Desktop (Cy): Intel Core i7 920 D0 @ 3.6GHz, Prolimatech Megahalems, Gigabyte X58-UD5, Patriot Viper DDR3 6GiB @ 1440MHz 7-7-7-20 2T, EVGA NVIDIA GTX 295 Co-Op, Asus Xonar D2X, Hauppauge WinTV Nova TD-500, 2x WD Caviar Black 1TB in RAID 0, 4x Samsung EcoDrive 1.5TB F2s in RAID 5, Corsair HX 750W PSU, Coolermaster RC-1100 Cosmos Sport (Custom), 4x Noctua P12s, 6x Noctua S12Bs, Sony Optiarc DVD+/-RW, Windows 7 Professional Edition, Dell 2408WFP, Mirai 22" HDTV
MacBook Pro (Voyager): Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.6GHz, 4GiB DDR2 RAM, 200GB 7200RPM HDD, NVIDIA 8600GTM 512MB, SuperDrive, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, 15.4" Matte Display
HTPC (Delta-Flyer): Intel Core 2 Q8200 @ 2.33GHz, Zotec GeForce 9300-ITX, 2GiB of DDR2 Corsair XMS2 RAM, KWorld PE355-2T, Samsung EcoDrive F2 1.5TB, In-Win BP655, Noctua NF-R8, LiteOn BluRay ROM Drive, Windows 7 Home Premium, 42" Sony 1080p Television
i7 (Bloomfield) Overclocking Guide
Originally Posted by Spock
Desktop (Cy): Intel Core i7 920 D0 @ 3.6GHz, Prolimatech Megahalems, Gigabyte X58-UD5, Patriot Viper DDR3 6GiB @ 1440MHz 7-7-7-20 2T, EVGA NVIDIA GTX 295 Co-Op, Asus Xonar D2X, Hauppauge WinTV Nova TD-500, 2x WD Caviar Black 1TB in RAID 0, 4x Samsung EcoDrive 1.5TB F2s in RAID 5, Corsair HX 750W PSU, Coolermaster RC-1100 Cosmos Sport (Custom), 4x Noctua P12s, 6x Noctua S12Bs, Sony Optiarc DVD+/-RW, Windows 7 Professional Edition, Dell 2408WFP, Mirai 22" HDTV
MacBook Pro (Voyager): Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.6GHz, 4GiB DDR2 RAM, 200GB 7200RPM HDD, NVIDIA 8600GTM 512MB, SuperDrive, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, 15.4" Matte Display
HTPC (Delta-Flyer): Intel Core 2 Q8200 @ 2.33GHz, Zotec GeForce 9300-ITX, 2GiB of DDR2 Corsair XMS2 RAM, KWorld PE355-2T, Samsung EcoDrive F2 1.5TB, In-Win BP655, Noctua NF-R8, LiteOn BluRay ROM Drive, Windows 7 Home Premium, 42" Sony 1080p Television
i7 (Bloomfield) Overclocking Guide
Originally Posted by Spock
Smudger (26-10-2009)
64bit is absolutely fine if you have a very standard machine with nothing too unusual or slightly older hardware/software. However, it's not all roses as I have found out by running Win7 64bit for the last week or so.
One of the main problems is driver support for older hardware. I have a TV card which works like a dream in XP, but as the company have gone out of business they never produced 64bit drivers for Vista64/Win7-64. There are plenty of 32bit drivers knocking around but none for 64bit. So check that you can get drivers for all your older/unusual hardware or you could be in trouble.
Everday performance is nothing to shout about tbh compared to 32bit. I've got a few specific 64bit applications but they haven't magically become super fast and amazing. There's not a lot of performance gain to be honest and where there is some, I'm not exactly bowled over with amazement. Internet Explorer 64bit (currently) does not support flash so you pretty much have to use the 32bit version anyway.
IMO, 64bit is still a few years away from being mainstream as the benefits are simply not worth the extra potential hassle (though it's pretty transparent unless you have issues). They have to start making a push toward it and it will become the standard eventually. However, for your everyday user, they don't care whether it's 64 bit. It just has to work and work well which is what Windows7 has got spot on this time around.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate 64bit, but it's not the silver bullet that some people preach it to be. It will be the standard, but I don't think Win7 is going to be the OS that does it. The benefits simply aren't there at the moment and the average user just doesn't need more than 4Gb of RAM.
