Hey smart computer folk....

[the mongoose]

Just got a computer with a Core 2 Quad running 32-bit Vista Home Premium.

Problem is, I've heard that computers with multiple cores like mine can only use those extra cores with Vista Ultimate.....is that true?!?:mad::confused::confused:

Also, Windows doesn't allow upgrades from 32-bit to 64-bit...and I've heard horror stories about driver issues and system crashes with 64-bit Vista. So, is 32-bit Ultimate going to be enough for most practical video and game useage, or should I be considering a change to 64-bit? So confused.....but I THINK that I may just need to go from 32-bit Home Premium to 32-bit Ultimate....right?????????:confused:

[Kein]

I have a quad core setup running vista home premium as well. I have a processor monitor widget that shows activity on all 4 cores. The only thing 64-bit version will help you with is more than 3 GB of RAM. Atleast thats my understanding.

[EuroZeroZero]

Just got a computer with a QuadCore Duo and it's running 32-bit Vista Home Premium.

Problem is, I've heard that computers with multiple cores like mine can only use those extra cores with Vista Ultimate.....is that true?!?:mad::confused::confused:

Also, Windows doesn't allow upgrades from 32-bit to 64-bit...and I've heard horror stories about driver issues and system crashes with 64-bit Vista. So, is 32-bit Ultimate going to be enough for most practical video and game useage, or should I be considering a change to 64-bit? So confused.....but I THINK that I may just need to go from 32-bit Home Premium to 32-bit Ultimate....right?????????:confused:

Ok. What youre talking about is dual processors. enterprise editions of vista and such support literally 2 processors on the mainboard (think servers). all windows versions support multiple cores. and even then, multi core usage is really an application or game level decision. if your game runs better on a dual/quad core, it doesnt matter what windows is using.

32 vs 64 - i wouldnt worry about it. again, its all application level optimization and gams really havent had marginally more performance using 64 but bus over 32 bit (look at crysis benchmarks for example). plus you have the added headache of finding 64 bit device drivers. not worth it.

what another poster said about limited ram is true. if you have more than 3 gigs (or so) vista will not be able to access it because all 32 bit operationg systems use 32 bit address space. so they can only access (less than 2*32) memory addresses. so if you ahve 4 gigs, tha extra bit wont be used by vista.

but this begs the question, wtf application will you be running that has a > 3 GB memory footprint? even the most intense games dont have need for that much ram. when it comes to ram, what matters would be speed (ram timign and bus speed), not how much.

end result.
windows vista shit edition, 32 bit will perform just as good as windows fucking leet edition 64 bit

[Spooky Shoes]

Problem is, I've heard that computers with multiple cores like mine can only use those extra cores with Vista Ultimate.....is that true?!?:mad::confused::confused:


Untrue.

The only thing 64-bit version will help you with is more than 3 GB of RAM. Atleast thats my understanding.

Untrue. SP1 fixes this with respect to 32bit Vista. With 64 bit the entire OS is 64 bit so performance benefit is immediate potentially used apps aside, driver issues are fewer than they were... nothing a little research can't resolve.

Your Vista key can be used to activate 32 bit or 64 bit installations of vista but to upgrade to Ultimate you must have the respective 32/64 bit Home Premium/Home Basic (Whatever you are upgrading from) Installed and activated first.

[the mongoose]

Thanks for the help yall!!!!:cool:

[Spooky Shoes]

Sorry I forgot to add that SP1 needs to be installed (for both 32 & 64 bit editions) before 4GB of RAM is installed in the system, so install with 2GB, run the updates and then upgrade the RAM.

but this begs the question, wtf application will you be running that has a > 3 GB memory footprint? even the most intense games dont have need for that much ram. when it comes to ram, what matters would be speed (ram timign and bus speed), not how much.


The answer is quite simple: Multi core technology. You can run more (RAM consuming) programs simultaneously, with Vista you can assign a specific core to an application which is pretty damn useful for things like rendering or encoding, not all advancements revolve around games.


end result.
windows vista shit edition, 32 bit will perform just as good as windows fucking leet edition 64 bit

Untrue. It depends on what you are using it for.

[EuroZeroZero]

Sorry I forgot to add that SP1 needs to be installed (for both 32 & 64 bit editions) before 4GB of RAM is installed in the system, so install with 2GB, run the updates and then upgrade the RAM.



The answer is quite simple: Multi core technology. You can run more (RAM consuming) programs simultaneously, with Vista you can assign a specific core to an application which is pretty damn useful for things like rendering or encoding, not all advancements revolve around games.



Untrue. It depends on what you are using it for.

Untrue.

First, SP1 on Vista. It will detect the 4 gigs, and report it as installed memory. But it wont be able to address the 4 gigs (in a 32 bit environment). Its physically IMPOSSIBLE to address the 4 gigs. Heres how you can tell. Vista (whatever) version. 4 gigs of ram. 32 bit. Go into the control panel, and check your system properties. It will report 4 gigs. Then check your task manager, performance tab. Youll see a different number (mine has 3.4 since my BIOS doesnt use that much I/O address space). Thats a far cry from the full 2^32 bytes that i should have addressable.

