(including installation time)...

dont bother with it now.... come back 5 years later and check back if x64 is useful

 

64 bit - you can use up all 4GB of your RAM
32 bit - you can use up only 3GB of your RAM

 

Yeah I mentioned that is one of the reasons why I was considering it.

 

i read somewhere that there was a fix for that 3 gb of ram usage only as opposed to 4 gb. also heard sp1 fixed it, or it mightve just fixed all the slow stuff in vista. i just got my new xps m1530 yesterday w/ 4 gb ram and its 32bit home premium, blazin fast although i have yet to install all my programs

 

The crap part about Vista 64 is that you have to have signed drivers for all of your products. I have a Sabrent USB -> Serial cable that I use to connect to Cisco console cables. Sabrent does not make Microsoft signed drivers for anything they make, because of the outrageous prices charged to certify them, so I had to revert back to Vista 32-bit.

Vista 32-bit will use 3.5 gigs of the 4gb of ram installed. This should be plenty anyway due to the fact that Vista 32/64 handles memory much differently than XP did and is therefore much more efficient at utilizing it.

 

The fix is for displaying a correct RAM installed under Vista 32.

 

I see you have 64 on both of yours. Was it worth it? Was it a PITA? Do you notice a difference? Do you run into much incompatibility problems?

 

I now run exclusively Vista x64 as my main OS on both of laptop and desktop. I had no problems finding drivers at all. On this site I was able to find drivers for everything via search at the top corner. Video, sound, fingerprint reader, webcam, touchpad, lojack, remote, bluetooth, wireless, media buttons...you name it and it works in Vista x64. All my software runs in it great. I also find Vista x64 to be more stable then Vista x86. If your gonna run a 64-bit OS, then Vista x64 is it...the driver and software support for Vista x64 is much better then for XP x64. I easily gained 500MB+ of usable ram going to Vista x64 (before: 3500mb or so, now: all 4096MB)

 

There is an unfair stigma surrounding 64-bit OS's, but the reality is performance and compatibility are pretty much identical to the 32-bit OS's. I'm dual-booting both Vista 64-bit and XP 64-bit, and both are excellent OS's. Driver support can be a problem in XP 64-bit (the ONLY problem, I add), but no such problem exists for Vista 64-bit.

 

You do gain small performance boosts hear and there in 64-bit that cause it to be a bit more functional. If you use 64-bit software, you can gain up to 2x the performance. I see this in encoding all the time. Here's an article in regards to the performance boost: http://www.start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2216&Itemid=126

The signed drivers are also a problem, but I have used readydriver readydriver

 

On pre-Montevina laptops, the end user experience with x86 vs x64 will be virtually identical, since you max out the board at 4 GB of RAM. Finding drivers for x64 is in general, not the nightmare that some people make it out to be, and backwards compatibility with x86 programs (not drivers) is fairly universal.

I went with x64 because it's a bit more secure (x64 rootkits, anyone?).

 

I feel like an idiot, but I can't find the dics on Microsoft's site. When I google, I find it available for about $16, but it isn't really a Microsoft page and they ask for a product key. Sounds phishy! I bought my m1330 with Home Premium but for $20 I got the Vista Ultimate 32 bit disc from my university. I have no idea if I'm even eligible to convert this to 64 bit. Anyone have a clue? For what it's worth, the code isn't OEM.

 

Here is the Microsoft Page. They want your product key but you should be able to trust them.

https://om.one.microsoft.com/opa/Validation.aspx?StoreID=37eb3052-7e03-4ce7-bee0-7f8e478f92c9&LocaleCode=en-us&JavaScriptOn=yes

Here is the part number if you want to try and find it from another vendor.
4CN-00788

 

I'm wondering where these " 2x performance" are supposed to come from.

I'm very sure, you currently do not see any performance gain in encoding. All important encoders such as DivX, XviD and x264 contain hand optimized assembler code running all performance critical and time consuming tasks in the 128 Bit SSE units, which are available on 32 Bit plattforms as well.

On Windows there isn't even a 64-Bit build of x264. Though a slightly outdated benchmark x264 runs slower on 64-Bit OS:
http://www.techarp.com/x264_Benchmark/sd/results-trends.htm

On Linux there's a 64-Bit build of x264 and it indeed performs faster. Most of the performance gain seems to be due to the optimized calling conventions on 64-Bit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_calling_conventions#AMD64_ABI_convention

I haven't seen any encoder that contains optimizations for the 8 additional SSE registers available on x86_64.

The performance benchmark you posted is a low level benchmark. It doesn't mean anything for real life applications.

 

In general the 8 extra general registers in 64bit mode will make a difference, a substantial one as 32bit x86 is rather register starved due to register use of the commands, leaving very little for data (review the age old architecture comparison between x86-32 and Sun Sparc). Outside of hand optimized assembly, it all comes down to the capabilities of the compilers. Even simple preloading data into excess registers can have amazing performance boost as compared to fetching data from cache.

So overall x86-64 is a go. Whether it's 2x, 1.5x or something else, who knows.

 

As long as you run 32 Bit Code in Compatibility Mode on x86-64 there is no use of any of the additional red registers:



This applies to DivX, XviD and x264 Encoders and is actually the whole point of my posting.

If you're unlucky, you'll even end up with less performance due to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOW64
and I've given a link derived from practical measurements where 64-Bit performance (on XP-64 and therefore slightly outdate) was lower.

What you would actually have to do is come up with a 64 Bit build to make any use of those registers. And as I said: All encoders do the hard work in the 128 Bit SSE registers. Therefore you won't gain a lot unless you touch the hardwired assembly code.

The only 64-Bit build I know of is the 64-Bit build of FFDShow, which actually is a Decoder not an encoder:
http://www.codecguide.com/klcp_64bit.htm

But what's that? Read the release notes:

But even if ffdshow would perform better in 64 Bit: It hardly plays a role in practise. All other 32-Bit Codecs (DivX, CoreAVC, ...) and including the GPU assisted DXVA enabled Codecs (Cyberlink, ArcSoft, ...) are much faster and would beat any 64 Bit ffdshow. CoreAVC announced a 64-Bit version, but don't expect tooo much regarding speed.

Here's another 32 vs 64 Bit shootout regarding encoders, but most applications are 32 Bit (is Microsoft Media Encoder 9 in 64 Bit?):
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2280814,00.asp

I named already the most prominent compiler optimization, which is the x86-64 calling convention, which will automatically use any of your additional registers. However as long as you don't have the source code ... or no 64 bit build is available ... your nice little registers go out the window.

Let me rephrase:

. x86-64 is a go for Linux since userland and system code is both available in 64-Bit
. x86-64 on Windows is a go if you want to use >4GB (e.g. taken by virtual machines) now. For everything else there is no performance gain whatsoever.