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To 64 or not to 64, that is the... ummm... ?


Talderon

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Ok all, I did some searching and have not found anything specific to this, but I have not take the plunge to 64 bit OS in any fashion for home use and was hoping for some help.

I just built me a new rig (Core 2 Duo Quad Core CPU, 4GB RAM, nForce 8600 GT 512MB x2, SATA DVD Burner, Seagate 500GB SATA HDD x2) running Vista Ultimate 32 bit currently.

Now, I am a gamer (mostly play WoW, Neverwinter Nights 2, FEAR and a few other games) so I was wondering how well games overall work with 64 bit.

I know that most all my productivity applications work well on 64.

Big question, will I really see a diff?

I use 64 OS's on my servers here, but they are work horses (4 dual cores, 16-64GB RAM and Local/SAN storage out the wazoo) and know it's great, but I never looked at it from a home perspective.

What are some of the pitfalls that I might run into trying out a 64 bit OS?

Thanks!

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From a gaming standpoint many new games have a 64 - bit mode that you will see preformance gains in (crysis, HL2, etc) for many games RAM can be an issue and running in a 64 bit mode helps allievate that problem. i have been running 64 bit for about 3 months now, and have yet to run into a game that has not work (COD4, HL2, War3, WOW, etc) it all depends on how the game was architected.

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Now, I am a gamer (mostly play WoW, Neverwinter Nights 2, FEAR and a few other games) so I was wondering how well games overall work with 64 bit
I have been using Vista Ultimate x64 on my main rig at home as my primary OS since beta 2 (just did a clean install at RTM) and I use it mostly for gaming.

World of Warcraft I play for hours at a time, it performs excellently and is rock-solid in stability (I frequently alt-tab out to browse, check mail, etc. and back in again without any issues too),

NWN2 I installed a few weeks ago and it wasn't as happy - graphics were a little choppy in the cutscenes, occasional crash to desktop during multiplayer games on the LAN.

F.EA.R. worked brilliantly (love that game), for some reason the first expansion pack I had to disable shadows to stop it rendering garbage on the screen, but the second expansion pack worked perfectly on max settings again.

Played the 64-bit Far Cry briefly - to be honest I tend to only notice the image quality improvement when shown side-by-side with the 32-bit version (the rendering goes a lot further into the distance).

Half Life 2 goes natively into 64-bit - works fine, as did Episode 1.

Bioshock, Civilization IV, Sam & Max Episode 1 I have installed and they work without hitches - as does a legacy game like Warcraft 3.

Possible gotcha:

- Some games use a 32-bit runtime kernel driver to implement their copy protection, these will fail to load on 64-bit Windows and so the copy protection check will fail (IIRC "Sacred" was one such game)

As for noticing a difference, difficult to say - the fact that the OS is 64-bit will enable things like hardware DEP and give you kernel patch protection for a little extra stability & security but not really quantifiable differences.

Remember that you cannot upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit, you have to do a clean install.

I was dual-booting with XP x64 during Vista's beta stage, but since RTM I have booted into it twice, maybe.

My new right should arrive in a day or 2, and that will have Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 installed on it alone from clean, fairly similar to the spec you mentioned: Core 2 Duo E6850, 8GB RAM, GeForce 8800 GTS 512, 2x 250GB SATA2

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Mr Snrub,

Thanks for the detailed information! I think I will definately do it this weekend.

Any idea's if Sim City 4 has issues with 64bit? That is about the only game my g/f plays other than WoW, so I want to make sure it works for her.

Thanks!

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There's absolutely no reason i wouldnt recommend x64 environment.. I've been using XP Pro x64 for ages and two weeks ago crossed to Vista Ultimate x64.. and the one or two minor bumps were both easily solvable.. I definately noticed a significant improvement in performance in Crysis from an XP Pro x86 > XP Pro x64 OS (dual boot)... but Vista did slow it back down again.. but that's Vista for you... she's pretty but she'll take you for all that you're worth...

I'd compare the games you expressed... but none of those skip a beat either way on my PC ;)

Edited by gaspah
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