Home Premium 32-Bit vs. Ultimate 64-Bit

Well I just ordered a Dell M1530 and it has the Intel T8100 (2.1Ghz), 4 GB of Ram, and an 8600m GT 256mb in it. My school has a Microsoft deal where you can get ANY, yes ANY Microsoft software (Vista Ultimate, Office Professional, you name it) for $30. My computer is going to come with 32-bit Home Premium. I am going to upgrade it to Ultimate 64-Bit most likely. Will this make a big performance difference, little or not at all? You help is greatly appreciated.

 

Dude, the only factor in deciding to get vista premium over vista ultimate is price. Get ULTIMATE, better in every way!

 

You'll be able to address all 4 GB of RAM so in some situations (heavy gaming, photo editing, video encoding, etc) you'll see a nice performance increase over 32-bit. Otherwise, it'll perform pretty much the same.

 

Also note that 64 bit sometimes suffers from program/driver compatibility issues.

 

From what I've heard, that issue is pretty rare with Vista 64-bit.

 

Yep. Dell should have all the 64bit drivers you need.

 

I have read a little about this before and am writing from memory but wanted to put this out to see what input others had?

Data in 64 bit architecture requires 40% more space in memory than 32 bit architecture? Thus a 32 bit system with 3.2 GB of usable RAM when converted to 64 a bit architecture would require 4.28 GB to be equal? With 4 GB max of RAM installed this would be a net loss of .28 GB to the system.

 

lucky! I go to a big school, very expensive, university in Boston and yet they have practically no software deals... its totally ridiculous.

 

Windows x64 is not as overwhelmingly resource hungry as you have been led to believe. Does it take more resources? Yes. Is it something that will break the back of the machine it's running on? No.

Observe Internet Explorer 32-bit and 64-bit right after being opened. 40% difference?

 

Using these figures I get 14% - 15% more memory is needed to run 64 bit virsus 32 bit. With 4 GB installed 64 bit would have a net gain of .3 GB? Does this sound more reasonable?

 

You'd be surprised. For example, I can't use 64 bit, as the Cisco VPN program I use does not support 64-bit.

It's best to find out if programs that are required for your work are usable with 64-bit. If they are, more power to you.

 

Most home users don't use the Cisco VPN Client on their personal computer. It's primarily used by employees working from home on their work laptop that need to connect to their company's network. And if they're using a work laptop, you probably have no choice on what OS to use anyways.

Besides, if you're using Cisco VPN Client, you probably already know it's not 64-bit compatible.