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Win7 x64

feanix
polycounter lvl 7
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feanix polycounter lvl 7
So I've juuuuust realised that I am an idiot. I bought 4 gigs of ram and I have been running Win7 x86. So I'm effectively missing a gig. I can make the switch to x64 but I'm worried about incompatibilities with my software and games.

Is anyone out there running x64? Have you had any problems?
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  • haiddasalami
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    haiddasalami polycounter lvl 14
    Nope havent run into any problems. Only problems you might have is with any older hardware/software
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  • Ruz
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    Ruz insane polycounter
    nope its been great for me so far. I had a problem trying to run gears of war but eventually sorted it out. runs great now
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  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    the compatability issue lies with drivers. 32bit software will run on a 64bit OS with no issues at all, but if there are two versions of the software, install 64bit to take full advantage.

    32bit drivers will not run on a 64bit OS, and if you do manage to tell windows to run them anyway, they won't be stable.
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  • [HP]
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    [HP] polycounter lvl 17
    I've been using x64 for more than 5 years now, (since XP64) never had a SINGLE problem with it, there's only advantages to it.
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  • Mark Dygert
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    Mark Dygert mod
    I think x86 uses 3.4gb so you're not wasting that extra gig, but you are not using .6gb... I doubt you'll see much of a performance jump from .6gb but you never know.

    The great thing is you can go well above that, 8gb seems to be pretty standard these days, but it really depends on what you're doing. Zbrush is still a 32bit app that uses only 3.4-4gb so it has a similar limit. BUT with a 64bit OS and 8gb your OS will take up 2-3gb, Zbrush will take up 4gb on top of that and whatever is left over goes to whatever else you have running. So Zbrush and the OS aren't fighting over the same 3.4gb of ram.

    So while its crappy that Zbrush doesn't use more than 4gb it still benefits from being run on a 64bit OS with more ram.

    I say jump up to 64bit Win7. I switched from 64bit XP and love it, especially on a clean install.
    On a fresh copy of XP I had to install 12 drivers just to get the thing online and resolve the driver conflicts with the newer hardware. Then all of the software updates and service packs where a pig... That was until I ghosted the HD after doing that for the 3rd time in 2 years.

    I still have XP 64bit installs on my wife's laptop and there aren't any complaints. And I do enjoy Win7 quite a bit.
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  • MrOneTwo
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    MrOneTwo polycounter lvl 12
    [HP] wrote: »
    I've been using x64 for more than 5 years now, (since XP64) never had a SINGLE problem with it, there's only advantages to it.

    about 4 years here but same story...
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  • Ben Apuna
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    Ben Apuna
    I think 16bit apps won't run under Win7 64bit. Like old DOS or Windows 3.1 games. Though I think there are emulators for such things nowadays.
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  • feanix
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    feanix polycounter lvl 7
    Mark Dygert wrote: »
    I think x86 uses 3.4gb so you're not wasting that extra gig, but you are not using .6gb...

    Based on that it seems more sensible to hold off until I upgrade to 8 gigs of RAM. If I'm not going to see a noticeable performance jump reinstalling my OS is a lot of faffing around. Plus the #1 reason I wanted that extra gig was for zbrush so I could go over 5 million polies without it crashing when I try to decimate or export. :/

    Thanks a lot for your advice, everyone! <3
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  • Mark Dygert
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    Mark Dygert mod
    Ben Apuna wrote: »
    I think 16bit apps won't run anymore. Like old DOS or Windows 3.1 games. Though I think there are emulators for such things nowadays.
    Yea there are. I had a super old win98 box sitting around just in case I got the itch to play some super old games but I ditched it once I found an emulator that runs everything I ever threw at it.

    www.dosbox.com is a good one but takes some wrangling sometimes like all old dos games did. I think they have a few GUI front ends available but I don't bother with them. I haven't run this on my win7 machine, just my wife's xp64bit but I think it will work with win7, it works with vista...

    www.gog.com Sells old dos games for pretty cheap. This is good if you can't find the disks and the games run on newer versions of windows.
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  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    feanix wrote: »
    Based on that it seems more sensible to hold off until I upgrade to 8 gigs of RAM. If I'm not going to see a noticeable performance jump reinstalling my OS is a lot of faffing around. Plus the #1 reason I wanted that extra gig was for zbrush so I could go over 5 million polies without it crashing when I try to decimate or export. :/

    Thanks a lot for your advice, everyone! <3

    while you won't notice a performance jump based on the amount of ram usage, you will still notice a performance increase based on the way the software you're running uses your hardware.
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