Hey smart computer folk....

[EuroZeroZero]

Originally Posted by the mongoose

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?!?

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?????????

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