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VISTA 64bit Best Out The Lot

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AngelfireUk83

Member
Joined
Nov 7, 2004
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36100

According to memory manufacturers they all reckon the 64bit version of VISTA is the way to go. Now this has to be (in my opinion) the shabbiest excuse to make people buy there memory modules. For a start most people nowadays have a 64bit CPU PC (excluding me but I will get round to it when I feel the time is right). So technically people using XP 32bit or Linux etc are not getting the full potential out of the hardware unless your using XP 64 (fare enough).

The other problem is about using a 64bit op system is the crap driver support (and people with XP 64 I feel on the amount of stress it causes getting hardware drivers for it I know I've done it). If your gonna get VISTA 64 1st things 1st make sure the drivers and support is up to scratch first then maybe just maybe it'll take off.

Whats the point in memory manufacturers saying the 64bit is the best choice. When you need to make sure your Motherboard, Graphics cards, hard drives, optical drivers & so on so forth work as well.
 
Wel las far as 64bit driver support AFAIK most all recent hardware comes with 64bit drivers. Last few motherboards I have gotten did. The new Creative soundcards do, video card companies do. My printer had 64bit support from the get go.

The only thing I have seen with 64bit issues now (except old hardware) is webcams. Logitech and creative are releasing 64 bit drivers for their webcams, so again its a matter of old technology.

Granted if you have a legacy device that you can not live without, then yes, 64 bit is not for you. If you are buying your first computer in 5 years... or have no problem replacing legacy devices, then 64 is absolutely the way to go. (Its nice not needing to F6 to install to raid too :) )
 
actually printers normally dont have 64 bit drivers. even this summer HP didnt have most of any 64 bit drivers. not for my printer
 
Most people that have tested Vista 64 vs Vista x86 agree that it is far faster. If you've used Vista, you'd know how horribly slow it is compared to XP. So if Vista 64 can practically mimic the speeds (and even increase it in games optimized for 64), then I would agree that Vista 64 is the best out of the lot.

I would be glad to see a full industry push for larger memory capacity and 64 bit implimentation though!

Vista will only get better with time, while I don't see XP getting any more efficient. Now if only Nvidia got their act together on driver support...
 
Cheator said:
Install Windows xp 64 and try it. That is proof enough that driver support sucks.

I think that XP64 driver support must have dramatically improved in the very recent past, as the only drivers I was not able to find were for my 6-year old Microtek scanner and my generic Taiwan security camera DVR. Everything else, including my 7-year old HP940C printer works just fine.

The 64-bit version of Vista Beta RC2 which I installed on my HTPC had no driver support issues either, with the possible exception of my Creative external sound card, which seems quite happy reproducing perfect 5.1 surround sound using the built-in Vista drivers.

Although the only real advantage offered by the 64-bit version TODAY is the ability use large amounts of RAM*, I'd still recommend it over the 32-bit version for those without legacy hardware for the sake of future-proofing.

gangaskan said:
actually printers normally dont have 64 bit drivers. even this summer HP didnt have most of any 64 bit drivers. not for my printer

You may want to check again. When I was looking at new printers, all of the HP models I was looking at online had drivers available for 64-bit XP and Vista, and as I mentioned, even my ancient 940C works fine.

Fireside85281 said:
Now if only Nvidia got their act together on driver support...

Actually I went with the Quadro over the FireGL, because Nvidia has WQL-Certified 64-bit drivers for both Windows XP x64 and W2K3 64, while ATI has nothing...I suppose it's all realtive...


*While 32-bit OSs state that they can support up to 4GB, only 3GB are available to the OS, and of that 3GB, a certain amount is allocated to board resources such as pci, pci-e, pci-x, resulting in 2.75-2.95GB available, regardless of amount of RAM installed.
 
Cheator said:
Install Windows xp 64 and try it. That is proof enough that driver support sucks.

Has worked great for me for over a year now.

But that won't matter much to me in about 15 hours when my Vista Ultimate X64 finishes downloading from MSDN.
 
When i put Vista 64 into my dell xps600 it had drivers for EVERYTHING default in it.

