a few questions about 64bit system

[russellwhite2007]

Hi I have a 64x cpu so I'm looking at going over to a 64bit os (xp home).

I've been told that a 64bit os would use my cpu much better as a 32bit is only using half of it, Is this right?

I have 4gb of ram which would give me the extra 1gb under the 64bit altough my m/b can take 8gb I'll look at upgrading the ram later.

I also have a 8500gt 512mb vid card.

Now how would trs run on 64bit system and would I need anything to make other programs work under a 64bit os as I know theres alot of people saying theres alot of programs that don't work with a 64bit os.

Any help you can give me on this please pros and cons etc.

Many thnaks in advance
Rusty.

 

[psycho_aussie]

Using a 32 bit os doesn't mean that only half the CPU is being used. A 32 bit os won't use some of the 64 bit specific features, so you are probably losing between 1/4 to 1/3 of the functionality. The 64 bit os will let you use 4Gb of ram.

TRS 04, 06 and TC run great on my Vista Ultimate x64 system. XP Home, as far as I know, isn't a 64 bit os. The only XP version that was 64 bit was XP x64 Edition. I would recommend looking at Vista Home Premium.

The video card is good, but I believe the GeForce 8600GT and 8600GTX are better cards. You should probably consider upgrading the video card soon (™), but it should do for now.

Most programs these days will run on a 64 bits os, but some of the older programs that haven't been updated may not. NT Compatible.com (http://ntcompatible.com/compatibility.html) has a list of most programs and games, and shows if they are compatible with 64 bit os'.

Chris

 

[johnwhelan]

Hi I have a 64x cpu so I'm looking at going over to a 64bit os (xp home).

I've been told that a 64bit os would use my cpu much better as a 32bit is only using half of it, Is this right?

I have 4gb of ram which would give me the extra 1gb under the 64bit altough my m/b can take 8gb I'll look at upgrading the ram later.

I also have a 8500gt 512mb vid card.

Now how would trs run on 64bit system and would I need anything to make other programs work under a 64bit os as I know theres alot of people saying theres alot of programs that don't work with a 64bit os.

Any help you can give me on this please pros and cons etc.

Many thnaks in advance
Rusty.

For the moment I'd stay with 32 bit XP, buying a 64 bit operating system will not buy you anything in performance.

A computer instruction tells the computer what to do. If you can get enough information in a 32 bit instruction for the computer to do the task that's all you need. A 64 bit instruction just is a bit longer and takes longer to decode etc. In general your graphic card uses much shorter simpler instructions by the way.

The trouble with 64 bit instructions is you can load two 32 bit instructions into the cpu in the same time so unless you have some specific requirement for 64 bit software I'd stay with the 32 bit xp.

This may change with TRS2009 I'm trying to coax Auran into changing a complier setting that would permit the same version of 32 bit of TRS2009 to use 2 gigs of memory under 32 bit XP and 4 gigs of memory under a 64 bit operating system. Since memory is one of the bottlenecks of Trainz then it makes logical sense to do it.

Also TRS2009 does its graphics differently, if you can hold off a couple of months we should know a lot more about which cards it works best with.

Cheerio John