Can I go from 32 to 64 bit?

[Murky]

Good advice, cheers. Yeah I mainly have my eye on seeing how Vicktoria 2 and Civ V perform, if they run OK on 32-bit I'll leave well enough alone.

I would imagine that Civ V will have a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version. 64-bit is more efficient at handling large amounts of memory at once. It can read and write to RAM faster than 32-bit (for large data sets) so it would probably improve Civ V performance, especially when there's a lot going on on the map. People who play on large or huge maps would benefit more than those who play on standard or small maps. Also, with Civ V it looks like they are breaking up stacks into more spread out units so there might be more objects for the CPU to manage in memory than in Civ IV. If they decide to cache AI scripts that would be another area working more efficiently.

 

[Souron]

x64 games can be faster simply by taking advantage of double the general purpose registers, so even an low memory program can be faster on a 64 bit OS. This is not always true, because 64 programs also use more memory, which can cause more cache misses (and on a low memory machine page faults).

 

[mdwh]

If you go to Task Manager (control+shift+escape), then click performance, you can see how much memory you have (Physical Memory, Total).

4GB on a 32 bit machine will typically have less than that available (e.g., 3GB) due to the graphics card, so you will get an increase if you upgrade. How much benefit you get depends what you do; whether it's a hassle to reinstall the OS is up to you.

 

[innonimatu]

I have Win7 32 at the moment, but I also have the disc for Win7 64. My computer is capable of running 64, but would there be any real point in the upgarde, given that I only have 4mb RAM?

You can only use 3GB with the 32bit versions of windows. Maybe less if the graphics card has 1GB or more of video memory. Each process is also limited to 2GB. I think that with some large civ4 maps (perhaps using Rhye's mod?) I hit that limit. Had to continue the game in XP 64bit, it would crash on the 32bit version after using up the 2GB allowed.

You will have to upgrade, eventually. But you can wait until necessary. I've been using a computer with 6GB RAM for years with a 32bit version of windows. And a 64bit linux, if only civ4 ran well there...

 

[mdwh]

What are people's thoughts on a system that doesn't have more than 3GB?

I've just bought Windows 7 for a new system, but I've only got 3GB. Am I still better off choosing the 64bit version? Or are compatibilities still an issue?

(I can see one advantage of 64bit being that it's easier if I upgrade the RAM in future, but I'm wondering if there are any other issues to consider.)