Win7 / Win7 64 bit

[nemoreborn]

heya , i am actualy using win7 pro ...

i never used any windows 64 bit , and here is my question ...

what would be the change for me to upgrade to 64bit windows7 ?

better gaming performance ? better for apps ? more stable ??? i have no idea what is the difference between both windows .. 32 bit / 64 ...

thx you

 

[Ijack]

...especially as they invented the x86_64.

 

[Zoron]

With regards to the 32-bit server variants, there is a feature called PAE (Physical Address Extension) which the server OSes happen to support. PAE was first offered in the Pentium Pro processor. With PAE, the address table's size is essentially increased to 36-bit... allowing for a max of 64GB of addressable memory rather than just the 4GB with 32-bit. The problem is with drivers... most 32-bit drivers are not large address aware and quite often there would be issues with most consumer hardware and PAE. Because server platforms are more tightly controlled, it's much easier to implement it on the server level. With 64-bit gaining more and more support, PAE will be rendered useless. After all, there is no point in offering a 32-bit OS only partially supporting 36-bit addressing when 64-bit is available widely now.

So in a nutshell, with 32-bit Windows you are still limited to 4GB. However, because your RAM is NOT the only addressable memory in your system and any hardware that has memory must have it's memory allocated first, you'll never be able to make use of the full 4GB of RAM. Actual addressable RAM will be 4GB minus however much memory is on your video card or cards, any other RAM or ROM that may be present on any add-in cards, and any cache memory on your hard drives / optical drives. So while you may only have 4GB of RAM installed, you can still benefit from installing 64-bit Windows... because you'll be able to make use of all 4GB. With 32-bit Windows, some of that RAM is going to waste.

 

[bl1tz]

With regards to the 32-bit server variants, there is a feature called PAE (Physical Address Extension) which the server OSes happen to support. PAE was first offered in the Pentium Pro processor. With PAE, the address table's size is essentially increased to 36-bit... allowing for a max of 64GB of addressable memory rather than just the 4GB with 32-bit. The problem is with drivers... most 32-bit drivers are not large address aware and quite often there would be issues with most consumer hardware and PAE. Because server platforms are more tightly controlled, it's much easier to implement it on the server level. With 64-bit gaining more and more support, PAE will be rendered useless. After all, there is no point in offering a 32-bit OS only partially supporting 36-bit addressing when 64-bit is available widely now.

So in a nutshell, with 32-bit Windows you are still limited to 4GB. However, because your RAM is NOT the only addressable memory in your system and any hardware that has memory must have it's memory allocated first, you'll never be able to make use of the full 4GB of RAM. Actual addressable RAM will be 4GB minus however much memory is on your video card or cards, any other RAM or ROM that may be present on any add-in cards, and any cache memory on your hard drives / optical drives. So while you may only have 4GB of RAM installed, you can still benefit from installing 64-bit Windows... because you'll be able to make use of all 4GB. With 32-bit Windows, some of that RAM is going to waste.

Well my situation is that my friend's uncle has a spare copy of Windows 7 32bit that I can get for free, I was thinking that if there was no performance difference between 32 bit and 64 bit with 4 gigs of RAM, I wouldn't bother buying Windows 7, however from your post, I'm getting the idea that I would still have to get it it because if that's true, I'm planning to Crossfire two 1 GB vid cards s
o according to your logic I would only be able to use 2 Gigs of my RAM?

 

[Scotteq]

Not all of the RAM on your video cards is memory mapped. Typically, the aperature for (each) card consumes roughly 256MB of address space. But, yes, running two cards comsumes more address space than the one.

 

[Zoron]

Out of the 4GB, I'd guess that only 3GB would be usable with 32-bit Windows on your planned configuration... which makes that extra 1GB useless.

 

[PsyKhiqZero]

Well my situation is that my friend's uncle has a spare copy of Windows 7 32bit that I can get for free, I was thinking that if there was no performance difference between 32 bit and 64 bit with 4 gigs of RAM, I wouldn't bother buying Windows 7, however from your post, I'm getting the idea that I would still have to get it it because if that's true, I'm planning to Crossfire two 1 GB vid cards s
o according to your logic I would only be able to use 2 Gigs of my RAM?

