Windows 7 32 vs 64 RAM usage

Hello everyone.

I've been trying out W7 for a while now, but I've always stuck to the 32 bit version as I have only 3GB of RAM in my laptop.

However, since I need to test out W7 for a school project, I though I'd give 64 bits a chance.

I've found that it uses roughly 300 more MBs of RAM* and that this amount can expand rather rapidly when in use. I'm guessing this is normal, but... any idea what actually takes up that extra RAM space and if it can interfere with normal work?

*- 32 bits after booting used something around 700MBs while now it's around 1GB.

 

For the same program, 32bit will use less ram than 64bit. Supposedly, the 64bit OS should use 2x more ram, but many changes have done to cut down the ram ussage.

 

I am running 64-bit Windows 7 with 2GB RAM and it uses anywhere between 550 MB - 1 GB of RAM.

 

I have about 1.3gb used surfing the net with live messenger, steam, limewire pro, and AVG free running

 

Geeez I did not realize Win7 uses that much memory..... my Win XP 32 uses around 100 MB only.

 

Why do people care how much memory they are using? It puzzles me why people buy ram, then only complain that their os is "using too much" of it. If you start a program that needs the ram, the os will give it to the program. Why do people want their ram to sit idle doing nothing?

 

If it's not causing any noticeable performance issues, don't obsess too about how much RAM your your system is using.

Me? I haven't installed a 32 bit OS on x64 hardware since Vista came out. Yes, even though my current laptop maxes out at 2GB of physical RAM, I still loaded Win7 x64 (and Vista x64 before that) on it and with the exception of a few apps that did not have x64 aware installers (Dragon 9.5) have had no issues.

I did manage to get Dragon 9.5 to work by updating a setting in the installer. It's not something I would encourage many people to do though.

 

Theoretically every memory address that is coded into the software will take twice as much memory under a 64bit OS as it will a 32bit OS, requiring more ram for the same functions. BUT it allows you to use ram beyond 3.5GB. If you're using less ram than 3.5GB then you're better off with a 32bit OS. If you have apps that need a lot of ram, and you have a lot of ram (meaning more than 3.5GB, maybe a lot more than 3.5GB), then you need a 64bit OS.

 

Well.. I can get both windows XP and windows 7 to run with only 80MB of ram. It depends on the complexity of the gui, the number of processes running and the optimizations you've done to the OS.

 

Now that I have tested x86 and x64 of Win7, x86 definitely uses less ram.

 

"Webdev511", thanks for the mention of running Win 7 x64 on a DV2xxx laptop. Wanting to throw the RC on my mothers DV6604 (essentially the same beast) as the Vista Home Pro is sluggish. Just looking to see if anyone had done it successfully.

Been running W7 x64 on three systems since beta and it rocks and, yes, while being able to use all four Gig on a laptop is nice it's also nice to be able to toss 8 gig, or so, into a desktop and rock on.

In response to "bj's" comment. Yes, the OS will allocate a greater (doubleish) quantity of RAM for operations however, this is far outweighed by the performance benefits of crunching twice as much data per clock cycle over the x86 (32 bit) hardware - ergo..., efficiency.

On a desktop w/4 gig running "full visuals" and integrated graphics Win 7 x64 (Ultimate RC) uses about 700 MB RAM. The same system running Vista Home Pro 32 bit uses approximately 1.5 GB RAM at idle with "full visuals".

Yes, this is the type of performance increase you can see with a 64 bit OS. And, yes, Win 7 is definitely "lighter weight" than Vista.

System as referenced is:

Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L
Intel E7200 C2D 2.53 GHz, 3 MB L2
4 GB Adata PC2-6400 (800 MHz)

 

Whoa, a few misconceptions going on in this thread.

x64 doesn't automatically mean twice the memory usage over x86. In x64 on Windows, only addresses are expanded to 64-bits. In programming terms, it means that pointers become 8 bytes instead of 4 bytes. Most other things stay the same size by default.

However, x64 assembly is typically a little larger than x86 assembly - I've found that 64-bit code is usually ~20% larger than an equivalent 32-bit code. In practical terms, it means that x64 DLLs and executable (*.exe) files will be a little larger than their x86 counterparts.

Also, while x64 can work natively on a 64-bit word size, it doesn't mean a twofold increase in computing power. There are marginal performance benefits for operations on 64-bit integers which but in most applications that's fairly rare.

The only real benefit of x64 is the increased memory address space. There are a whole host of minor side effects, but they can mostly be ignored.

 

Not sure what you mean by this. Overall I am not seeing anywhere near (doubleish) RAM usage. Also I think results will vary depending what the program has to do and how it does it, for instance in 32-bit mode there may be mmx registers available to move data 64-bits at a time.

I installed W7 7100 32-bit & 64-bit a few days ago and the difference in memory wasn't massive. With the 32-bit OS adapted to test the full 4GB installed, 64-bit used 676MB while 32-bit used 525MB. So for me something like 150MB of difference.

64-bit


32-bit

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One of the biggest advantages for 64-bit programs though will be the extra registers that are not available in 32-bit mode.