vista 32 or 64bit for 2gb ram?

[Splash]

Nope, that's tosh. x64 doesn't require more RAM to run, it just makes it possible to use more.

[Agent]

no i'm just scared i'm going to get a preformance hit with 64bit and need 4gb:\ whereas 2gb with 32bit i thought would be less hungry on the resources...

64bit based cpus have been around for a _long_ time, with _much_ less RAM available to them.

Not only that, but the how many bits a CPU works in doesn't directly translate into how much RAM will cause a "performance hit" - Thats more an issue with the OS/Kernel design.

You'll be fine

[Dreaming]

no i'm just scared i'm going to get a preformance hit with 64bit and need 4gb:\ whereas 2gb with 32bit i thought would be less hungry on the resources...

32bit and 64bit aren't more or less demanding as such, it's simply the way the CPU is enabled to carry out instructions. On a 64bit system, since 64 bits is greater than 32 bits (lol, pointing out the obvious), the CPU can do larger calculations faster. Like having a calculator with more digits on the end (although not really, but the example is accurate enough). The problem being 32 bit was the standard so software wasn't optimised for 64 bit, so no processors could cope with 64 bit addressing.

Then AMD brought out the Athlon64 processor which was a mainstream 64 bit processor (before they were reserved to server applications). If you've got a large calculation to do (practically every process on your computer these days) then if you can use more numbers at once then it will go much faster than having to do short calculations then add them all together, if that makes sense.

The main criticism is that it's slow to bring out the proper drivers for 64 bit, since it handles things at a basic level differently applications and software have to be compatible with the new addressing system. XP64 had awful driver support because there was no money in 64 bit drivers for the driver devs. Making the Nvidia 6600 faster the 9800 in 32 bit was much more of a priority.

But we've got to the stage now where the drivers are pretty good and as more people go to 64 bit better drivers will be developed. As I said, everything you do will be approximately 10% under 64 bit, simply because the CPU can work more efficiently. It is just the issue of whether your hardware or applications are compatible. (All mainstream stuff is now, if there are problems it will be with old things with outdated drivers or with extremely specific software)

I've waited until just a few weeks ago to go to 64 bit because the drivers for Intel's RAID weren't amazing, but they're much better now

[Timmy!!!]

I've recently upgraded to vista 64 from vista 32 using 2 gigs ram. Having 2 gigs was plenty even when using big programs like 3d max/maya/after effects. I've gone to 4 gigs now and glad I did however.

Vista 64 renders about 10-15% quicker in 3d max and maya which is always a bonus. General reponsiveness of the os seems pretty much the same as 32 bit however.

[directhex]

hm, technically 64-bit DOES require more memory to run - many of the primitive data types used by every app from the kernel upwards are suddenly twice as many bits as they were before. the difference is NOT double, though.