Is upgrading to a 64-bit OS worth it?

Some pros and cons would be nice. I am thinking of upgrading but I am not sure if I want to. Can you easily install older games? Is there a significant performance boost?

 

You need to define "older".

From my experience, Vista runs better w/ the x64 flavor.

Besides Win7 x64, Vista Ultimate x64 is my favorite OS of all-time. The most solid and responsive OS setup I've ever used. "Benchmarks" do not necessarily says it's the fastest, but whatever. I love it.

Anymore, compatibility is almost never a problem. In fact, into the future (though perhaps distant) I think you will find that people running x86 versions will have the compatibility problems, but this will not happen until the cast business user-base machines are supplanted with x64 capable CPUs.

 

Star wars battlefront 2, farcry, age of empires 2. That kind of old.

 

You've really got nothing to lose. Dell has full driver support for 64-bit Vista for the Studio 1535. Older games will work just as well. I haven't had many compatibility issues so far, and the ones that did have issues were the same ones that didn't work on Vista 32-bit anyway. I play games as old as the original Halo for PC, Age of Empires II and the expansion, Unreal Gold, Call of Duty, and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault without issue.

There's definitely a performance boost to be had with 4GB or more of RAM. Your average programs and games won't see much of a boost, but it is very nice for things natively made for 64-bit. iTunes, for example...Apple currently has a 32-bit and 64-bit version of it. The 64-bit version seems to load much faster than the 32-bit ever did.

Like I say, there's really nothing to lose.

 

[Almost] anything that will run on Vista X86 will run on Vista X64. The real question you should be asking is "will my games run under Vista?"
If they will, they'll run in Vista X64.

 

Yeah, you're good to go. I play Battlefront 2 occasionally on my setup.

And yes, the 4GB of RAM makes x64 delicious (though x64 ran just fine when I only had 2GB of RAM). If you are a System resource freak, you might not like the "RAM usage"...but people need to realize that RAM was meant to be used, the more you have, the more your system can use, and x64 simply implements more, and for a good cause.

 

Thanks for the replies guys. I think I will go ahead and upgrade. The only downside is that I won't have Vista Ultimate, it will have to be Home Premium. Dell agreed to send me the 64-bit version of the disk for free, I thought for sure I would have to pay extra. (but of course, they still think I have my AMD Studio 1536, hehe. )

 

Meh, Vista "Ultimate" isn't all that great. If you really want "DreamScene", I've heard you can. Other than that there's nothing in Ultimate I've ever used besides a few silly games.

 

I wanted to know the same thing... In India 64bit is Rs 109 extra on the Studio 1555!

 

Isn't 100 rupees like 2 USD?

 

Yes. Haha. That's dirt cheap.

 

Yup it is... Even i was suprised... I was thinking like it would be at least 1000 rupees.! Actually the Studio 15 with the specs i was configuring came to about rs 48000 on Dell India and $1264 (rs 68000) on Dell USA!!! but that was using 1usd=50rs on google...! It wont be that expensive for you if you are not asking a friend to buy it in the US and then paying exchange rate to get it to India.

 

100 RUPEES MAY BE 2 USD...but if the daily wage of an indian worker isn't comparable in Rupees to dollars, than indeed it may be more expensive than we think.

 

That's so true. iTunes opens in just a few seconds now and it moves through all of the menus very quickly, as do most of my other programs. Overall, there are noticeable changes, most of which are improvements as your system will move faster overall. My only gripe is that my bootup time seems to have actually increased and Windows sits at that 'Welcome' screen longer.

 

Sounds like a job for...duh duh duh duuuh duh duuuuuuuh:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

 

Thanks! I'll have to check it out .

 

No problemo, I saw that you only had a few posts, and figured you may not have had a chance to encounter that beauty. It is one of the best threads here.

It is the consummation of the efforts of many of us here at NBR for the past couple years almost. Les put it together quite well.

You should see a difference, if you have not tweaked your system along the lines detailed there.

 

Wow thanks. I had not seen that thread either. =D

 

You bet, I think we need to compile a list of the most helpful threads.

Most of them are stickies in their respective forums, no doubt, but there are a few very helpful ones that are not.

 

Rs. 109 is not really that much if you can afford a laptop (or computer)!!!