32bt and 64bt WIN 7

nick 56

I wanted to upgrade or buy a new pc to run photographic software such as Nikon NX capture, Adobe lightroom, and Photoshop .

I am at present using XP with 2gb RAM and a Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz Socket AM2, 1MB.and Gigabyte GA-M59SLI-S5,nForce 590 SLI,ATX Socket-AM2,GbLAN,DDR2,Firew, 2xPCI-Ex16 (sorry if this does not make sense I am coping it from the Komplett specs) I am happy with the PCs performance for most uses (MS office, internet and so on)

It slows and some times freezes when dealing with major adjustments to large RAW (11 to 25 mb ) Files

I had thought to fit an extra RAM to speed performance an extra hard drive to store the large and growing collection of photographs.

It was suggested that I completely upgrade the pc and change to WIN 7. I was then told that WIN 7 has the same limitations as XP on the amount of RAM it could use (4gb) and the big change was to go from 32bit processing to 64bit (64bit being able to use unlimited amounts of RAM)

I researched on the net and found that a lot of software including Nikon NX is not guaranteed to run on a 64bit system be it WIN 7 or even a 64 bit version of XP (if I could find and buy one).

I am lost as to what to do next and would welcome advice.

PS Due to chronic arthritis and ignorance (about computer repair stuff) I am unable to do the work. I would welcome advice as to where to go in Dublin to get the work done.

Jaafa

I can tell you two things.

First to use 64bit windows 7 you will need 4gb of RAM. This is because although faster 64bit uses around 1.2-1.4gb of that RAM.

Secondly yes some program's are unstable on 64bit but that is getting less and less common these days.

Thats is all I can say without going into things I dont fully understand.

Hope it helps.

nick 56

Thank you Jaafa it is useful to know that win7 uses 1.4 gb of the RAM to be honest I was thinking of giving it 6 or 8 gb being that I have never ever had a pc with loads of ram.
What I can’t work out is would the win 7 (64bit ) and 8gb ram be better for the photo software than my old set up and say 4gb

Jaafa

4-6gb should be plenty. Any more is overkill I would say.

VenomIreland

64-bit apps can use >2GB RAM aswell.

djan

NEW ADOBE SOFTWARE CS5 REQUIRES 64-Bit operating systems of Vista or Win 7.

qwertz

djan wrote: »

NEW ADOBE SOFTWARE CS5 REQUIRES 64-Bit operating systems of Vista or Win 7.

Only some of the new CS5 applications do.

Groinshot

Jaafa wrote: »

I can tell you two things.

First to use 64bit windows 7 you will need 4gb of RAM. This is because although faster 64bit uses around 1.2-1.4gb of that RAM.

Secondly yes some program's are unstable on 64bit but that is getting less and less common these days.

Thats is all I can say without going into things I dont fully understand.

Hope it helps.

Not entirely true. you don't NEED 4Gb ram, I only have two, and run win7 x64. to use more than 4GB Ram in total (that is including your video cards memory, so if it;s 1GB, then 3GB ram) you need a 64 bit OS. There's a limit to what x64 can take too, but it's something ridicolous, like millions of petaBytes (i think)

Very very few programs are incompatible with x64 nowadays. I think partition master was the only one I came up with, usually you can install them as x86 and have no problems. if you're not sure, then see how muchr am you're getting, if it's over 4GB total then use x64, if not, then there's no need really. It's not THAT much faster that you'd notice anyway with a new PC.

Solitaire

The main barrier to upgrading was the fact that XP64 was pants and Vista 64 was... well, pants Vista :pac: Win7 64 is actually a good OS without the buggyness of previous Microsoft 64bit releases.

