32 bit or 64 bit .. (ppl with 64 bit os experience-give advice)

Prior to this I never encountered 64 bit stuff.. but recently I bought AMD lappy .. AMD Athlon X2 QL-60 is its processor. As I had no 64 bit stuff hence I did not even bothered to read / know about it.

Now since I have a 64 bit machine.. now I am wondering which version of OS will be beneficial ? Should I install 32 bit or go for 64 bit.

I have installed ubuntu 64 bit and now thinking for xp or vista for dual boot.

so what if I install 32 bit .. or install 64 bit.. what advantages or disadvantages..
If I go for 64 bit then will it require special version of software I use or at frontend there is no difference in using 64 bit and 32 bit ?

What level of compatibility issue I may face ?

Or if I go for 32 bit .. then will I have any performance lag on this 64bit processor ?

Lappy has 3GB of RAM .. I guess 32 bit xp can handle 4GB of RAM.. so amount of RAM is not an issue regarding 32bit or 64bit..

Go for 64 bit. It would 32 bit programs flawlessly and 64 bit programs efficiently.

Do note that XP 64 bit can run 16 bit programs in compatibility mode but Vista 64 bit can't run them. Also to add, Vista 64 bit is more polished (in usage terms) than the 32 bit counterpart

I read somewhere that on 64 bit OS 32bit programs are resources intensive as they are being used in emulation mode.

any catch !

Well, the reason people use 64bit programs is simple. You are allowed to address more memory.

Taking C++ as an example, the pointer variable is 64bits in size in a 64bit program. This means that it is able to address 2 raised to 64 bytes, meaning 16 exabytes of memory, unlike 32bit programs which offer only 2 raised to 32 bytes, i.e, 4GB of memory to address.

Being able to address more memory helps in handling high file size multimedia files, and to use more RAM. However, the ram limit of 4GB has been overcome in linux by a simple patch which enables it to address 16GB of RAM.

Now, 64bit has a major drawback. As I said before, pointer variables use double the space compared to 32bit. This would result in usage of more memory by several programs. Thats why 64bit is only adviced if you either want to do lots of multimedia or have lots of RAM.

Another drawback is that there is more space which needs to be scanned in order to find something in the RAM, due to which in some benchmarks, 32bit is clearly faster than 64bit.

Finally, after considering everything, its indeed better to go for 64bit OSes if you have some serious number crunching activities, like handling databases, multimedia, etc, and want to have better performance in many programs, 64 bit is recommended. But DONT use it if you have less ram.

Informative answer.. btw what do you mean by good amount of RAM. .. you mean more than 4 GB..

Also, as you said if there is no sufficient RAM then better to avoid.. but what about the 64bit processor we have ? If we install 32bit OS on it.. are we wasting its capabilities ? or not utilizing it at full ?

64bit can handle upto 32gb of ram. If you cannot upgrade to 4gb ram then avoid 64bit. You will not be able to utilize its full power. 32bit is recommended if you are planning for a home basic pc and not a programmer.

jojothedragon said:
64bit can handle upto 32gb of ram. If you cannot upgrade to 4gb ram then avoid 64bit. You will not be able to utilize its full power. 32bit is recommended if you are planning for a home basic pc and not a programmer.

Wrong.

Please learn first what x86_64 really is before passing on such uninformed replies.

Ricky said:
Informative answer.. btw what do you mean by good amount of RAM. .. you mean more than 4 GB..

Also, as you said if there is no sufficient RAM then better to avoid.. but what about the 64bit processor we have ? If we install 32bit OS on it.. are we wasting its capabilities ? or not utilizing it at full ?

By Sufficient RAM, I mean around 1GB.

A 64bit processor is also a 32bit processor, kyonki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi.

Actually, ALL modern CPUs are 64bit CPUs. Right from Pentium 4 Prescott and Athlon64 onwards.

Its just people who are reluctant to use 64bit and MS which took a long time to release stable 64bit versions of windows, the OS which a majority use.

I recommend everyone to try out 64bit. Infact, only by using 64bit OSes more and more can its popularity increase and then software developers will take 64bit more seriously.

@MetalheadGautham: ^plz clearify what do you mean and what is wrong with my reply. I would like to know more about it here itself then redirecting links.

jojothedragon said:
@MetalheadGautham: ^plz clearify what do you mean and what is wrong with my reply. I would like to know more about it here itself then redirecting links.

See my previous post. 64bit is supposed to be able to handle 2 raised to 64 bytes. Convert that to Gigabytes and you will know what I meant.

And you would NOT loose the potential offered by 64bit if you have less than 4GB RAM. It works as fine on 1GB RAM and 400GB RAM as it does on 4GB RAM.

I recently switched from x86 to x64 version of vista ultimate.I really find it much more responsive and stable. Not much program incopatibility..only some security programs like firewall needed to be changed...all application programes ran fine

One word of caution : Make sure you have 64 bit drivers available for all your hardware parts. Its a big big big problem for computer with legacy hardware. I had to sacrifice my perfectly working 6 years old logitech webcam and 3 years old tv tuner to make the switch.But I am happy with it..its worth the sacrifice

BTW : My comp is Athlon x2 4200 + ,M2NVM DVI+ 2GB DDR 800

Use 64bit OS only if you are in need of running 64bit Applications
Otherwise it is useless

It has compatibility of Running bot 32 bit & 64 bit Apps

but sometimes some 3rd party drivers creates a problem like it my case when i installed 64bit XP my I was unable to find a driver for my Scanner

Now m back to 32bit

Thanks for the info and my apologies