64 or 32 bit Vista?

I was just ordering a new system and was trying to decide on either 32-bit or 64-bit Vista installed by the retailer. The hardware is entirely 64-bit capable, I was just worried about being able to play current games, such as: Dawn of War Winter Assault/Dark Crusade, Rome/Medieval 2 Total War, Hearts of Iron Doomsday...

I know the 64-bit Vista would alow me to use 4GB of RAM and would increase system performance, however I wanted to know if there was any downsides. I also wanted to hear feedback from anyone who is using 64-bit Vista.

 

I just upgraded to 64bit vista Ultimate about 6 days ago, I'm loving it! Everything that I've run in 32bit vista, has worked in 64bit vista, so I don't see how it's any worse.

Games I've played on 64bit vista Ult so far,

FEAR
Prey
HL2/CS:S/DOD:S
Warhammer, Dawn of war 40K
THAW
CS 1.6/CS CZ
Bioshock, both demo and retail versions
RCT3
Sims 2
AOE3
Lost planet
Call of juarez,

This list can go on forever because I've yet to see an issue with anything.

 

i dont see why any1 would get 32bit vista... if ur gonna get a 32 OS just get XP

 

Does 64-bit Vista work with all 32-bit games and software (while 32-bit Vista and XP will work with all 32-bit and 16-bit aplications)?

Are there any 64-bit games or applications currently available?

Are any 16-bit games still being played?

I also had a question about 32-bit games + RAM. I was playing "Warhammer Dawn of War" on a system w/ 32-bit Vista and 4GB RAM and the game said I only had 2GB RAM. I understand 32-bit Vista will only recognize 3GB RAM, but why would the game say I only have 2GB RAM? Would the game recognize 4GB RAM if I ran it it 64-bit Vista?

 

Note that drivers are much more scarce for the 64-bit Vista than the 32-bit. With the 32-bit you are guaranteed better compatibility. Unless you have a specific need to run 64-bit programs I would avoid it. A friend of mine built a new computer and installed the 64-bit, it was the worst mistake he made. His scanner, printer, and TV tuner did not have drivers and refused to work. However there were drivers available for the 32-bit.

 

Its the opposite for one of my computers. Everything works flawlessly in x64, but fails miserably in regular windows. And this is with both vista and xp.

 

When will 64-bit Vista be a viable option? Next year?

I also read somewhere that if you're going to go with 32-bit, you're better off with XP; and that if you're going to upgrade to Vista you should wait until next summer and then go with 64-bit.

Is that good advice? What benefits does 32-bit Vista offer for gaming over XP?

 

At this moment i would have to say that there's no point in vista 64bit and i would only get the 32 bit edition if you have a dx10 compatible card. The main reason being is there are alot of drivers that are not written in 64 bit so that could be an issue when buying hardware. 32bit applications are emulated somehow and some apps have problems running correctly. also as its already been said there a very few 64 bit apps and even more so i dont think you'll find any 64-bit apps that dont have a 32 bit equivalent.

As for your question i would say 64 bit vista wont be a viable option for atleast 2-3 years or even longer due to the fact that 32 bit OS have been around for almost 15 years and the fact that drivers and some apps are not supported in 64bit edition which really only advantage over the 32 bit edition at the moment is a speed increase only noticeble when performing multiple tasks at the same time. But at the end of the day if you dont have/get a dx10 card then there's no point in vista and Xp is the best option.

 

One point in 64-bit's favor is that it can work better with 32 bit applications as well.
In particular, a 32-bit application running under 32-bit Vista can only use up to 2GB memory. Under a 64-bit OS, the same application is able to use up to 4GB. So for memory-heavy games and such, you may avoid crashes by running a 64-bit OS.

Also, the driver situation varies a lot. All the core hardware should have drivers, but extra stuff like printers, scanners, tv tuners and such may not.

Sounds more or less reasonable to me.
32 bit Vista supports DirectX 10, but other than that, it only has disadvantages when it comes to gaming, such as ~10-20% lower performance and higher memory consumption.

 

actually, 64bit lets you have 17,179,869,184GB of RAM

 

Not in a 32-bit application.
32-bit applications can use 4GB on a 64-bit system, where they're limited to 2GB on a 32-bit OS.

Of course, 64-bit applications can use far more than that.

 

yeah, i guess you were talking about 32 bit apps. my bad

 

Current 64bit OS tops at 128GB of RAM.
Just trashed my Vista x64 for XP x64 due to 6 software incompatibilities during the trial period. For now, i recommend to still stick with either 32bit XP or Vista.

(You'll save yourself some trouble having to find alternate programs for those that are incompatible.)

 

Anyone have a list of 64-bit apps? Googled it but the most recent list I could find was over a year old.

 

I wonder when 64-bit games will become available. Well they started using multiple cores at least - now I would like them to use it in 64-bit. Office and other ordinary programs work fine in 32-bit anyway. I expect some improvement in 3D, image-editing and math programs when using 64-bit calculations. And as Jalf said - more available memory even for 32-bit apps (that can use more than 2-4GB of ram - many today's programmers will limit it to 2GB anyway)

And many people think "64-bit is twice as better than 32-bit". It is in fact 2^32 times better than 32-bit if you just want just maths.
Imagine 64 bit registers - whole instructions WITH data can be loaded into the same register - being processed in the SAME CYCLE. Even 32 bit apps run faster if CPU is optimized to load instructions and data into the large 64 bit register - processing it in just one cycle. I have seen some tests where 64 bit CPU runs 32-bit apps faster than a 32-bit CPU of the same speed and architecture.