ASUS P5K Premium || Q6600 || 4Gb RAM || 8800GTS
Speak for yourself. I'd like you to define your "unusual hardware" that doesn't have 64bit drivers, and ignore out of date hardware, I refer to that below.
Yes, older, out of service hardware will not be supported. But to fact of the matter is very few people retain their older hardware, and those that do won't run it on their brand new machine now will they? Drivers that don't work in 64bit Windows 7 are just as likely not to work in 32bit Windows 7 as well.
That is not the point. It is not supposed to perform better, it is supposed to allow more applications to run at the same time, i.e. more addressable memory, and allow applications to handle larger data sets, i.e. more addressable memory. It also allow variables to hold more data without losing accuracy, reducing calculation time significantly when handling very large (in terms of bit length) numbers.
It is, and should be mainstream now. Computers are being released with 4GBs of RAM, and computers with more than 3GBs of RAM are plainly ripping users off if they don't ship with a 64bit OS. The average user is not aware of the issue cause no one told them, so we should tell them. If you find a machine that can't address all it's memory, tell the user the were ripped off, and they will likely complain to the manufacturer or retailer they bought the machine from.
Silver bullet? Where did you get that from? It's hardly a miracle. It's not even unique, 64bit is even ancient by computing standards. The point is that it was time to go 64bit when Vista came out. 64bit is now gone my friend. Now it's time to take it up. And yes, that one piece of old hardware that doesn't work? Well leave it in an old XP rig if you really need. The only reason that Windows 7 ships in 32bit, in my opinion, is the Atom.
Last edited by nightkhaos; 26-10-2009 at 10:54 PM.
Desktop (Cy): Intel Core i7 920 D0 @ 3.6GHz, Prolimatech Megahalems, Gigabyte X58-UD5, Patriot Viper DDR3 6GiB @ 1440MHz 7-7-7-20 2T, EVGA NVIDIA GTX 295 Co-Op, Asus Xonar D2X, Hauppauge WinTV Nova TD-500, 2x WD Caviar Black 1TB in RAID 0, 4x Samsung EcoDrive 1.5TB F2s in RAID 5, Corsair HX 750W PSU, Coolermaster RC-1100 Cosmos Sport (Custom), 4x Noctua P12s, 6x Noctua S12Bs, Sony Optiarc DVD+/-RW, Windows 7 Professional Edition, Dell 2408WFP, Mirai 22" HDTV
MacBook Pro (Voyager): Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.6GHz, 4GiB DDR2 RAM, 200GB 7200RPM HDD, NVIDIA 8600GTM 512MB, SuperDrive, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, 15.4" Matte Display
HTPC (Delta-Flyer): Intel Core 2 Q8200 @ 2.33GHz, Zotec GeForce 9300-ITX, 2GiB of DDR2 Corsair XMS2 RAM, KWorld PE355-2T, Samsung EcoDrive F2 1.5TB, In-Win BP655, Noctua NF-R8, LiteOn BluRay ROM Drive, Windows 7 Home Premium, 42" Sony 1080p Television
i7 (Bloomfield) Overclocking Guide
Originally Posted by Spock
all 64 bit versions of windows suport the capability to run 32 bit apps period
if you look into the amd64 processpr architecture or the intel equivilent you will find that it was designed such that 32 bit software would run nativly on the processor
the only problem you will ever encounter with running a 64bit system is lack of drivers which should be a non problem for more recent hardware
some programs eg older games may have trouble under the new kernal, the price of progress I'm afraid
if you are installing windows 7 and can get 64 bit drivers for everything you want to use install 64bit win7, no point in installing 32 bit if your hardware can support 64 bit
anything that will run on windows 7 32 bit will run on windows 7 64 bit
as far as xp mode goes it was designed to run legacy apps for buisness, not run games, however I have found the various compatability modes work very well for installing older games
I'm currently playing kotor and it is the only game that is having trouble for me under windows 7
Sorry nightkhaos but we're going to have to agree to disagree here because you have a totally different view to 64bit to me. There are going to be a lot of people upgrading to Win7 so they won't necessarily have the newest hardware or even a new machine. Your opinion seems to be that you shouldn't dream of running 64bit on hardware that is more than a couple of years old but is still very good at what it does. Most older hardware works fine under 32bit as the drivers are available for Vista/XP but 64bit is relatively new in the OS world for the everyday user. My Terratec DMX6Fire PCI doesn't work under 64 bit as they haven't produced drivers for it. This is down to each manufacturer. Alternatively my RME Fireface 800 works superbly as RME have always been on the ball with their drivers.
