64-bit question

I just recently bought a new computer that comes with a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+.... It of course came with windows vista home edition. It says under the computer specs that is a 32 bit operating system. So its not going to take full advantage of the 64 bit processor is it??

all retail computers come with 32bit os, no performance increase between 64bit and 32bit. So your fine, it can take full advantage.

If you werent a diamond member I'd call you a liar. If there is absolutly no performance increase, why the hell switch at all? Hmm theres got to be something.



The main thing is the 16 exebytes of memory you can have But since ABSOLUTLEY NO COMPUTER to date uses that much (and for that matter all computers ever made don't even use 1 exebyte) you are perfectly safe.



As for the actuall processor, it process everthing exactly the same (from what I understand).

64bit is an architecture and there is performance increases to be had, but not really at this point in time. The market has not shifted over to a fully supported 64 bit platform yet. So, until that happens 64bit really will not have any huge advantage over 32bit.

He is pretty much right, almost all retail computers come with 32 bit versions of Vista. Most people have no idea what 64 bit actually means, even if you had a 64 bit OS you wont be hard pressed to find any apps that are 64 bit as well, so it's pretty pointless.

What?



Call me a liar, what the hell did i say? If you have no more that 3Gb its going to perform the same.

but if you run 64-bit apps that have been optimized to make use of the new architecture, you'll see a difference also if you don't have that much ram

No, not entirely true because a system doesn't bottle neck on just RAM. RAM is only good if it is being used. If you have 20 gigs of RAM and only use 1 gig, it doesn't make your system run any faster.



64-bit is an architecture and you will see lots of performance increases when it is fully supported and utilized. The problem is there are not a lot of taxing applications out there that benefit from a full 64bit system.

Well, of course if you have programs that will benefit from 64bit operating system then it will be a performance increase. But at the moment there aren't many. The main reason i went with it is because i do plan to have 4gb later on.

FYI: 32bit - no more than 3.25GB RAM, 64bit - 128GB max