Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 2nd Apr 2008 18:04 UTC, submitted by Jeremy13
"Testing 64-bit performance is still a somewhat dicey proposition. Major benchmarks are either lacking, or don't work properly. For example, SYSmark 2007 simply doesn't run on a 64-bit OS (Vista or XP). And while there's now a 3ds Max 9 SPECapc benchmark, the benchmark crashes consistently with a scripting error before it completes when running on 3ds Max 9 64-bit under Vista 64-bit. On the other hand, there are more 64-bit applications and benchmarks now. That system-sapping game, Crysis, ships with a 64-bit client. 3ds Max 9, Lightwave 9, POV-Ray, and the Cinebench rendering benchmark all have 64-bit versions. Futuremark's PCMark Vantage offers a 64-bit version of that Vista-centric, synthetic test. On top of that, anyone using 64-bit Vista will still be running a lot of 32-bit applications. So we benchmarked some of those as well. Let's take a look at the benchmarks and test system."
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Member since:
2005-10-01
With ram prices being as low as they are I decided to take the plunge and upgrade to 6 gigs of ram with vista 64. I kept hearing all these horror stories of incompatible apps and drivers and was worried that the ram i got would be wasted if i went back to vista/xp 32.
It went rather well, I found drivers for all my hardware and every app but one (gametap do to drm) worked just as it did on x32
A few things surprised me and only found out about when I installed x64
1) Vista comes with 32bit and 64bit versions of IE and WMP and by default will use the 32bit version. So things like Adobe Flash and divx codec work as they should for the most part* THe codec problem with x64 has to do with 64bit version of WMP and Media center as well as explorer uses the 64bit codecs for thumbnails. 32bit codec like divx work fine when useing 32bit players and converters (there is a 64 bit version of xvid that can play many divx files)
2)You don't have to use 64 bit versions of programs. I was worried most about this sense there are very few 64 bit apps out and the fear of running into bugs with 32 bit, however when I noticed that 32 bit ran fine I got over my fear so to speak and just grab 32 bit versions without thinking about it. With some rare exceptions the stability and performance of 32 bit apps is the same under x64 as x32. in fact you can treat the system as if it was 32 bit and not even realize that the os was 64bit and still gain an advantage in the amount of ram when multitasking