Fully utilizing 4gb ram upgrading to win 7?

When I got my laptop with 4gb ram and 1gb video card I didn't realize that only 3gb would be used under vista 32.

Vista 32 wasn't so great at the beginning but after many updates the machine is running great and hardly ever have problems.

With Win7 out next week I was thinking of buying the upgrade cd to install the 64-bit version to use this wasted 1gb ram.

However with a 9800m gtx 1gb is the 4th gb of ram likely to even add to the performance of current games and future games like COD MW2, Crysis 2 etc.

Also with adobe photoshop and watching movies Im just not sure if it is worth it since I don't have an issue with Vista. Is it likely I will have a fair bit of 64-bit software incompatibility issues to deal with like early vista days?

What do you guys think? Is there gonna be a noticeable difference in switching?

Thx.

 

I have a laptop with 4gb ram too, but im using Windows 7 32-bit. I have tried out 64-bit but i myself seem to find 32-bit faster at some points, and since i tend to play some old games or use some old programs, which wouldnt work in 64bit. Anyway, i dont really think the 1 gb extra ram would do any difference and 64bit isnt faster than 32bit, people just say that because they want it to be like that.

Also post #500

 

64bit OSes can fully utilize more than 3GB++ of RAM.
However, 32bit OSes only can fully utilize 3GB to 3.5GB of RAM.
In addition, 64bit OSes have more benefits than 32bit's(too much already, lazy to list out).
So, what're you waiting for? 64bit Windows 7 FTW!

 

Just pick up W7 x64. If there is a compatibility problem, I'm going to speculate that the program is old enough that you could easily use XP Mode (XP in a virtual machine) and still use it effectively.

 

No, not likely that you will have any real issues.

Since moving to Win7 x64 nearly two months ago the only issue I've had with the 32bit to 64bit switch is that Microsoft OneNote 2007 doesn't support "print to OneNote" on 64bit systems.

 

64-bit is definitely faster in many points and more secure. It will also utilize 3+ GB of RAM. 64-bit OS is becoming mainstream as more PC's ship with 64-bit OS pre-installed.

 

Ah, no it's not.

There is nothing inherently faster or more secure about any 64bit OS. Windows 7 included.

 

I think 64bit OS's have become more mainstream with PC's shipping with 4GB+ in an effort to boost overall performance running Vista. I bought a Toshiba laptop and it came with 4GB and Vista 64. It's all a good thing because like others have said I prefer a 64 bit OS.

 

My dear.
8GB RAM Windows 7 64bit is faster than 8GB RAM Windows 7 32bit.

 

That's not entirely true. Besides the fact that you can use more RAM (which is quite frankly a stupid example - the RAM is causing the performance increase, not the OS), 64-bit operating systems definitely have the potential to run much faster than a 32-bit counterpart.

Realize that today, most programs for 64-bit operating systems are still coded using 32-bit registers. This means that there will be no performance difference between the two systems. However, if programs are coded to use 64-bit registers, we can see a very noticeable performance increase in numerically intensive tasks (such as encryption).

As for more secure, Windows Vista/7 x64 have little features (such as forced driver signing) that arguably make it slightly more secure, though this is very debatable.

 

Well obviously...? This isn't a good counter argument.

 

While you're at it why don't you pick up a pentium 2 processor for that badboy

 

I didn't know that a 64 bit os could run the cpu and memory clocks faster than a 32 bit os would.

 

64-bit applications run faster than the same 32-bit apps in a 64-bit processor.

 

Well thx for the responses..think I will probably pick up the upgrade cd next week.

 

No, they don't.

Show me timed benchmarks carried out by a third party.

 

It has nothing to do with faster CPU or memory clocks. It has everything to do with the fact that you are now performing logical operations on 64-bit registers rather than 32-bit ones. If you are using 32-bit architecture, and you have a value that cannot fit into a 32-bit register, then to perform an operation on that value, it takes up at least 2 clock cycles (once for the first 32 bits, a second for the last 32 bits). With 64-bit architecture, that operation can now be done in one cycle. A performance increase of 100%.

