XP 32 or 64

[Sic Puppy]

Right, Hi All,
I have just built myself a nice new system (see my specs) and I have both a 32bit and a 64bit version of XP Pro sitting here.

Question is, which do I install? Now I don't want to hear "get with the times and get Vista" Nice as Vista is, there are still too many niggles in it for me at the mo and I didn't find DX10 much to right home about.

I use my PC for mainly games (Crysis, Half Life, BF2142 etc) and a bit of Word when I fell like doing work

I'm sure there's not much difference, but a second opinion would be great.

Cheers,

P.S. I'm thinking of upping my RAM to 4GB soon.

[mkk]

Check for XP x64 drivers in advance and then give it a try. Don't forget about the motherboard drivers as XP x64 may lack some basic things like networking or SATA drivers for your type of board, and then it might get a bit messy. But it's great when it's up and running.

[CDsDontBurn]

yea, just check for drivers for winXP x64. other than that, it's not so bad of an OS.

oh yea, and proggies too. make sure that the stuff you NEED to use, or stuff you WANT to use are winXP x64 compatible. otherwise, you'll need to make a dual-boot system, lol.

[OldBuzzard]

Since it's a new system, you shouldn't have to worry about driver problems for the chipset/mainboard.

The only problem you may run into is some old programs left over from the Win98 days. We have ONE Geneology program that doesn't even like XP Pro, so the so the wife runs that on an old lappy with ME on it.

Mostly, if you are just a home user, and do run ito an application that doesn't like x64, there are generally other apps newer apps that can replace them.

I started using XP x64 in it's beta days, and I've been quite happy with it. I use HyperOS, for running multiple OSs, and started with one install of x64 just to see what it was like. Since then, I've gradually switched all my OSs but one to x64. Now I'm the opposite of where I started. One Xp Pro for the wife, and 5 x64's for me.

Put x64 on your new compy, and add another couple of gigs of RAM while you are at it. I'm running 2 gigs right now, but when the tax return gets back...it's gonna be 8 gigs for me since it's so cheap right now

I thought I'd never need more than 2 gigs, but I installed Fakefactory's Cinematic MOD for HL2 and it needs at least three, and would probably use more if it could get it. I think that's the first time I've seen my system really NEED the pagefile.

[Judas]

what i find amusing is some of these programs that refuse to work under xp pro.... 32bit... and work flawlessly under vista.... go figure