Second, I was addressing his need for games, mainly. Yes, assigning apps to hardware threads is all fine and dandy, but for mongoose' purposes it's not important, and his question was who i was addressing. Even if you run 10 non game applications at the same time, in terms of performance, youre going to run into any one of many other bottlenecks (like I/O)before you start paging a lot (edit).

Finally, again, for his purposes - all the vista solutions will yeild the exact same performance. This is hands down an undisputable fact. If you're going to consider the 64 vs 32 bit increase, thats great - but benchmark after benchmark has proven that for this generation of apps there is MINIMAL difference. Are you implying that, for whatever use, Vista Ultimate is a better written memory manager or threading functionality than Vista home? BS. You can even assign a core to a process in XP as well. But again, if your apps arent written to create those parallel hardware thread it's useless (years of writing code for the 360 and banging my head against the wall has taught me this)

[Spooky Shoes]

Untrue.
Heres how you can tell. Vista (whatever) version. 4 gigs of ram. 32 bit. Go into the control panel, and check your system properties. It will report 4 gigs. Then check your task manager, performance tab. Youll see a different number ....


In all of the system builds I have looked at over the past few months I have seen this many times, however they have all been the boot loader cracked version of Vista Ultimate (Which affect the way Vista sees the BIOS) running the cracked version of the Dell RTM SP1, however this is not the case for all as in that I haven't noticed this limitation in legitimate OS installs there are many factors but I will admit that I simply may not have looked, I will check when convenient however.


Its physically IMPOSSIBLE to address the 4 gigs.


Untrue.

Provided that the chipset and BIOS support it the limit is more like 2^36 as in some of the other 32 bit Microsoft (PAE) OS's, this may have been incorporated into SP1. Honestly I have no idea if it was incorporated or not, nor do I care the thing I was getting at is that it could have been.


Second, I was addressing his need for games, mainly. Yes, assigning apps to hardware threads is all fine and dandy, but for mongoose' purposes it's not important, and his question was who i was addressing.

Have you ever had someone ask you "Would this be OK for a gaming machine?", you say that it should be fine and a week or so later they ask you about something completely unrelated to gaming that should be running better on their new Gee wizz machine? Well I just wasn't making assumptions, just trying to be informative, information which I quantified as outside of gaming.

Even if you run 10 non game applications at the same time, in terms of performance, youre going to run into any one of many other bottlenecks (like I/O)before you start paging a lot (edit).

True and also a part of what I said, I was only thinking of 2~3 encoding type apps running alongside the usual but paging is less of an issue on a 64 bit system, no?


Finally, again, for his purposes - all the vista solutions will yeild the exact same performance. This is hands down an undisputable fact. If you're going to consider the 64 vs 32 bit increase, thats great - but benchmark after benchmark has proven that for this generation of apps there is MINIMAL difference.

There is a minimal difference running 32 bit apps on a 64 bit Vista system because the 32 bit app pretty much runs in an emulation mode which requires an overhead by the 64 bit system, this overhead would in normal circumstance (IE 32 bit emulated on 32 bit system) would make it slower however the OS itself is faster which brings the difference down to minimal. It's like expecting a PS2 game to be better on a PS3, it won't. If you have a 64 bit OS you go for the 64 bit apps not the 32 (Where choice allows).


Are you implying that, for whatever use, Vista Ultimate is a better written memory manager or threading functionality than Vista home? BS.


Not at all and I really have no idea where you got that impression from? I didn't even mention Ultimate.


You can even assign a core to a process in XP as well.


Indeed, something that I almost mentioned but thought irrelevant to the thread.


But again, if your apps arent written to create those parallel hardware thread it's useless (years of writing code for the 360 and banging my head against the wall has taught me this)

Tri-state buffers were my watershed moment, ON, Off and Between states ... messed up TTL forever.

[viddy]

Get.....a.....Mac.....



Sorry, had to say it. :D

[stimpee]

No differences in memory management or core management in any of the versions of Vista, from Home Basic thru to Ultimate. They all handle quad core and the ram they have identically. The 32bit versions are all limited to 4GB ram (even if they cant really access all of it). The 64bit versions of Home Basic are limited to 8GB and the others 16GB.

I run Vista Business 64bit with 4GB ram (on a Core 2 Duo E6600) and its just flies. The 64bit drivers were easy to find and run very smoothly. 64bit XP drivers have been around for 3 or 4 years now and Vista 64bit drivers are usually available these days. Finding x64 versions of all apps is a different thing, but 32bit apps run just fine if not.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Windows_Vista_Basic__Home_Premium_Ultimate_Whats_t he_Difference
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/choose.mspx