BUT - the real power will remain for true 64-bit apps that are OPTIMIZED for 64-bit processing. Expect math algorithms to use that first. Not games or Windows.

I see NO 64-bit games. I see NO 64-bit apps yet. At least not so often. Until that happens - my 64-bit CPU will run 32-bit windows and 32-bit apps. But it is the future...

So 32-bit Vista for me because of drivers and apps. Otherwise I know 64-bit version runs well and fast.

Cheers,

Ivan

 

Not completely certain what you're referring to as this topic is fairly new to me but I think there are 64-bit games (at least 64-bit XP):

*
Half-Life 2
*
Lost Coast
*
Bet On Soldier: Blood Sport
*
Codename: Panzers (Phase one)
*
Colin McRae Rally 2005
*
Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
*
Far Cry
*
Fahrenheit
*
Shadow Ops: Red Mercury
*
Unreal Tournament 2004
*
World of Warcraft
*
WWII Tank Commander
*
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl
*
Dreadnought

http://www.start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=190&Itemid=116

 

Thanks Astrolad,

Future is very near then...........

Ivan

 

Well, the instruction length (or handling of them) isn't affected by whether the CPU runs in 32 or 64 bit mode. Apart from everything else, the x86 architecture is already too messed up for that kind of niceties. Instructions are between 1 and 16 bytes in length now (and generally 1 byte longer in 64-bit mode)

 

can someone try starcraft under 64bit vista? I'm running 32bit XP professional and opt for 64bit XP if some older games can be run there.

 

Well, MS should have offered Vista 64-bit only, that way it would have forced developers to code for 64-bit. But now we have to wait for M$'s next OS due out in 2010.

I doubt we'll see any 64-bit only games or even ones recoded that will take advantage of it.

 

There's no particular reason why it shouldn't work. The only programs that require special handling are those that mess with the OS on the driver/kernel level. Games don't do that, so they should work fine.

 

No problem. FWIW, there is also a 64-bit Firefox that a lot of people say runs pretty well. DL link- http://www.mozilla-x86-64.com/download.html

I've been trying to work my way through this morass as I went with Vista 64 and believe it will be worth the trouble once more and more things get ironed out. I also don't have a ton of essential periphs so drivers aren't a huge issue--I'll likely just buy whatever periphs have stable 64-bit drivers. I've heard the Logitech ones are a bit messy but hopefully I can work my way through it as I'm a bit wed to my G5.

 

Crysis will come in native 64-bit and 32-bit flavors, and running in 64-bit mode will supposedly net a 10-15% performance increase, so that's reason enough for me to go with 64-bit.

 

As far as I know, Logitech shouldn't be a problem. First, all the basic functionality doesn't need a special driver. (it comes with Windows). For special utilities and whatever else, you'll need Logitech's own driver, but I checked a few days ago, and they seemed to have 64bit drivers too.

 

X64 ultimate here. Starcraft works fine. Hell everythings worked fine so far, heres what ive got installed gamewise:

http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/3545/gamesbt9.jpg

They all worked. Few minor problems involved:

1. Same incompatibility faults that i had with XP, for example alpha centauri still has a CPU not recognised issue, still the same solution to it that worked in XP

2. Needed to set compatability mode to XP-SP2 or Windows 98/SE for certain games/programs

3. Needed to set as "Run as administrator" for certain games/programs

Apart from that everythings fine.

 

Thank you Soviet779, I'll borrow my friend's copy before jumping the gun. Glad to hear starcraft can be run on 64bit platform

 

I didn't know that! Thanks Jalf. I was reading something about Instruction sets and instructions being usually 16 bit long, but apparently many of them have numerous operands that require additional bites - so I assumed instruction+operand(s)+(immediate)data must be more than 16 and less than max 32 on a 32-bit CPU. I obviously misinterpreted the whole thing.

Also when you say between 1-16 does this mean variable instruction length - meaning harder to decode (more cycles or more complex decoder)?

Cheers,

Ivan

 

Yes and yes. It is a huge mess.
One instruction in itself can range from I think, 1-12 bytes or something like that. (The 1-byte instruction accumulates the result in register eax, and only has one operand (the register to read from. Source and second operand is implicit register eax)
Then there are all the instructions that have been added on later (such as SSE instructions), which obviously didn't fit in without making them longer.
Of course, this also means there's no fixed structure. You can't tell in advance which part of the instruction is the opcode, and which parts indicate the operand registers.
And then, if this wasn't messy enough already, you can add several prefix bytes to an isntruction (for example, if you want to use one of the 8 new registers in 64-bit mode, you have to add a prefix byte to indicate this. If you want the instruction to be atomic, you can add a 'lock' prefix to ensure other processors don't simultaneously modify the same bit of memory, and so on.
All in all, on average, in "typical" programs, the average instruction length is 5 byte though.

So yes, very much harder to decode.
In fact, on the K8 architecture, the first 7 pipeline stages are dedicated solely to instruction decoding Core(2) is similar, and on NetBurst, it's even more.
If there were any justice in the world, this architecture would have died a quiet death 20 years ago

By comparison, "sane" architectures like the Alpha or Mips have fixed-length 32-bit instructions, and they still have room for 3 operands (x86 instructions only allow so the destination register must be the same as one of the sources), and a larger register count (typically 32, compared to the 8 on x86)

 

Thanks again. RISC seems much easier then! 32 bit fixed. Well. CISC is what I have in this box in front of me anyway. But this is way out of this thread.

I'll go with the rest of the world. 64-bit in its time

Cheers,

Ivan