Renzatic on 5/5/2009 at 20:44
One quick question here. I'm about to do the pain in the ass process of reinstalling everything, and I'm thinking about going 64 bit. The only thing barring me from doing so is I only have 2 gig of ram. Is that enough to get by comfortably until I upgrade, or should I throw in a couple more gig before making the plunge?
thefonz on 5/5/2009 at 21:08
If any app needs more than 2gigs of Ram that isnt some high profile swanky graphics design software (or the shit Nasa uses to monitor the Space Shuttle), then it probably isnt worth it.
On the other hand, I'm jonesing to try this Win 7 malarky out. Currently sporting Vista on my desktop pc and a very very heavily modified version of xp pro on my laptop. Is Windows 7 worth the plunge? Hmm...its possible to dual boot it on my laptop?
Also correct me if i'm wrong - but this will expire in a years time no?
Renzatic on 5/5/2009 at 21:34
Well, I do use alot of fancy stuff. Just to be on the safe side, I'll stick with 32 bit for now and upgrade later.
As for 7, think of it as Vista that's gone to the gym and got a tummy tuck and got a nifty new Superbar. Unless you're really paranoid about stuff that may or may not arise and fuck your happy world over, I don't see a reason why you would want to dual boot Vista and 7 at the same time. I say get it and do an upgrade.
Disclaimer: While I haven't had any problems with it (besides getting Gothic 2 to run), it could very well rear up and kill you out of spite. You never know
And yeah, it's good til June 2010. Though I believe around March or April next year, it'll begin to shut itself down every two hours to remind the hangers on to either upgrade or go back to XP before the final hour arrives.
Fafhrd on 6/5/2009 at 01:38
2 gigs should be fine for 64bit. 64bit Vista is actually slightly less RAM hungry than 32-bit, iirc, so I imagine Win7 is the same. 64-bit also doesn't have the 2 gigabyte page file limitation (unless that's been sorted in 32 bit Win7), so that's a slight bonus.
I was actually running Vista64 with 2gigs RAM up until last week without any real trouble (admittedly I only used Vista for Company of Heroes, DoWII, Crysis, Riddick, and HD .mkvs). The only reason I upgraded to 4 is because my brother's got more than 2 gigs, and playing co-op DoWII kind of sucked because his load times were significantly faster, and I'd end up hearing story bits through the phone before I got to them.
You're tempting me to try Win7 out, but I think I'll wait until it's finalized, and see if I can get a legit copy for free, like I did Vista (thanks, Live! Search Club!).
Aja on 6/5/2009 at 02:31
Running the release candidate now. Doesn't seem especially different, but somehow feels closer to a final product: it's the little things, like the new desktop backgrounds (which are awesome) and new sound schemes (that I'll never use).
I used the Windows File transfer wizard to back up my stuff before the reformat... man I should've used it earlier. This was the fastest reformat/reinstall I've ever done.
Koki on 6/5/2009 at 08:06
But it's not as kathartic.
The Brain on 6/5/2009 at 12:10
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
2 gigs should be fine for 64bit. 64bit Vista is actually slightly
less RAM hungry than 32-bit, iirc, so I imagine Win7 is the same. 64-bit also doesn't have the 2 gigabyte page file limitation (unless that's been sorted in 32 bit Win7), so that's a slight bonus.
...
Actually underlying file system sets size limit on
single page file. Under FAT32 it is 4 GB.
[QUOTE="(
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx) Mark's Blog : Pushing the Limits of Windows: Virtual Memory]A couple of final limits related to virtual memory are the maximum size and number of paging files supported by Windows. 32-bit Windows has a maximum paging file size of 16TB (4GB if you for some reason run in non-PAE mode) and 64-bit Windows can having paging files that are up to 16TB in size on x64 and 32TB on IA64. For all versions, Windows supports up to 16 paging files, where each must be on a separate volume.
Renzatic on 6/5/2009 at 16:29
Quote Posted by Fafhrd
2 gigs should be fine for 64bit. 64bit Vista is actually slightly
less RAM hungry than 32-bit, iirc, so I imagine Win7 is the same.
I've always thought it was the opposite. 64-bit programs by default take up more ram to execute, but how much more has been the big mystery question I've never gotten a straight answer for. I've heard everything from 10% more on average, to 64 bit is twice 32 bit so olol x2 ram, all the way to GEEGS AND GEEGS OMG. Basically enough varying crap to make me wary, and keep me from upgrading til I have a goodly amount stuffed in my comp to back me up.
Anyway, I got impatient and wanted to try it out like now, so I went with 32 bit. My experiences so far are about the same as Aja's. The beta was as solid and speedy as you could hope, and the RC hasn't done anything to change that. MS just tightened the screws, gave it a spit shine, and sent it on its merry way. No complaints here, cept the UAC seems a bit more aggressive than it was before.
And I still can't run Gothic 2. :mad:
Quote:
You're tempting me to try Win7 out, but I think I'll wait until it's finalized, and see if I can get a legit copy for free, like I did Vista (thanks, Live! Search Club!).
Free? I like free! I want more details. :D
Fafhrd on 7/5/2009 at 01:27
Quote Posted by The Brain
Actually underlying file system sets size limit on
single page file. Under FAT32 it is 4 GB.
Sorry, I meant paged pool memory, not page file size. Paged pool is locked to 2 gigabytes under 32-bit XP and Vista (unless you use the /3gb boot.ini switch). 64-bit has a max of 128 gigabytes.
32-bit OSes also reserve a chunk of RAM for PCI or some garbage so, for example: despite my 4 gigs of RAM, XP x32 says I only have 3.25 available, while Vista x64 reports the full 4 gigs. (this may only apply when RAM exceeds a certain amount, because when I only had 2 gigs, XP said I had 2 gigs.)
Quote:
Free? I like free! I want more details.
(
http://club.live.com/Pages/Prizes/Prize_Mall.aspx?tab=all+prizes#AllPrizes_5001andUpTickets) Live Search Club. Back when they first started, that copy of Vista Ultimate was only 5000 tickets or something silly. Somebody realized that they were giving away
Vista Ultimate for almost no work on the players part, so they initially jacked the ticket price up and changed it to Home Premium. I managed to get Ultimate for the lower cost after about a week of playing the little crossword puzzle game.
