Geezer

I am going to replace my ageing XP system this year with a shiny new Win7 one.

The only thing I have to consider is, should I go 64bit or 32 bit?

I know a few of you here have already been running either Vista or the beta Win 7 in 64 bit (and 32 bit too obviously!) and wondered about any issues you have had, or simply whether it's not worth it.

Geezer

ScoobyJawa

Assuming you have a decent proc I can't see any reason to stay 32bit, I've been running Vista and 7 64bit for ages without issue

ChefDude

I imagine your new computer's hardware will be fine, but check the applications you depend on to see if they will run in win7 x64.

spectrum48k

I still haven't made the move either, despite having a 64bit CPU, etc...

I run XP Sp3 with 8GB Ram - to elaborate, Windows uses 3.25GB and my Ram disk uses the rest.

Coupled with my SSD, it's all blisteringly quick, so I simply haven't bothered yet.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Been using 64bit for about three years now.

Yes there were issues at the start (especially with XP x64), but I can't think of anything that I currently use that doesn't work with x64.

My Tbalancer fan controller is a bit glitchy, but then it is using XP x64 drivers in Vista x64 (seems they never bothered updating it).

hodgy0_2

the big driver to go 64bit is access to memory -- and lots of it

in 32bit you are severly limited -- to 4gb, but 64bit processors can address 16tb of memory

Iain Young

Applications written for 64bit can run faster than 32bit programs as well (depending on what they are doing of course). Being able to address longer (in bits) numbers allows you to do certain bits of maths much more efficiently than you can in 32bit.