How is RAM Different with 64bit OS ?

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goldtech

Hi,

I've never used a 64bit OS. I have 32bit OS and 3GB of RAM. It's enough RAM for most anything I've tried. I'm not even sure 32bit XP can effectively use over 2GB.

But if I switch to 64bit Win7 how does that change things? Is it that it's faster but hogs more RAM or will 3GB be enough for average use?

Thanks.
 
goldtech said:
Hi,

I've never used a 64bit OS. I have 32bit OS and 3GB of RAM. It's enough RAM for most anything I've tried. I'm not even sure 32bit XP can effectively use over 2GB.

But if I switch to 64bit Win7 how does that change things? Is it that it's faster but hogs more RAM or will 3GB be enough for average use?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

My laptop runs Windows 7 64 bit, on 3GB of RAM.

When you offer the OS more RAM, it just caches more
things with it. Up to around 1GB or so occupied.
On WinXP, you might have seen 200-300MB or so for
that kind of thing.

As for the amount of memory a process can use, that
is documented here. On a 32 bit OS, users are used to
seeing a 2GB limitation per program. My old copy of
Photoshop, would stop at around 1.8GB, rather than go
to exactly 2GB.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx

I don't really think you'll see much difference between a 32 bit
and 64 bit OS, for the modern OSes. Especially if your needs
are modest. If you run half a dozen virtual machines at one
time, then additional memory space comes in handy. And the purchase
of more memory helps. For a lot of other day to day activities,
I doubt you'll see a big difference.

Adobe products, some of the latest versions, are 64 bit only.
And that would be another incentive to go 64 bit, if you
were a photographer or did other multimedia things. If you
don't use Adobe, then that aspect is a don't care.

Paul
 
Hi,
Click to expand...
I've never used a 64bit OS. I have 32bit OS and 3GB of RAM. It's
enough RAM for most anything I've tried. I'm not even sure 32bit XP
can effectively use over 2GB.But if I switch to 64bit Win7 how does that change things? Is it that
it's faster but hogs more RAM or will 3GB be enough for average use?
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Try some 64-bit programs and judge for yourself;- or, run it from a
Solid State Drive, which runs at some magnitude closer to system
memory, addressed by and in some instances conjointly by the CPU, over
conventional media, such as magnetic media sprayed on cardboard within
180Kilobyte floppy disc casings. Run XP, through a W7 virtual box,
even.

Of course, a limit to XP at 2GB memory is as needless to mention when
considering eight, or more, over two cores;- effectively, I'm not
really quite up on how many cores W8.1 covers within that particular
contingency during such as these days, when people are migrating in
virtual droves, no doubt, to wristwatch cloud subscription computers,
of sorts, I'd imagine.
 
I've never used a 64bit OS. I have 32bit OS and 3GB of RAM. It's enough
RAM for
most anything I've tried. I'm not even sure 32bit XP can effectively use
over 2GB.

But if I switch to 64bit Win7 how does that change things? Is it that it's
faster but
hogs more RAM or will 3GB be enough for average use?
Click to expand...

3Gb RAM works fine on an (oldish) Gateway laptop with 64-bit Win7.
User experience seems to be that Win7 is "suboptimized." Win7 does
many OS functions faster or better than XP; and adds useful new ones,
e.g. its self-repair routines (albeit fully automatic, so the user cannot
see
what is going on;) and some nonfunctional features of the GUI
are infuriating, viz. any window's switching to maximum size if its top
edge touches the top of the screen.
 
Hi,

I've never used a 64bit OS. I have 32bit OS and 3GB of RAM. It's
enough RAM for most anything I've tried. I'm not even sure 32bit XP
can effectively use over 2GB.

But if I switch to 64bit Win7 how does that change things? Is it that
it's faster but hogs more RAM or will 3GB be enough for average use?
Click to expand...

Well, there is a 32-bit version of Win7 which has system requirements
pretty much similar to 32-bit XP. "Pretty much" is of course a relative
term to Microsoft, which has a habit of loading down more and more junk
into the OS with every new version that it brings out. So even a very
comfortable XP-32 system might become a barely livable W7-32 system.

If you want to know what a comfortable system in W7-64 would be, I'd say
that the sweet spot is right now 8GB. 4GB tends to be quite tight, while
16GB might be overkill for most desktop needs.

The main advantage of more RAM is of course that more of the RAM can be
used by a 64-bit system, so there will be less stuff needed from the
disk (or SSD). This speeds up system performance and responsiveness. I
wouldn't consider going to a 32-bit system anymore these days, it's just
not going to be able to handle today's memory requirements.

Yousuf Khan
 
Hi,

I've never used a 64bit OS. I have 32bit OS and 3GB of RAM. It's enough RAM for most anything I've tried. I'm not even sure 32bit XP can effectively use over 2GB.

But if I switch to 64bit Win7 how does that change things? Is it that it's faster but hogs more RAM or will 3GB be enough for average use?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

There's no gain if you aren't going to put more memory on the board
than XP can use. All there is is a small loss from the fact that 64
bit programs are bigger.
 
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