I do a lot of recording and that's where I think you'll find your statement above doesn't hold true. Just because a soundcard is PCI and 3 years old, it doesn't mean you should HAVE to replace it to run 64bit. Some of these cards run into the thousands of pounds and some of the manufacturers are still catching up or just not producing 64 bit drivers. Generally speaking, people don't upgrade their pro level sound cards just to upgrade to a new OS because it's a MASSIVE outlay.
Yes I absolutely agree
I said silver bullet because there are a lot of posts saying that going to 64bit is entirely painless and brings nothing but benefits (I'm not saying your are btw). Yes there are definitely benefits but not everyone will have a smooth ride if they need to run older programs or hardware and the majority of users ARE running older hardware. I am going to have to spend £250+ to replace my software/hardware that doesn't run in 64bit. Or alternatively, I could just roll back to 32bit for a year or so. That's why they produced a 32bit version of Win7, they know that the average PC user generally doesn't want to replace hardware that worked fine in vista.
ASUS P5K Premium || Q6600 || 4Gb RAM || 8800GTS
Fair enough my friend. It is unfortunate that your hardware does not work in Windows 7.
But I think you will find that the majority of users upgrading are also naive and don't know how to maintain old hardware, and will also be running sub-£500 machines that they can easily replace.
Desktop (Cy): Intel Core i7 920 D0 @ 3.6GHz, Prolimatech Megahalems, Gigabyte X58-UD5, Patriot Viper DDR3 6GiB @ 1440MHz 7-7-7-20 2T, EVGA NVIDIA GTX 295 Co-Op, Asus Xonar D2X, Hauppauge WinTV Nova TD-500, 2x WD Caviar Black 1TB in RAID 0, 4x Samsung EcoDrive 1.5TB F2s in RAID 5, Corsair HX 750W PSU, Coolermaster RC-1100 Cosmos Sport (Custom), 4x Noctua P12s, 6x Noctua S12Bs, Sony Optiarc DVD+/-RW, Windows 7 Professional Edition, Dell 2408WFP, Mirai 22" HDTV
MacBook Pro (Voyager): Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.6GHz, 4GiB DDR2 RAM, 200GB 7200RPM HDD, NVIDIA 8600GTM 512MB, SuperDrive, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, 15.4" Matte Display
HTPC (Delta-Flyer): Intel Core 2 Q8200 @ 2.33GHz, Zotec GeForce 9300-ITX, 2GiB of DDR2 Corsair XMS2 RAM, KWorld PE355-2T, Samsung EcoDrive F2 1.5TB, In-Win BP655, Noctua NF-R8, LiteOn BluRay ROM Drive, Windows 7 Home Premium, 42" Sony 1080p Television
i7 (Bloomfield) Overclocking Guide
Originally Posted by Spock
There will always be exceptions. If you're using pro software for professional purposes, the last thing you should be doing is upgrading OS on day one. Expensive hardware should provide you the ability to jump up and down and ask when they'll have drivers, though.
Then again, in theory the companies you pay lots of money to should be up to date on OS support. In practice it's not unusual for them to not even bother starting to support an OS until it's released.
Vista x64 drivers should work in Windows 7, though (although there may be some limitations if using Vista's WDDM 1.0 display drivers instead of 7's WDDM 1.1).
PK
I went for 64 bit in the end, the only thing that didn't work was my ancient Webcam NX Pro that I never used anyway,,,
hello all
would these run on win 7 x64:
office 2007, ms project 03 o7 and maybe visio 7, cad 10 thats the most of it for now. i take it SW that ran of Vista wouldnt necessarly run on 7.
thanks
Office (32bit) works fine on 64 bit windows 7 (you'd expect it to being microsoft as there isn't a 64 bit version of office), don't know about CAD I'm afraid.
thanks a lot as long it works.
dell been a pain in regards to win xp support.
Just out of interest what is everyone's experience of memory footprint for Windows 7? I stuck the 32bit RC on my HTPC just for fun, and I'm pretty impressed that its memory footprint is only ~ 550MB: that's 200 lower than in the Hexus 7 review. Is anyone running both so they could do a comparison for us? I would, but I just don't have the time or energy ro reinstall the OS twice (at the minute, anyway: perhaps I will later... )
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