Personally I think you'd be mad not to go 64bit if you have the chance, as even if you don't have 4GB at the moment, odds are you will soon enough. Odds are you'll have 6-8GB at some point in the not-so-distant future. And if you have a powerful discrete graphics adapter a significant chunk of your 4GB of RAM can vanish in an eye-blink; protected system area + 1GB graphics card = maximum of 2.75GB RAM on a 32bit OS. Protected area + 2GB card = 1.75GB maximum RAM... ouch

Jaafa

Groinshot wrote: »

Not entirely true. you don't NEED 4Gb ram, I only have two, and run win7 x64. to use more than 4GB Ram in total (that is including your video cards memory, so if it;s 1GB, then 3GB ram) you need a 64 bit OS. There's a limit to what x64 can take too, but it's something ridicolous, like millions of petaBytes (i think)

Yes you don't NEED 4GB of RAM but I would highly recommend. As I mentioned before about windows 7 64bit taking 1.2GB of RAM. You got 800MB left if you have 2GB. Sure thats enough to run many things....for now.

You can just imagine how much RAM the next windows OS will take. I mean XP could run on less than 256MB of RAM. So again just imagine an OS or two down the line from now.

Getting 4GB of RAM is mainly to future proof your PC for the next few years.

Solitaire

Jaafa wrote: »

XP could run on less than 256MB of RAM.

SP1 maybe... SP2 took twice as much, SP3 twice that! :eek::o

Jaafa

Well there you have it then. Expect the next major OS to take at least 2GB.

Unregistered.

Jaafa wrote: »

Well there you have it then. Expect the next major OS to take at least 2GB.

Which is fine if it's put to good use.

Jaafa

Unregistered. wrote: »

Which is fine if it's put to good use.

Exactly....Id imagine by then the average ram for a PC/Laptop would be at least 6GB. So even if it isnt it wont be a big deal.

Unregistered.

Jaafa wrote: »

Exactly....Id imagine by then the average ram for a PC/Laptop would be at least 6GB. So even if it isnt it wont be a big deal.

Doubt it. Read an article on Bit-tech recently which summed up leaps in memory capacity into three tiers: “nice to have” to “now useful” to “absolutely needed".
4GB is only now in the "now useful" bracket. The average home PC would be 2 or so I'd imagine.

Jaafa

This does of course does depend a lot on the person who will decide how 'useful' the RAM will be.
But for my part Im seeing a lot more 3GB+ PCs/laptops these days.

Oh and when I say the next OS I mean any time up to 5 years from now.

Unregistered.

Jaafa wrote: »

This does of course does depend a lot on the person who will decide how 'useful' the RAM will be.
But for my part Im seeing a lot more 3GB+ PCs/laptops these days.

Oh and when I say the next OS I mean any time up to 5 years from now.

The next OS release for me though will be out in October and still only needs 512KB of memory.

Jaafa

What is this wondrous OS you speak of?:rolleyes:

Unregistered.

Jaafa wrote: »

What is this wondrous OS you speak of?:rolleyes:

Ubuntu 10.10.




(yes I am fully aware that the title of this thread is all to do with Windows)

Jaafa

Interesting...however I'm a windows man and as they say old habits die hard. Maybe one day.

Unregistered.

Jaafa wrote: »

Interesting...however I'm a windows man and as they say old habits die hard. Maybe one day.

Costs nothing to try. Can be run off a DVD or a USB stick before you install!

Jaafa

Hmmm....what exactly are the benefits over windows 7? Other then its open sourced and very small. (which are good reasons on their own)

Unregistered.

Jaafa wrote: »

Hmmm....what exactly are the benefits over windows 7? Other then its open sourced and very small. (which are good reasons on their own)

It depends what you do tbh. What I have found very useful from time to time is using it to test hardware on old machines! I don't game and I'm not an expert, but the general assumption is that it's not for gamers. You can emulate windows-only apps and quite a few (but by no means all) games if you have to. Though there are a lot of common programs that are written for all three of the major platforms, for a casual PC user - Browsing the internet, email, IM, word documents etc - there will be no difference.

Jaafa

Well Ill keep an eye on it anyway....wow we've taken this tread way off topic.....

Scorpion venom

64 bit all the way you wont go wrong :P