>I've seen XP x32 machines that use 4GB. Actually, I have one machine that sees 4GB right now - I just moved the harddrive from another machine that had a 3GB limit in BIOS. And I haven't done anything special to configure it to see 4GB.
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>I don't understand why so many people think there will be a performance improvement with 64 bit OSes? Is there any reason to get a performance improvement?
I don't either really. Other than the increased memory space there's no real difference, especially since the 64 bit core processors are using the same registers the 32 bit use - it's the same chip that can run either. When we moved from 16 bit to 32 bit there was a new generation of processors that were a lot faster than the 16 bit ones - this isn't the case for 64 bit, so I'm with you - there's currently no big benefit for 64 bit software if it even existed for the desktop. And anything that runs in compatiblity mode (ie. most apps today) will run slower due to the down thunking to 32 bit mode.
I won't be installing 64 bit on my Windows 7 machine in the near future (I'm due for Win 7 in the next few weeks).
+++ Rick ---
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>Vlad
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>>>It'll use the entire 4 Gig RAM. Performance should be better.
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>>It (as well as Vista) use 4 gig of RAM in 32 bit just the same. XP can't use more than 3 gigs in 32 bit, but Vista already supports 4 gig. Only in 64 bit you have to deduct a significant amount of the memory used for the 64 bit pointers - most apps run 20-30% more memory on 64 bit...
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>>I really question the logic in going with 64 bit given that there continue to be lots of driver incompatibilities especially with any older hardware as well as the hassles of having mixed and duplicated setups on your machines for program files certain windwos files and folders.
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>>Until the time comes where there is more software actually takes advantage of 64 bit operation (which is minimal for desktop) I can't justfify the additional hassles or overhead for 64 bit.Plus repeated performance tests have shown that there's no performance gain in overall user application usage by using 64 bit OS (for Vista at least). This may change over the years but as of right now I wouldn't expect a change for release of Win7.
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>>64 bit for servers makes perfect sense to me since many server apps (like IIS and ASP.NET including my own code) are optimized for it, but for desktop that same incentive is near nil.
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>>+++ Rick ---
