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Windows 7 - 32 or 64 bit???

akutad

akutad

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 12, 2008
150
0
London, Ontario, Canada
Not sure if my computer will work with Windows 7 64 bit. I will be upgrading my aluminum(Not Unibody!:eek:) MacBook Pro (Penryn) 2.5 GHz to 640GB Hard Drive and 4GB or 6GB RAM. Any feedback from anyone who has had success installing windows 7 a machine similar to mine. Any help would be wonderful. Cheers!:)
 
I installed Win 7 Pro 64 just fine on my Mac Pro 1,1, which is supposedly not capable of running a 64-bit OS. Try it, it just might work.
 
I also don't know whether I should install 32-bit or 64-bit. I have a C2D MBP with 4GB RAM and will only use Bootcamp for some gaming. Apart from that, I'll use Parallels/VMWare to watch PPStream (online streaming program for Windows), and that's about it as far as Windows go.

Would I benefit at all by installing 64-bit Windows?
 
jon08 said:
But isn't gaming in particular what having a 64-bit OS could benefit from??
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Only if the game has a 64 bit native executable. Crysis had one and it definitely had a performance advantage over the 32bit running on regular x86 XP on the same machine. This was on a PC with 8 gigs of ram, though.

John
 
I put 64 bit on my MBP (not unibody) and it works great. I recommend 64 bit over 32 if you have the opportunity.
 
Camaro6700 said:
I put 64 bit on my MBP (not unibody) and it works great. I recommend 64 bit over 32 if you have the opportunity.
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I do have the opportunity, but since 64-bit takes up twice as much space as the 32-bit version, I'd only install 64-bit if I knew that I would really benefit from it - otherwise it's just a waste of space imo.
 
I've been running various benchmarks and testing both 32 and 64bit flavors and all I can say is that unless you have > 4gig or you have a need for 64bit apps. Go with the 32bit. In vmware, 32bit is faster, and even in bootcamp it (32bit) appears to be a bit faster.
 
maflynn said:
I've been running various benchmarks and testing both 32 and 64bit flavors and all I can say is that unless you have > 4gig or you have a need for 64bit apps. Go with the 32bit. In vmware, 32bit is faster, and even in bootcamp it (32bit) appears to be a bit faster.
Click to expand...

Interesting, thanks!
 
maflynn said:
I've been running various benchmarks and testing both 32 and 64bit flavors and all I can say is that unless you have > 4gig or you have a need for 64bit apps. Go with the 32bit. In vmware, 32bit is faster, and even in bootcamp it (32bit) appears to be a bit faster.
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That's exactly right. However, it's not a very popular opinion. A lot people think that 64 bit is automatically better than 32 just because it's 64. And why not? Eight cylinders is better than 4, four gigs is better than 2, and a terabyte drive is better than a 500gig.

The benefit can be realized, but only if there is more than 4 (not just 4) gigs of physical ram. The real benefit comes when the applications are also 64 bit. A 32 bit application running on a 64 bit OS is still bound by the 32 bit addressing limitation and can't take advantage of the extra usable RAM. Maybe you can run more apps at the same time, but each individual app can only go so far.

John
 
I tried installing Windows 7 32-bit in Bootcamp on my MBP 13" w/ 4GB of RAM. It could only address 2.72gb of RAM. Then I tried 64-bit, and it could address 3.72gb of RAM. So I'd rather have an OS that can address all the max RAM the machine possibly can. 1 vote for 64-bit.
 
melman101 said:
I tried installing Windows 7 32-bit in Bootcamp on my MBP 13" w/ 4GB of RAM. It could only address 2.72gb of RAM. Then I tried 64-bit, and it could address 3.72gb of RAM. So I'd rather have an OS that can address all the max RAM the machine possibly can. 1 vote for 64-bit.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but the additional overhead of WoW64 and the rest of the 64 bit libraries cancels out the benefit of that extra visible ram. If you feel that 64 bit better serves your purposes, then that's great. Stick with it.
 
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