Windows 7 64-bit Creeping Up on 32-bit Installs
More bits, more better.
Upgrading to Windows 7? Did you go with the 64-bit or the 32-bit version? We're guessing that lots of you went for the 64-bit, as that's slowly creeping up to become the majority of Windows 7 installations.
According to data released by Microsoft, 46 percent of all Windows 7 installs are the 64-bit version. This is a huge jump over the 11 percent of 64-bit installs for Windows Vista and the less than 1 percent for Windows XP.
Windows community guy Brandon LeBlanc explained why more bits are better: "A primary benefit of 64-bit Windows is the increase in addressable memory. This makes more 'bits' available to Windows, which means more information can be 'addressed at once. 32-bit architectures have a memory ceiling of 4GB while the 64-bit architecture increases the memory ceiling to approximately 17.2 billion GB or RAM! Windows 7 is designed to use up to 192 GB of RAM, a huge jump compared to limits with all 32-bit systems.
"Essentially, 64-bit Windows allows your PC to take advantage of more memory to do more things. If you are like me and are running tons of apps, you can see a real difference in performance. Aside from the performance gains, there are also security enhancements and support for virtualization as well."
The growth in 64-bit can be attributed to a couple things. One, price of RAM, while not at a low-point right now, is still cheaper that what we paid during the launch of Windows Vista. Secondly, 77 percent of PCs sold at retail in April 2010 with Windows 7 came preinstalled with the 64-bit OS, according to NPD.
We want to hear from those of you who are running 32-bit Windows 7. Tell us why you're still behind that 4GB barrier!
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not a huge surprise really, 4Gb of memory is entry level now...
I'm running 32Bit Win7 on the netbook, because it was the first thing that came to hand off my MSDN subscription. I'm using the 64Bit install on the desktop, along with the XP64 and OpenSUSE installs. The Netbook won't support more than 2Gb of RAM, and it came with Win7 Starter *shudder*.
The biggest barrier you have not mentioned was the availability of 64 bit drivers.
You could want 64 bit before but you had no driver support not even from the bigger manufacturers.
At start of Windows 7 it was still a bit waggly about drivers but the beta stage was just enough for the major manufacturers to squeeze even if partially bugged 64 bit drivers.
Now the 64 bit driver market has matured and there is no reason to not go 64 bit even if u have 2 gb or ram, except for the random unknown manufacturer not having 64 bit drivers yet most hardware is ok and now strongly evolving.
I'm x64 all the way and have been since vista.
I have 2 pc's running windows 7 x64, one with 8GB RAM and the other with 6GB RAM and I wouldn't go back to 32bit.
I'd agree that in the beginning the driver support was very poor at best but now there are 64bit drivers for just about everything. I have had an issue with a memory card reader I bought about 6 months ago but it was poor quality and an unknown chinese brand so I ended up just binning it anyways.
The main incompatability I have is with very old games which I have given up trying to install these days, I accept that to be a very small price to pay for the very fast and stable systems I run today.
It's been a long time since my PC's crashed on me, I can't remember the last time :-)
I would like windows 8 and beyond to be x64 only to accelerate uptake and to rid us of backwards compatability requirements, It's time to move forward and leave 32bit in the history books where it belongs :-) lol
64-bit since XP. Only driver issue I ever had was with a Microsoft webcam - go figure.
Been using 64Bit on my work PC since XP x64, jumped to vista x64 , for 5-6 weeks then back to XP until W7 x64. Never had a problem with any software that I use or drivers.
64 bit is the only way to go if you need to handle large amounts of memory (Currently 48GB), but still not seeing much use of 64bit compiled apps.
x64 for the RAM barrier, I had no problems with drivers and it works wonderfully. +32bit apps work with no problems at all.
Windows XP 64 bit was shockingly bad!
Windows XP 64 bit was shockingly bad!
nah, wasn't too bad actually. Really just Server 2k3 with an XP front end on if the service packs for it are anything to go by. Personally I only moved to it because it was that or 64Bit 2k3 Server (running 8Gb back then), and XP64 was somewhat cheaper!
64 bit is slowly gaining its deserved recognition