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How-To Geek Forums / Windows 7

Do I need Windows 7 32bit or 64bit?

(5 posts)
  • Started 3 years ago by Gurgel
  • Latest reply from cobija
  • Topic Viewed 1047 times

Gurgel
Posts: 1

Hi everybody,
I have a Acer Aspire 5110 Laptop with an AMD Turion 64 MK-36 processor (2,0 GHz, 512 KB L2-Cache, 31 W TDP) and 3 GB RAM.

Now I am wondering if I should upgrade to the 32 bit or the 64 bit version of Windows 7. The Microsoft tool ("upgrade advisor") says that both versions are possible.

Which advantages/disadvantages would each version have? Is the 64 bit version faster than the 32 bit version? What about driver/software compatibilty?

Thanks a lot for your help!

Posted 3 years ago #
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LH
LH
Posts: 20002

Gurgel hi. You should check driver availability first, that 64bit drivers are available for every device in your machine.
If they are not, well, problem solved.

Edit. I looked at the UK and US sites. They are not showing W7 drivers yet !

Posted 3 years ago #
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whs
whs
Posts: 17584

At this time, I would go for 32bit. On the various forums I see a lot of problems with 64bit. Not only drivers, but also programs that do not run. And with 3GB of RAM, there is no need for 64bit anyhow.

Posted 3 years ago #
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Chalboy
Chalboy
Posts: 4

I've just installed win7 64bit on my homebuilt machine, it seems a bit nippier, however support for 64 bit is not yet at its prime.

I'm having problems with my WiFi dongle compatable driver (posted on the forum).

Also 64 bit applications are quite sparce and not fully supported, an example would be Firefox - the 64bit benchmark tests result in pages loading a few ms faster, however Adobe are behind with flash not being compatable with 64bit Firefox...

Especially with a laptop, I doubt there would be much gain in going 64 bit... what with the stress of finding working drivers.

Hopefully 64 bit architecture will become more popular and wider supported, can defo see the benafits in it!

Posted 3 years ago #
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cobija
Posts: 331

gurgel, i recommend if you are not upgrading ram, stay with 32 bit. the reason being is that all software was first made for 32 bit. when 64 bit came out, there were ALOT of software capibilities. now there are less, but still there is a significant amount. 64 bit is meant for people that want <4GB of ram, cause 4gb is the most 32 bit can handle.

Posted 3 years ago #
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