Vista 64 Bit downside??

[catcando]

I am considering purchasing an HP computer that has Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Bit installed.
Is there a downside to buying this to use as a 32 Bit machine. I was not going to reinstall the operating system as 32 Bit because I don't think it comes with a Vista disk, just HP's recovery partition.
I cannot think of a single thing I would buy or use as 64 bit. It has 3GB of ram. Does Is it use more ram than 32 bit?
Thanks for helping the aged.

[shaithis]

1 downside:

You cannot run 16bit apps.

You have to go back a long way to find a 16bit windows app.

[Agent]

1 downside:

You cannot run 16bit apps.

You have to go back a long way to find a 16bit windows app.

Quite a few older games use 16-bit installers, but there is usually a way to work around it.
Other than that, some older hardware may not have 64-bit Vista drivers but its not really a concern with anything recent - certainly not with a new system.

[catcando]

Thanks for the replies.
Since it has not been mentioned, can I assume that is not more memory hungry than 32 bit?

[Hicks12]

you cant play red alert 1 on it , its s shame as i love that game lol
.
But no there isnt really any dissadvantages to it.

[this_is_gav]

Thanks for the replies.
Since it has not been mentioned, can I assume that is not more memory hungry than 32 bit?

A little bit, but not enough for Joe Average to notice.

The issue bigger than game installers for me is codecs which struggle to work fully on 64-bit Vista. Koepi's XviD (last time I checked anyway) and DivX can be a handful to get working fully. Doesn't take much to get the most out of them (encoders primarily), but it can be a bit fiddly at first.

64-bit is worth it just so you can use more than 3.5GB (3.2GB on most) of RAM though. 8GB on Vista x64 flies.

[catcando]

Thanks guys.
I have bought it now. It is Vista Ultimate 64 bit Quad Core 2.4 with 3GB of ram, two 500GB drives, a DVDRW LightScribe drive and an 8800 GTS 320 video card and a TV card with remote for £400.

[DDY]

Although all drivers must be digitally signed to be installed on Vista x64, workarounds exist, there is a good guide on the freeOTFE website.

I currently have the 'test signing on' in use (to run freeOTFE) but with the side effect of "test mode" on the desktop wallpaper, there are workarounds for this too but none of them have worked for me.

[CaptainCrash]

The issue bigger than game installers for me is codecs which struggle to work fully on 64-bit Vista. Koepi's XviD (last time I checked anyway) and DivX can be a handful to get working fully. Doesn't take much to get the most out of them (encoders primarily), but it can be a bit fiddly at first.

Vista 64 on a HTPC is a world of pain in my experience - apart from dubious driver support for many TV tuner cards (even recent ones), there's the codec hell you mentioned, made worse if (as in all likelihood) you're running a mixture of 32-bit and 64-bit media apps, each inhabiting their own little parallel universes.

I'm sure people with more patience than me can and do make it work well, but it takes a *lot* more effort than Vista 32, for this kind of specialised application at least.

Other than that, no significant downsides, apart from possible driver support for older peripherals. Needless to say, the manufacturers would much rather "encourage" you to buy new hardware than support what you already have, even though it may be working perfectly in all other respects.

[Funkstar]

64-bit is worth it just so you can use more than 3.5GB (3.2GB on most) of RAM though. 8GB on Vista x64 flies.

Good to know, thats what i'll be running soon

Debating with myself if it's worth puting Vista Business 64bit on my laptop to make use of the other 800MB of RAM in there....

[Rainmaker]

Vista 64 bit is much nicer than 32 bit overall, imho. Codecs are quite easily sorted by simply installing Vista Codecs and the related 64 bit tools (two .exe files, 2 minute job). After that ANY app that requires codecs (32 or 64 bit) will "just work" - the codecs are system wide not app specific

I'm back on XP Professional x64 Edition atm and loving it, but I'd just as happily use Vista

[Agent]

Vista 64 bit is much nicer than 32 bit overall, imho. Codecs are quite easily sorted by simply installing Vista Codecs and the related 64 bit tools (two .exe files, 2 minute job). After that ANY app that requires codecs (32 or 64 bit) will "just work" - the codecs are system wide not app specific

Some apps are a bit...'funny' though - usually the ones made by Microsoft ironically
This is very noticeable if you try to run Vista64 along with Vista Media Centre where getting it to "just work" can be a nightmare - I did a post about it here and there is a bunch more about.

There are also loads of posts on MCE specific forums such as 'the green button'.
FFDShow is great and I wouldn't be without it, but I've never understood why a basic control panel applet showing you which codec is decoding which format, along with an easy way to change / remove / update them isn't in Windows. Its just madness
Unless I'm missing something, Vista is just as bad at managing codecs as Windows 95.