E1705 - 32- or 64-bit?

I'm about to upgrade my Win7 RC1 with the Windows 7 Pro RTM on my T5600 equipped E1705. Because the E1705 appears to be BIOS-limited to 3.2GB of RAM from what I've read, is there any reason to install the 64-bit version over the 32-bit? Especially considering most applications are still 32-bit by default. Don't 32-bit applications run a bit slower under a 64-bit OS since the 32-bit environment has to be emulated?

I've installed the 64-bit version (though I haven't activated it yet) to see how things work, and I've run into a couple small snags.

I8kfanGUI was a bit of a chore to get running under the 64-bit RC, but I finally managed to get it running via http://cdiefer.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=i8kfan&action=display&thread=664

Also, there seems to be a smaller video driver selection for the go 7900 GS under 64-bit Win7, which is my next task if I'm to install the 64-bit OS. Which video drivers are recommended these days? When using a 32-bit OS, I've always installed the 179.48 Geforce drivers and have used those pretty much exclusively for ages, but do any of the 18x.xx or 19x.xx drivers work well under Win7 64? Specifically, a cooler-running driver would be preferred. My three-year warranty expires in 15 days, and I'm going to be using this laptop until the GPU finally dies again. I haven't had a chance to thoroughly browse laptopvideo2go; I'm just wondering if there's a consensus on a preferred driver.

If I should just be installing the 32-bit version, is there still a 'best' driver, perhaps for performance and/or heat?

Sorry, I know I could find pretty general answers to both of these questions via a 10-15 minutes with Google, but just hoping for a bit more specific advice. I'm a bit constrained with time these days, I'm afraid. I'd greatly appreciate any advisement.

 

Unless you are specifically using applications that are written for 64bit, you'd be fine staying with 32bit. 32bit apps don't generally run slower under 64bit, but you might have compatibility issues as you've already discovered, with some programs that don't have signed drivers available.

 

Thanks for the response. I brought up the discussion in another forum's thread on a netbook I just purchased. In that thread, despite that this netbook has less than 4GB RAM, everyone was saying that the 64-bit 'felt' faster. That's where my confusion stemmed from.

Quoting some of those posts, apparently the Athalon in that computer runs faster under 64-bit Win7 because "the athlons had extra registers for 64bit mode. So it will be faster in general". So it's a special circumstance. More at http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=1884&p=2

So, due to the problems with signed drivers and the fact that 32-bit applications will be running in an emulation layer, I think I'll be installing x86 on the E1705. The only advantage, it seems, would be that the general OS experience might be slightly faster in a x64 environment. Eh, oh well. The difference would probably be negligible for my uses. The aforementioned Athalon sees a 10-20% performance gain running 32-bit apps in the 64-bit environment, but it doesn't look like the T5600 would see similar gains.

 

Absolutely, the OS might be marginally faster, but 64bit doesn't really come into it's own until you are using programs specifically written for 64bit. However, it doesn't sound like it's anything you've missed out on before.

I go 64bit because of the SQL server work I do. If it wasn't for that, I'd probably not bother; getting my HSDPA expresscard modem to work under 64bit (i.e. with signed drivers) was an absolute nightmare.