Vista 64 bit or not?

[drawbridge35]

I have an Acer Desk top with AMD Phenom 9100e quad processors currently running Vista Ultimate 32 bit. Would I see an increase in performance if I installed the 64 bit version? The System has 4 GB of ram and NVIDIA 9200 Graphics card. I do realise that I will have to do a clean install if I go down this route. Many thanks.

 

[zigzag3143]

I have an Acer Desk top with AMD Phenom 9100e quad processors currently running Vista Ultimate 32 bit. Would I see an increase in performance if I installed the 64 bit version? The System has 4 GB of ram and NVIDIA 9200 Graphics card. I do realise that I will have to do a clean install if I go down this route. Many thanks.

Yes it will, but it really depends on how you use your machine. Is it a gamer, do you just use it for office work, just emails, etc. Its just a wider path for instrucions to be processed. Will cpu benchmarks go up? YEP. will you notice it? maybe not. Smallest amount of change that you can notice is probably abt 15%, and just switching from 32 to 64 will not give you more than that.

Then there are the cons. It is more difficult to get drivers for. It produces more heat and in some laptops the power management doesn't function flawlessly.

If you have to have the absolute bleeding edge of speed go 64. You're going to have to in a year or so anyway. Win 8 is said to be 64 bit only (maybe).

You make the call

Ken

 

[bruce2]

Yes; Also more stable.

 

[whs]

You also need to check on your program inventory. Not all programs are available for 64bit.

 

[lemur]

64-bit os was initially more of a boost for servers with the NOS that could take advantage of it. What benefits me most is statistical software - huge boost. I don't know about gamers and their benefits. I doubt browsers really benefit at this point, but we are finding the browser being more and more incorporated into the OS and executing programs. I'm finding a lot more drivers available for 64-bit, and this will only increase with addition of Windows 7 and most new chips capable of supporting it.

Coming back to you... would I recommend it? Sure, give it a try. Eventually you're going to have to move in that direction anyhow.

 

[JMH]

I have an Acer Desk top with AMD Phenom 9100e quad processors currently running Vista Ultimate 32 bit. Would I see an increase in performance if I installed the 64 bit version? The System has 4 GB of ram and NVIDIA 9200 Graphics card. I do realise that I will have to do a clean install if I go down this route. Many thanks.

Hello drawbridge35,
Yes you should.