midiboy wrote:I don´t quite agree with Helmi when it comes to the benefit of going 64bit with Vista. Ram is sooo cheap these days, 40€ für 2 GB ... and Vista really flies with 8GB RAM for instance since contrary to XP it uses that RAM for its cache. Using Vista with 2 GB RAM should be the minimum requirement for any performance oriented user and even 4 GB cannot be used with 32bit Vista completely so going with 64bit is or will be a reality for lots of people soon.
While I agree with the fact that Vista simply is no fun with less than 2GB of RAM, the question remains whether the average user actually needs more than 4GB of that right now.
Sure, you can go ahead and buy it while it's cheap but if you still don't use it, it's wasted money.
Also, the number of RAM slots is limited on most motherboards, so you may actually want to pick up the largest modules possible so you can keep free slots for future upgrades - however, these sticks are ususally rather expensive.
Also, DDR-3 is around the corner, the question remains when it will have its finaly break-trough.
Investing in a lot of DDR-2 now may be a wrong choice in the long run.
Anyway, if you are using Vista, you aren't using the DriverPacks anyway, so you may just go 64bit regardless
As for caching, what makes you think XP does not use the RAM for that?
What else does it use the RAM for, then?
Also, I'd like to re-state that I do not oppose 64bit architechtures in general.
In fact, I would have loved to see MS release Vista as 64bit only (generally, the CPU required to run it properly also does support 64bit instructions already).
It's just that currently, I see little gains in 64bit and huge drawbacks because of compatibility.
Also, AFAIK the 64bit version of Vista does not let you use unsigned drivers anymore (or so I've read).
That's another plus for the 32bit edition in my book (which still allows non-WHQL drivers!).