Now it does get a lot more complicated than this, but this is the general reason why 64-bit architecture has the potential to be faster.

 

now we're down to potentially faster..........

 

This is why I take anything I read on the Internet with a grain of salt.

 

I don't just make up what I say off the top of my head. If you don't believe me, you're free to take any introductory Assembly or circuit design class to see the theory behind everything.

If you have bigger registers, you have the ability to perform operations on large values faster than if you have small registers. It's a basic fundamental property of computer engineering.

 

You can go back in technology. Nobody prevents you to do so.

 

It's not a question of going forward or backward. It's about making blanket statements about 'faster, better, more secure' without having a shred of evidence to back it up.

It's really all about the software, not the underlying hardware or os.

 

Wrong. All three of these have to be done properly in order to get the extra speed -- the software is (necessarily) just the last piece to fall into place. Practically all hardware on the market has had this capacity for half a decade (ever since AMD and Intel made the x86-64 deal). Consumer operating systems are finally catching up (industry is way ahead; I work in a place where CPU time is valuable and our OSes have all been 64-bit for years). The software is the only thing left.

 

I've given you examples. Data encryption is faster using 64-bit architecture, 64-bit versions of Vista require driver signing and have extra kernel protection.

Software runs on the OS. It's not possible for it to be "all about the software". The OS has to support what the software is trying to do.

 

Only if you live and work in an ivory tower. Hand-tuned 64 bit code is such a small percentage of the market it's not worth discussing on a consumer web board.

Reality being, and the reality in this case being an OS and apps from MSFT, you can't assume that they are doing much more than using 64 bit translation wrappers around 32 bit code.

That's how a lot of modules in Visual Studio output their code.

Intel is pulling their collective hair out over the pseudo-madness emanating from Redmond. Intel is sponsoring more than a few projects to make it easier to write and deploy 'real' 64 bit code for IA64 and x64 (AMD64) as well as encouraging the use of thread-safe SMP coding practices.

These projects have pushed a lot of compiler tech into the GCC trees as well as onto Cray, SGI, Sun, and HP hardware using Intel chips. IBM Power, Sun Sparc/Niagra/Rock, and what's left of HP PA-RISC are all in better shape because of the Intel and AMD compiler projects as well as their internal development environments. But the big bottom feeder, MSFT, is still wedded to a 32 bit module and development environment and will be for about 18 months yet.

Why 18 months? That is when MSFT is projecting that their commercial development environments, Visual Studio, will be 64 bit clean.

Yes, I know that no one is really tied to VS-anything for development. But the weight of the market is such that not only does every rookie coder learn using VS, but a lot of IT shops will simply not purchase or deploy modular code that was worked up with anything other than VS.

 

The primary benefit from increasing bus widths will always be in multitasking. Not necessarily in the sense that you can run more applications under a 64bit os simultaneously (although, practically speaking, you generally have more RAM and less delayed response when multitasking under a 64bit os); but in the software's ability to utilize that bus to do more at once.

+1 to newsposter to bring forth the wrapping-of-current-code problem developers are now facing. In a struggle to keep their software platforms running "native" in the most mainstream OS (soon to be w7x64) of current; instead of writing code that will take advantage of the fact that it can now provide more instructions to the CPU simultaneously, they are instead writing wrappers on top of their old code that play in to a 64x processor's translation schemes. This does not make for a faster program. It will get better in the future, as the transition to 64 bit as the primary platform takes place.

There are a rare few instances, outside open-source, where a developer takes the high road and develops their software from the ground up for 64 bit. 64 bit operating systems developed by MS are inherently more secure as a result of dropping the inherently insecure 16-bit subsystem and including support for DEP ( read).

I have yet to have an issue with 32 bit programs under w7x64. WinXP mode works flawlessly if the program is actually antiquated to the point that w7 can not accurately emulate 64bit code for its 32bit processes.