PCTech Forums

Hey guys, just a quick question to ask.

The family pc we have (which no one uses except my brother) has magically stopped working.

My parents are buying another one and the one they like is vista 64bit.

Is there anything major i need to know about 64bit vista in terms of compatibility?

The rig they are buying is a amd quad core 2.8ghz, 8 gig of ram :O and a crappy gpu (but it wont be used for games).

Looks like a monster, but im worried that 64 bit might not be right?
Thanks for the advice, hope you guys are well.

Vista can detect if a program uses 32 bit and run will it accordingly.

I only have experience with windows 7 64 bit to speak of but they aren't that different.
In the task manager everything that's running under 32bit has '*32' after it.

So they shouldn't run into any problems.



But putting that to one side, I think they'd be better off saving money and getting a dual core, 2GB of RAM, and 32bit XP. srsly, quad core and 8 GB of RAM is total overkill.

You'd even save enough to get a half decent GPU which'll make the most noticeable difference, even in stuff besides gaming.

You can barely drag a window around without slowing the computer down without one. They're a lot more stable too since there's none of the shared memory bull going on.

the biggest issues will be drivers as they cant be emulated like software can. So things like cameras, printers, scanners and other peripherals come in to play. Basic software would be ok. Theres also a good reason for the 8 gigs of ram, its VISTA..lol. Ive seen notebooks with vista 64 and 8 gigs, thats because its almost required for it to run smooth.

Something interesting thats starting to happen though is AMD/ATI is beginning to put its own video memory onboard motherboards instead of using system ram.