Question:
What’s the difference between windows vista 32bit and 64bit?
Why doesn’t everyone install the 64 bit since its better (so we can profit of the extra ram if we have it)? I have bought a new Intel original core 2 Quad 2.8 GHz with 8 GB ram DDR2… Can I install windows vista 64 bit?
Answer:
What’s the difference between windows vista 32bit and 64bit?
Short answer is the instruction code. More or less 32 bit operating systems can push smaller chunks of data through the bus at a time. A 64 bit operating system can push larger chunks of data through the bus and has more address locations, thus allowing you to use more ram and advanced hardware. The issue is that in order to take advantage of 64 bit operating system you need an application that is 64 bit enabled. Most applications are compatible and optimized for x64 now, and the ones that are not will still run in a ‘compatibility’ mode for 32 bit. You should have no issue installing vista64 on that hardware, you will also have the ability to address that amount of RAM.
#1 by EarlW - June 18th, 2009 at 08:18
You may want to mention that some very old applications may refuse to work on 64bit. If you depend on one of these and a newer version is not available, you may want to stick with 32bit.