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To 64bit or not to 64bit (need some advice)

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To 64bit or not to 64bit (need some advice)

from Sins Forums
I've been debating whether or not should bite the 64-bit bullet and upgrade from vista 32 to vista 64. I'm just looking to improve my gaming performance really. Here are my specs:

Current-Gen Macbook Pro:
2.5 GHz C2D
4GB DDR 2 667 MHz Dual-Channel RAM
512MB Nvidia 8600M GT
250GB 5,400 RPM HDD
Currently running Vista32 SP1 on a 100GB partition

The games I currently am playing and would like to see a performance boost:
Sins of a Solar Empire
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
Crysis (Which I hear benefits from 64bit)
Medieval II Total War (+ Total War kingdoms)

So what do yall think? The downside of course is that I'd have to erase all of my data (Which means HOURS of reinstalling programs), and the fact that 64 bit is still young and might not be the best option. What should I do?
85,411 views 28 replies
Reply #26 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You may wonder why more resourceintensive games don't crash. They are programmed to take RAM from the videocard instead. That's a workaround which drives up the graphiccard system req a bit.


Nonsense. Videocard memory cannot be directly accessed by the CPU; it has to go through a DMA operation, which takes a rather long time. Also, for any graphically intensive game, videocard memory is too precious to use up main memory for. You don't want to tell your modelers to half their vertex counts just because you want to put some game data into VRAM.
Reply #27 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You may wonder why more resourceintensive games don't crash.


These days, the OS is partially responsible for stability. In the case of memory, modern OSes deal with low memory conditions by moving some memory to the hard drive when the memory is full. You may see a considerable slowdown when memory is full, but you shouldn't see a crash. Even when both are full, however, I've noticed that the OS will shut down the offending applications rather than crash the entire system.
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Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top
I too love my 64 bit system and I've had no issues.

Bear in mind that more and more games / programs will be tailored for it in the future.

For right now, as others have said, you'll not really see a big improvement in speed.

As for your data, why oh WHY would you have it on the same partition as your games and programs?

If you do upgrade then make sure you partition!

My computer has the following partitions:

C - OS and programs
D - Data
G - Games
M - Music
V - Videos

Reinstalling my OS, etc. is a breeze and I don't lose any data.

Good luck.

Cheers.