can i use Vista32 instead of having to buy Win7-64 for my games machine?

[giantbucket]

how much worse is Win Vista 32 compared to Win 7 64? i mean as far as the kernel, the underlying code, compatibility with drivers & programs. i have a board for which i only have 2x2G of ram and i don't want to buy any more ram. i have a Vista 32 install key available, but i don't have any available Win7 keys, so i'd have to buy one - and i don't feel like spending any more money on it.

so, being that i only have 4G of ram to work with, and most of the use will be Steam games (not even modern AAA stuff, but older stuff), will it work on Vista32 the same way as on Win7-64?

and more generally, is the 32bit version going to be somewhat lighter and snappier compared to a 64bit version? is there less overhead with 32?

i gather than when it was released, Vista had issues - but it's been a few years so drivers ought to be up to par now... and i'd be playing older games only anyways, stuff that'll use my GTX470 or HD5870 cards, no bleeding-edge top-end modern stuff.

 

[Rabmac]

Windows 7 is far superior, especially the 64 bit version. However, I should point out that for your purposes Vista will be fine as you are going to be limited by your GPU anyway, plus your system may not be suited to 64 bit OS.

Mod Edit

 

[Martell1977]

Vista is still clunky and buggy, but usable. Since you will be running older programs, it should be fine.

As for 32-bit vs 64-bit....with 32-bit you will only have about 3 - 3.25gb of that 4gb available as the OS can only address 4gb and that includes the GPU memory. It's not a huge problem, unless you run a program that is memory hungry. Vista will take 1gb to idle, then the GPU memory, leaves about 2 to 2.25gb to run programs before the OS must use the page file.
Depending on the CPU you have, 32-bit can be lighter for the CPU to run.

Many of the bugs with Vista were patched, but it's still a bit buggy compared to Windows 7. Vista has a feel of being the Beta version of Windows 7.

 

[giantbucket]

hmm.... i won't be able to use an SSD on this build as the mobo loves to blue-screen with SSDs, so it'll be paging to a plain HDD. the cpu is A6-3650. i'm going to dual-boot this with WinXP, but on that one the only real option is 32bit anyways.

though, why would a gig of my mobo ram be tied up to a gpu if that gpu has its own ram???

 

[Kurdain1]

Vista, the OS, takes a fair amount of RAM to do it's thing, which lessens the available RAM for other things. I don't think he meant the system RAM is tied to the GPU memory directly.

The way they are related is as he mentioned that a 32-bit OS can only address 4 GB of memory, regardless of where/what/how it is.
So if you have 4 GB system memory and a 1 GB video card that's total of 5 GB.
The OS will then address the video memory and whatever is left of the RAM, so in this case 1 GB of system memory would be unused as unaddressable leaving you with 3GB system memory + 1GB GPU memory = 4 GB memory maximum for the OS.

Hopefully that clears up something.

As for paging, even with a SSD paging to a drive is a bad idea if access speed is a concern.

I'd really spring for Win7-64 if you can, you won't be sorry.

 

[nukemaster]

It is a 32 bit address space limit. I am not even sure you can still get XP drivers for modern hardware.

I personally NEVER had issues with Vista(64-bit). Nvidia on the other hand had some god awful drivers for that operating system. Those issues have long since been fixed.

Vista DID like its memory however(I had 8 from the start). Please note that caching may look like all memory used, when in fact it is usable if needed.

 

[Martell1977]

The way they are related is as he mentioned that a 32-bit OS can only address 4 GB of memory, regardless of where/what/how it is.
So if you have 4 GB system memory and a 1 GB video card that's total of 5 GB.
The OS will then address the video memory and whatever is left of the RAM, so in this case 1 GB of system memory would be unused as unaddressable leaving you with 3GB system memory + 1GB GPU memory = 4 GB memory maximum for the OS.

Exactly what I was referring to.

To the OP: If the computer uses a lot of the page file and you have a USB 2.0 port, you could try connecting a flash drive and enable "Readyboost" to try to enhance performance. The USB 2.0 port is faster than using the HDD pagefile so it might help.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-performance/vista-ready-boost/03951209-475a-4b53-a7e4-0e7c81573607

 

[giantbucket]

yeah, i was just thinking that ReadyBoost will be cheap enough (under $10 for a suitable USB stick) and i am using it on one machine at the office and the user is not complaining about slowness or anything.

 

[Martell1977]

yeah, i was just thinking that ReadyBoost will be cheap enough (under $10 for a suitable USB stick) and i am using it on one machine at the office and the user is not complaining about slowness or anything.

I used Readyboost on my "legacy" computer running Vista, but the limitations of the platform didn't allow it to help much.
You should be Ok running Vista and if you decide you don't like it, upgrading to Windows 7 or 10 is always an option, so nothing to lose.

 

[FALC0N]

Vista keys are interchangeable between x86 and x64 versions. You just have to dig up x64 install media.