{"id":1853,"date":"2009-10-12T14:20:06","date_gmt":"2009-10-12T22:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sapien.com\/blog\/?p=1853"},"modified":"2009-10-13T01:56:47","modified_gmt":"2009-10-13T09:56:47","slug":"moving-to-windows-7-32-or-64-bit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/12\/moving-to-windows-7-32-or-64-bit\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving to Windows 7: 32 or 64 bit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just recently I had to replace the hard drive in a friends notebook. Since everything has to be installed from scratch anyway, the friend asked that I install Windows 7 (RTM for now) and asked if he should go with the 64 bit version.<\/p>\n

I know a lot of folks recommend that you should immediately go to 64 bit if your processor can run it, but I was a bit more skeptical and installed both and did some test under each OS.<\/p>\n

The laptop in question is a 2 year old SONY Vaio with a decent screen, new 500GB hard drive and a CD\/DVD burner. Perfectly usable for everyday work. The RAM is maxed out at 2GB and that is exactly why I questioned a move to 64 bit. Unless you have at least 4 GB of RAM (32 bit OSes can only address 3.2-3.5 GB of memory) I am not expecting any benefit.<\/p>\n

I used Windows 7 Ultimate (RTM) for the following tests.<\/p>\n

A 10K PowerShell script was used as test file for Notepad, PrimalPad and the the PowerShell ISE.<\/p>\n

The network used to test the copy speed was a 802.11g wireless connection from the notebook, the NAS was on a 1GB wired LAN connected directly to the router.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Test<\/strong><\/td>\nWindows 7 32 bit<\/strong><\/td>\nWindows 7 64 bit<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Install time<\/td>\n22:46 minutes<\/td>\n24:30 minutes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Install size<\/td>\n8.54 GB<\/td>\n10.5 GB<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Memory used default<\/td>\n33%<\/td>\n41%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Notepad reference file<\/td>\n852 Kb<\/td>\n1408 Kb<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Powershell ISE ref. file<\/td>\n88732 Kb<\/td>\n93228 Kb<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Primalpad 64 ref. file<\/td>\nN\/A<\/td>\n10348 Kb<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Primalpad 32 ref. file<\/td>\n9388 Kb<\/td>\n9892 Kb<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Primaltools.com in IE<\/td>\n20616 Kb<\/td>\n21312 Kb<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Copy 2.49 GB ISO from NAS<\/td>\n14:52 minutes<\/td>\n14:46 minutes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Copy 2.49 GB ISO to NAS<\/td>\n21:34 minutes<\/td>\n16:29 minutes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The conclusion is, the 64 bit OS naturally already uses more RAM to begin with and all 64 bit processes use more RAM than their 32 bit counterparts. Even the same 32 bit process uses a little bit more memory under the 64 bit OS.<\/p>\n

Unless you have a real need for 64 bit software or more than 3 GB of RAM, the 32 bit version of Windows 7 is a better choice.<\/p>\n

What’s your experience with 64 vs 32 bit?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just recently I had to replace the hard drive in a friends notebook. Since everything has to be installed from scratch anyway, the friend asked that I install Windows 7 (RTM for now) and asked if he should go with the 64 bit version. I know a lot of folks recommend that you should immediately […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[526,525,439],"class_list":["post-1853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-20000-feet","tag-32-bit","tag-64-bit","tag-windows-7"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t