I have a 2.8 Octo Mac Pro with 4 GB RAM and Geforce 6800GT. Right now I have 32-bit Vista Ultimate. I see that Bootcamp 2.1 now supports 64-bit versions of Windows. Should I upgrade to the 64-bit version? Would I notice any difference? I have a friend who would buy my 32-bit version, so it isn't l like I'd be losing all of money from the old one, just some. What do you guys think?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Should I get Vista 64?
- Thread starter c073186
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
With 4GB of RAM, you likely will not notice much difference since Windows will be able to access 3-3.5GB of it. I use 8GB on my HP workstations and Vista/XP 64 is snappier since it can really exercise that extra 4.5-5GB of memory.
I don't know if you would notice a difference or not but I also own Vista Ultimate and it came with both. The 32 bit and the 64 bit. Where did you buy ours that you don't have the second disk
I don't know if you would notice a difference or not but I also own Vista Ultimate and it came with both. The 32 bit and the 64 bit. Where did you buy ours that you don't have the second disk
I bought mine from Newegg, OEM. Should I have received the 64-bit version?
Not unless you asked for it specially.
I assume you're using Vista Ultimate.
To be honest that and the fact that you can use it on multiple machines are the only advantages of the retail version over the OEM editions.
If you have plans to buy more RAM, then it'll mean you don't have to reinstall Vista to take advantage of the additional RAM. It might be worth doing for that. If you plan to stick to 4Gb for the foreseeable future, then it's not really worth it.
And as ^ said, sequentially and not consecutively OEM licenses are essentially non-portable, although moving it around is technically only a violation of the EULA.
And as ^ said, sequentially and not consecutively
OEM licenses are essentially non-portable, although moving it around is technically only a violation of the EULA.It would only Really be a difference with a few gigs more of ram otherwise there isn't too much of an advantage of running 64-Bit.
Not sure if you just "NEED" Vista for something... but XP will run circles around it from a raw performance standard. ESPECIALLY if you right click on My Computer... go into advanced and choose "best performance" and turn all the goofy green Microsoft "Eye Candy" off.
Runs incredibly fast on my Quad 2.8 2008!
Runs incredibly fast on my Quad 2.8 2008!
It's not scientific, but I have always ran 32-bit Vista (Boot Camp and VMWare Fusion) until recently when I installed Vista 64-bit instead, and there seems to be a major difference in how 'snappy' Vista 64-bit seems to boot, load in from the password screen and shut down etc, it just FEELS much faster. I was quite surprised to notice any difference at all.
Running an OS via virtualization should always offer poorer performance than running it natively since you have the "host" OS' overhead, as well.
I installed XP Pro 32 which I ran for a few weeks before installing Vista 64. I notice a big speed increase especially when running DirectX10 games. The OP probably purchased Vista 32 which being an OEM version is not subject to the $10 64 bit disk from Microsoft that the retail versions do. However the savings by buying OEM are very much worth it (when was the last time you called Microsoft technical support line?) For me it was when I installed Windows 95!!!
Alan
Some of that can be attributed to more aggressive "superfetching / prefetching".
When you juxtapose how much vista 64 loads into system memory in comparison to vista 32 it´s pretty clear why big apps launch that quickly (over time).