like the title and topic description says, i have 4gb of ram for my new build...i read that the 32-bit versions do not use all 4gb but rather 2-3.5gb...so my question is should i just stick with a 32-bit os vista or xp OR should i go ahead and purchase XP---- 64-bit or vista home premium 64-bit. Keep in mind this is a gaming pc!
Do all PC games made after 2006 support 64 bit, or are they made individually? if so, wouldn't they be a bit rare / more expensive?
it doesn't really matter as game performance is largely limited by video card performance and not CPU performance. Going for IA32 to IA64 got something like a 5% boost to CPU performance in games and that's nothing. that said more and more games support 64bit addressing but not all do and quite frankly I don't even think about it it's not that important of a thing. Also 32bit and 64bit versions are usually included on the same disc/download. also price is seemingly unaffected.
well ive checked out the driver support for the parts of my new build and it seems they all have the vista 64-bit drivers for download on their websites...seems like ill be picking up vista home premium 64-bit on monday
2^16 = 65536bytes = 64KB 2^32 = 4294967296 = 4GB(but some is lost to overhead and the like; 4GB is the absolute theoretical max) 2^64 = 18446744073709551616bytes = 16exabytes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit
they support pretty much everything. it's just that the drivers in xp IA32 are better than in XP/2003 IA64 and better than vistaIA32 and vista IA64
when i went visat 64 my gfx card and sound card werent recgonized..so i went back to xp 64. drivers are a real big issue when switching between 32 and 64
