Gordon Laing

Vista is Microsoft’s first desktop operating system to be made available in 32- and 64-bit versions from day one.

If you buy a retail copy of Vista Home Basic, Home Premium or Business, you’re entitled to order a copy of the 64-bit DVD for a so-called minimal fee, while owners of the retail Vista Ultimate should find the disc already in the box.

Given that most of us have processors that have long understood 64-bit instructions and there are 64-bit drivers for mainstream hardware, we’re ready for the 64-bit experience, right? Not quite. Our PCs may be ready but it would appear we’re not yet willing. Most Vista owners are still running 32-bit versions.

There are many reasons for this. If you bought Vista preinstalled, you may not have the option to order the disc. There’s also the annoying fact that you can’t upgrade from a 32-bit to a 64-bit OS without performing a clean reinstall. Then there are bigger concerns over application support, drivers for less common hardware and ultimately the question of what benefit you can expect from 64-bit in practice.

So what is 64-bit Vista like? Until recently I’d built 64-bit test systems but returned to my main 32-bit work PC to write them up. No longer. For the past two months I’ve been exclusively running 64-bit Vista on my main PC and forced myself to work through any problems. Here’s how it worked out.

The main benefit of 64-bit operating systems is support for lots of Ram and this greatly appealed to me. 32-bit Windows desktop operating systems support up to 4GB of Ram but in practice can use about 3.2GB of it. In contrast, Vista Ultimate 64-bit can support more than 128GB of Ram.

My Asus P5W DH Deluxe could accommodate 8GB in its four slots. Four 2GB Dimms were beyond me but I complemented a pair of 1GB Dimms with a pair of 2GB Dimms from Crucial, giving a respectable total of 6GB. After enabling Memory Remapping in the Bios, I was ready to go.

Vista Ultimate 64-bit appeared to install fine on my system and reassuringly reported the full 6GB of Ram available. I also found 64-bit drivers for all my hardware, including the graphics, audio, network and Raid 5 controller - although drivers for the latter were only recently released. Ironically, the only device that didn’t work smoothly was my Microsoft VX-1000 webcam, bought when 32-bit Vista refused to talk to my old model.

Microsoft offers 64-bit drivers for this webcam but at the time of writing they conflicted with installations with more than 4GB of Ram. Luckily this is a known glitch and Microsoft has issued a hotfix for it, although you need to personally request it. I hope it soon becomes a standard Windows Update.

With my hardware running it was time to check the application support. None of the applications I commonly use are available in 64-bit, so I was stuck with running the 32-bit versions under emulation. This worked better that I expected, with no problems on programs such as Office, Photoshop, Premiere and Dreamweaver.

Since 32-bit applications are limited in their memory addressing though, you may wonder if there’s any benefit to running them under a 64-bit OS with lots of Ram. Fortunately when the 32-bit application runs out of real Ram and thinks it’s requesting disk-based virtual memory, 64-bit Vista actually caches it into spare Ram instead.

Considerable performance benefits can result and I’ve detailed my experience with Photoshop in this month’s Hands On Hardware column. Beyond huge graphic files, my 64-bit system felt more responsive day to day than my 32-bit system.

Two months later I’m convinced 64-bit Vista was the right move. I’m disappointed there are no 64-bit versions of my favourite applications but they still benefit from the extra Ram. Unless you want more than 3GB of Ram, I wouldn’t bother with 64-bit Vista. It’s crucial to verify driver availability for all your devices and that your applications will work - anything with an older 16-bit installer won’t play.

If you want lots of Ram and your hardware and software are compatible, I’d recommend making the move. Despite a few restrictions, I know I won’t be going back to 32-bit.

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!