Vista will have much better driver support then XP64 - Xp 64 was a failure, why little companies support it.

the only thing was my creative card, which took some time to get working.
 
Fireside85281 said:
Most people that have tested Vista 64 vs Vista x86 agree that it is far faster. If you've used Vista, you'd know how horribly slow it is compared to XP.

If you were running Vista 32-Bit RC1 or RC2, you were running in DEBUG mode. The RTM is rumored to be JUST as snappy as XP (or more so).

64 Bit will ABSOLUTELY be more secure than any 32-bit OS as MS has put their foot down on Kernel Hooks in the 64-Bit Version (but left it wide open in Vista 32 Bit :rolleyes: ) . I think I will jump in on Vista 64 once things get going smoothly...

:cool:
 
I'll run 32-bit Vista then jump over to 64-bit when more drivers and programs will run it nicely, unless it will run the majority (not what was happening with the beta) and hopfully we could turn off some of those damn security features. Thats the issue I had with the 64 when I tried it, there was so much security on it, it was more annoying then helpful.
 
myarrowsaim said:
Has worked great for me for over a year now.

But that won't matter much to me in about 15 hours when my Vista Ultimate X64 finishes downloading from MSDN.

In response to both guys that quoted me, it certianly has improved recently, and it CAN work great, if you have a certain setup. But I couldn't get my onboard Nics working on my A8R32-mvp on x64, and my Sounblaster Live 5.1 did not have support either. Plus, back when i tried it, nothing worked at all.

But it cannot be denied that people did have issues with it. Driver support was bad and it still isn't as good as it should be.
 
Cheator said:
But it cannot be denied that people did have issues with it. Driver support was bad and it still isn't as good as it should be.

I'm sure that part of the reason for this is simply supply and demand. With Vista being the primary focus of MS efforts and a 64-bit version being rolled out at the launch, rather than an afterthought, I'll be willing to bet that we'll see far more drivers being developed far more quickly for Vista 64 than we did for XP 64.
 
Yup! How many XP users do you think ran XP-64? MAYBE 0.05%? Manufacturers didn't want to fuss with Driver Development for such a small target market (just like Crackers don't write Virii for Mac ;) ).

MS has shown that Vista 64 will be a stong, SECURE, and popular (eventually) platform, and 64 Bit Driver Support will increase exponentially over the next few months IMO...

:cool:
 
For all the people that complain about driver support.. I would just like to clarify 2 things...

a) Its up to your 3rd party maunfacturer to supply drivers... MS offers frees upport to devleop those drivers.. .ifthey dont want to spend money to send their engineers to do it... what does that say about their loyalty to you?

b) If youwant to run 10 yr old technology.. then why are you even posting in this thread? No one is going to build a PC now a days and use 10 yr old technology (ala soundblaster Live!)


Hello does no one else remember this same S** going on in 2001?
 
Last edited:
Neur0mancer said:
Hello does no one else remember this same S** going on in 2001?

I don't remember this big of an issue back then. Everything was at least partialy supported. Going from 32-bit to 32-bit is relatively easy. Going from 32-bit to 64-bit is another story.
 
myarrowsaim said:
installing vista ultimate x64 right now

wut wut

Which release is that? I'm curios, since I probably will try 64-bit when I do get Vista just to give it a whirl and if it doesn't work right i'll go 32-bit of course til when the time is right.
 
deathman20 said:
Which release is that? I'm curios, since I probably will try 64-bit when I do get Vista just to give it a whirl and if it doesn't work right i'll go 32-bit of course til when the time is right.

Release?

It is the final version of vista ultimate x64

Ultimate has all of the home stuff and all of the enterprise stuff in it. Cream of the crop.

It was one of the easiest installs I have ever done. It was quick and painless. So far its nice eye candy.
 
myarrowsaim said:
Release?

It is the final version of vista ultimate x64

Ultimate has all of the home stuff and all of the enterprise stuff in it. Cream of the crop.

Why I was asking is because personal versions (home, home professional and ultimate) will not released until Jan 30th. Only corporations have access to the 2 versions out currenlty.
 
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