I'm fairly certain product keys are interchangeable between 32 and 64 bit variants of windows 7. So if you can find the x64 bit disc and install with the spare key you should be ok.

Now I don't know how this will work with the 3 pack upgrade as all 3 copies have 1 key.

 

[The_Prophecy]

I'm fairly certain product keys are interchangeable between 32 and 64 bit variants of windows 7. So if you can find the x64 bit disc and install with the spare key you should be ok.

Now I don't know how this will work with the 3 pack upgrade as all 3 copies have 1 key.

Confirmed. Windows product keys are interchangeable between equivalent 32 and 64 bit SKU's.

 

[bl1tz]

Lol, facepalm, how could I have overlooked that. So I'll just get my hands on a x64 installation disk and I'm set, thanks!

 

[skittle]

Some applications are faster on 64bit as well. x264 for example is ~5% faster when you use 64bit binaries.

 

[apache_lives]

But there are some con's with the 64-bit such as some programs won't be as stable as they are if they were used in 32-bit

Its usually the exact opposide - your 32-bit apps will have more memory to work with (4gb max) rather then a 32-bit os cramming everything into a 4gb (max) area so applications have less chance to run out of memory and cause instabilities

Supreme Commander is a prime example where a well documented memory leak causes crashes, by using a system with a 64-bit OS and allowing the 64-bit aware option (cant remember the exact term) it stops crashes thanks to 64-bit

 

[Kewlx25]

I don't know if it means much. However when intel first started to introduce 64 bits to their cpus, they named them pentium IV emt. The emt stood for extended memory translation. To me this sound as if intel made a 32 bit chip capable of addressing more then 4 GB of ram, but somehow different then a "full" 64 bit chip.

There were/are ways around the 4GB barrier by using these memory "extensions". They way they work is any single App can see 32bits of memory at a "time". But with 36-bit addressing, you can switch which 4GB's you're looking at.

So, instead of one "flat" piece of memory, you break your 36bit memory range into 16 4GB views/pages.

The problem is this isn't transparent. Your OS and drivers must support this or you can get weird problems. The software does not need to support the extended memory, but the app cannot access more than 2GB in a 32bit machine/OS unless it specifically programs for it.

One of the issues with drivers is something kind of like this

A driver not meant to work with 36bit memory will see the 32bit memory at a time. The driver tries to allocate memory and the OS says there's memory free at FFFF FFF0 but on page 2. The Video drivers don't see the page 2 part and suddenly reads/writes data out of the wrong page/view.

Microsoft got too many calls to their tech support about VERY random issues and data corruption that resulted from consumer grade drivers and decided non-server 32bit installs will not see past 4GB. The issues that resulted from driver probably were random and hard to track down.

 

[john51]

So while you may only have 4GB of RAM installed, you can still benefit from
installing 64-bit Windows... because you'll be able to make use of all 4GB. With 32-bit Windows, some of that RAM is going to waste.

well, this is totally false.

with every win 32bit system like servers or *enabled* vists/w7 (not sure with xp),
you are able to use 100% of your 4gbyte. you dont waste anything.
this allso counts with more then 4gbyte.

better:
with an 32bit system running with 4gb memory which *enabled* like servers or modify'd vista/w7 you
have normally about 150-250 mbyte more free memory compared against a similar x64 system.

here my game-system, normal nonpatched 4gb installed, 3.5gb usable:

*enabled* 4gb installed, 4gb usable::

best

 

[Zoron]

As I stated, this is PAE and it is only enabled in SERVER editions of Windows. You have to MODIFY your desktop OS to enable PAE, and if you do, there is no guarantee that this will be stable. Consumer drivers are NOT designed to take advantage of PAE, since it is expected that no consumer would ever have it enabled. You can argue the point as much as you like, but it's already been beaten to death in the Vista forum.

