What's the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit versions of vista?

Question

What's the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit versions of vista?

Answer 1

The 64-bit supports a lot more RAM. I'm pretty sure the exact number was 116GB, but a lot of things are not compatible with 64-bit OS's

Answer 2

This has nothing to do with the speed of your computer.  It will not go any faster or any slower.  It has to do with something called Virtual Addressing.

When your OS starts a program, it gives that program a chunk of RAM to work with.  The program doesn't actually have any of that RAM yet, but it believes it does.  It's allowed around 4Gb of RAM, whether or not your computer has that much in it or not.  The application uses as much or as little of that "virtual" RAM as it sees fit, leaving the Operating System to translate that "virtual" RAM into the real RAM your computer has in it.  The way it handles these translation is with memory addresses.  I'm sure most people have seen the "Invalid memory address 0x000000" message.

The problem with this system is that with address that are 6 characters long (or 32bit address) you can only address 4Gb of memory, and until recently that hasn't been a problem.  But computers are getting faster and programs are wanting more than 4Gb of memory, and computers are starting to actually have it.  So to compensate, some Operating Systems are changing to a 64 character or 16bit addressing scheme, which will allow for . . . um. .  a lot more addresses.  whatever 2^64 is, instead of the current 2^32.

Answer 3

how much hardware can be optimized

Answer 4

The terms 32-bit and 64-bit refer to the way a computer's processor (also called a CPU), handles information. The 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows are designed for use in computers with 32-bit or 64-bit processors, respectively.

The 64-bit versions of Windows can utilize more memory than 32-bit versions of Windows. This helps minimize the time spent swapping processes in and out of memory by storing more of those processes in Random access memory (RAM) rather than on the hard disk. This, in turn, can increase overall program performance. For more details, go to A description of the differences between 32-bit versions of Windows Vista and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista online.

for more info about that, check this link: http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/windows...

Answer 5

nothing for the normal user.. just faster proccessing power for crazy nice programs like chief architect..

Answer 6

The main difference between a 32 bit and 64 bit OS(Operating system) is that, 64 bit process much faster than 32 bit. But you need to have a Motherboard supporting 64 bit OS's. 64 bit will speed up every activity of pc, like boot up, shut down, opening applications... Some of the softwares did not support 64 bit. But now, there are softwares of all classes to work on 64 bit also. So you can go ahead to install 64 bit OS on your pc