Upgrade to 64 Bit - Benefits?

[UKMedia]

I have an established movies setup across HD TV, NAS devices and 2 PC's, with a similar setup as my system spec. My questions are:

1. If I was to install a 64 bit OS (Vista or 7) would I get any improvement in stability or performance?
2. On one PC I play BF2142 , am I going to have problems running this? - Sorry I know this isn't a Media Centre question
3. Is it going to be worth the hassle of a clean install and load all my apps again?

UKMedia

 

[Ayporos]

There are 2 'main' differences between 32bit and 64bit namely:

-64bit allows for more than 2gb to be effectively used for a SINGLE application.
No game or video playback software at the moment would ever need more than 2gb of memory though.

-64bit enabled CPU's are able to process MORE commands at the same time (twice as many in fact) however there are hardly any programs/applications out there that can actually make use of this.
I don't want to go into too much detail because frankly its unnecessary and I don't know all that much about it to begin with but I can tell you that your games or video playback software will hardly (if at all) be able to make use of this extra processing power.

At the moment the critics are agreed that 64bit is only usefull for high-load operations such as video/audio editing which eats up loads of CPU and RAM, servers, scientific research computers and distributed computing (such as BIONC enabled stuff).

conclusion:
NO, you will most definatelly not get any noticable/worthwile improvement or increased stability.

 

[H2SO4]

There are 2 'main' differences between 32bit and 64bit namely:

-64bit allows for more than 2gb to be effectively used for a SINGLE application.
No game or video playback software at the moment would ever need more than 2gb of memory though.

Only for apps which are also 64-bit. 32-bit apps running on a 64-bit OS will still mostly limit themselves to 2GB maximum, although they can puff up to 4GB if they're capable of it.

-64bit enabled CPU's are able to process MORE commands at the same time (twice as many in fact) however there are hardly any programs/applications out there that can actually make use of this.
I don't want to go into too much detail because frankly its unnecessary and I don't know all that much about it to begin with but I can tell you that your games or video playback software will hardly (if at all) be able to make use of this extra processing power.

I think you misunderstood something there. There's no doubling of command rates. There are benefits to be gained in stability and even security (much harder to inject bad or malicious drivers into kernel-mode under 64-bit), and there are some performance advantages stemming from the way that information is (more efficiently) passed around between functions in code, but there's no inherently overwhelming boost.

As for whether games and other software "will hardly (if at all) be able to make use of this extra processing power", you've probably heard of Moore's Law:

"The hardware horsepower of a typical processor will continue to double roughly every 18 months".

There's an equally accurate though far less well known corollary:

"But it doesn't matter because the software will always p##s away all those hardware gains, and then some"

 

[Martee]

Vista 64bit is more secure, faster and stable, no doubt about it.

cheers...

 

[UKMedia]

There are 2 'main' differences between 32bit and 64bit namely:

-64bit allows for more than 2gb to be effectively used for a SINGLE application.
No game or video playback software at the moment would ever need more than 2gb of memory though.

Only for apps which are also 64-bit. 32-bit apps running on a 64-bit OS will still mostly limit themselves to 2GB maximum, although they can puff up to 4GB if they're capable of it.

-64bit enabled CPU's are able to process MORE commands at the same time (twice as many in fact) however there are hardly any programs/applications out there that can actually make use of this.
I don't want to go into too much detail because frankly its unnecessary and I don't know all that much about it to begin with but I can tell you that your games or video playback software will hardly (if at all) be able to make use of this extra processing power.

I think you misunderstood something there. There's no doubling of command rates. There are benefits to be gained in stability and even security (much harder to inject bad or malicious drivers into kernel-mode under 64-bit), and there are some performance advantages stemming from the way that information is (more efficiently) passed around between functions in code, but there's no inherently overwhelming boost.

As for whether games and other software "will hardly (if at all) be able to make use of this extra processing power", you've probably heard of Moore's Law:

"The hardware horsepower of a typical processor will continue to double roughly every 18 months".

There's an equally accurate though far less well known corollary:

"But it doesn't matter because the software will always p##s away all those hardware gains, and then some"

Thanks for the replies and you back up what I thought that the benefits don't justify the re-build time. It's strange that few people can justify moving to 64bit and yet the majority of system specs indicate a 64 bit install!! lol

UKMedia

 

[mattinahat]

Thread is a bit over but you might find this in interesting.

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/99613-64-bit-more-than-just-ram.html

-64bit allows for more than 2gb to be effectively used for a SINGLE application.
No game or video playback software at the moment would ever need more than 2gb of memory though.

Really? Photoshop easily uses 3-4 GB of my RAM and GTA IV is happy to eat away 2 GB of RAM (patched 1.3 so no memory leak).

 

[echrada]

One of the best operating systems around :D