With 32-bit you are limited to 4GB. That is not a theoretical limit, it is a hard mathmatical limit. PAE was created as a workaround to this 32-bit limit. It increases the address table size to 36-bits (even though the processor itself and the OS is still 32-bit) and allows for a maximum of 64GB of RAM to be addressed with a 32-bit OS. All processors support PAE... though I'm not 100% sure about Atom. This was designed for servers, because at that time (Pentium Pro era) servers were the only computers that needed to address more than 4GB of RAM and 64-bit processors still weren't quite there.

Now that 64-bit has arrived, PAE is a waste of time... unless you're running a server or a very old computer with a 32-bit only processor. You might find it useful if you have an Atom-based system as well I suppose, but then the Atom wasn't designed to be in systems that would require 4+GB of RAM. Maybe it's just me, but I prefer to eliminate limits rather than work around them.

 

[Scotteq]

Why are we still having these stupid conversations about PAE?

If you want/need 4GB of RAM or more, then use a 64 bit version of the OS. Period. End. No hacks or "creative licencing mods" required to make a desktop version of the OS think it's a server, and no hassles with drivers which aren't capable of handling two tables. Not to mention that with a 32 bit OS you still have set limits on what is application space versus what is reserved for the system ( /3gb switch).

I can see it in the context of keeping an old, non-64bit capable system running for as long as possible so it can continue performing some specific task. You have legacy stuff laying around that otherwise would be inadequate? Fine.. But otherwise, screwing with PAE is a waste of time and effort.

 

[apache_lives]

what if i want 8gb? there aint no modifications available to do that with 32-bit - its dead

 

[Kewlx25]

well, this is totally false.

with every win 32bit system like servers or *enabled* vists/w7 (not sure with xp),
you are able to use 100% of your 4gbyte. you dont waste anything.
this allso counts with more then 4gbyte.

better:
with an 32bit system running with 4gb memory which *enabled* like servers or modify'd vista/w7 you
have normally about 150-250 mbyte more free memory compared against a similar x64 system.

here my game-system, normal nonpatched 4gb installed, 3.5gb usable:

*Picture Removed*

*enabled* 4gb installed, 4gb usable::

*Picture Removed*


best

Even if your system can see all 4GB, Windows reserves half of your memory range for Kernel rated stuff.

So, even if your computer sees all of your memory, all of your applications cannot access more than 2GB of your total memory.

eg
Applications share memory ranges 0000 0000 through 7FFFFFFF

Kernel reserved space is 8000 0000 through FFFF FFFF

This does mean your apps get a full 2GB to play with since the OS will hang out in the upper 2GB range, but your total user space memory won't be able to exceed 2GB w/o swapping

If you have a 64bit system
Application space is 0000 0000 0000 0000 through 7FFF FFFF FFFF FFFF which is more than you'll use in a long time.

Edit: Also, read an MSDN article on this, Windows will show/claim a full 4GB of usable memory, but the OS will still not use any of the memory ranges allocated by your videocard/etc for DMA

 

[Zoron]

PAE would allow you to use all 8GB, but all the other limitations to the 32-bit architecture would still apply. You are much better served going to 64-bit than modifying your desktop OS to do something it was never designed to do.

You don't see Linux users wasting time with 32-bit versions and PAE... they go straight to 64-bit versions. Now that MS has finally caught up with their own very usable 64-bit OS, there is simply no reason to waste time on PAE.

 

[Scotteq]

/agreed - Now that there is a fully consumer ready 64 bit version, there is no reason to play with PAE unless, as pointed out above, you have some legacy hardware which requires the workaround.


Some links if anyone feels the need to learn more about memory management in Windows than I would possibly be able to relate.

All of these are by Microsoft VP and technical guru Mark Russinovich


Pushing the limits of Windows: Physical Memory

Pushing The Limits of Windows: Paged and Non Paged Pool

Pushing the Limits of Windows: Processes and Threads

Pushing the Limits of Windows: Handles

and

Pushing the Limits of Windows: Virtual Memory