Zoom7000 Posted March 23, 2011 Posted March 23, 2011 Can someone please explain installing and running x64 programs over x86? I'm now running Windows 7 x64 on my main PC at home and a lot of everyday use software now comes in both x86 and x64 flavours. Some of the programs I'm using are: 7-Zip WinRAR Media Player Classic - Home Cinema Microsoft Office 2010 As far as I was aware, the only advantage for me was that running Windows 7 x64 allowed me to make use of more than 4Gb RAM. (Hence the 8Gb in my PC used for VMware etc plus the 1Gb on my GPU). But what advantages does it have using 64bit versions of everyday software? Will something like Media Player Classic run smoother? Will 7-Zip and WinRAR extract faster? What use is there running IE9 in x64 over x86? (Last time I ran IE(8) in x64 it neither supported Flash or Microsoft's own File Transfer Utility for downloading from Technet/MSDN - Not checked since) - Will I actually notice any speed advantages running these programs on my SandyBridge Core i7? Just wanted to get some suggestions/opinions.
SYNACK Posted March 23, 2011 Posted March 23, 2011 (edited) It depends on exactly what kind of operation the program does. Using x64 does enable some 64 bit operators so for certain maths tasks like those used in graphics or possibly compression the math can be run much faster in larger trunks. For instance there are certain Windwos services that will run 13 or so times faster under x64 because the math is just that much more efficient. Browsers are still kind of limited to 32bit for general use as the great 'uniform platform' still requires an army of badly written plugins that require 32bit hosting. Edited March 23, 2011 by SYNACK 1
Michael Posted March 24, 2011 Posted March 24, 2011 Generally speaking (at the time of writing) 64Bit on workstations will make little difference, but as software gets bigger and more complicated, its requirements will grow. Compare Windows 95 to Windows 7, and you can see the features of the OS have grown and the System Requirements have also grown. It's only a matter of time before 64Bit becomes the norm. The next Windows Server will be 64Bit only and I suspect Windows 8 will probably be 64Bit only. I think Microsoft should of done this with Windows 7, as many OEMs pre-load Windows 7 64Bit these days. Windows XP for example (without additional drivers) will not address a 3TB hard drive and cannot address more than 4GB of memory. Someday 5TB hard drives with 12GB of memory, with 64 Core processors will be normal and a 64Bit OS will be a lot more suitable and a lot faster as a result.
Zoom7000 Posted March 24, 2011 Author Posted March 24, 2011 Generally speaking (at the time of writing) 64Bit on workstations will make little difference, but as software gets bigger and more complicated, its requirements will grow. Compare Windows 95 to Windows 7, and you can see the features of the OS have grown and the System Requirements have also grown. It's only a matter of time before 64Bit becomes the norm. The next Windows Server will be 64Bit only and I suspect Windows 8 will probably be 64Bit only. I think Microsoft should of done this with Windows 7, as many OEMs pre-load Windows 7 64Bit these days. Windows XP for example (without additional drivers) will not address a 3TB hard drive and cannot address more than 4GB of memory. Someday 5TB hard drives with 12GB of memory, with 64 Core processors will be normal and a 64Bit OS will be a lot more suitable and a lot faster as a result. I understand all of this. I just wanted to know what the advantages of running x64 versions of everyday use programs was compared to running the x86 versions on Windows 7 x64.
srochford Posted March 24, 2011 Posted March 24, 2011 I understand all of this. I just wanted to know what the advantages of running x64 versions of everyday use programs was compared to running the x86 versions on Windows 7 x64. As @synack has said, anything which is doing "number crunching" will run faster because the CPU works with 64 bits of data at a time instead of 32 bits. For most things, however, this may make no difference at all because most of what you do doesn't involve much CPU use (take a look in task manager at the amount of time used by "system idle process" - you need to "show processes from all users" to see this. It's probably > 95% meaning that you've used less than 5% of the available CPU time) I work with people who do try and wring every little bit of speed out of their machines (mainly mathematicians) - I can't find the numbers at the moment but the move from 32bit to 64bit code has had dramatic effects on the speed at which the code runs (and this costs nothing; since the later revisions of the P4 you've been able to install a 64 bit OS) Looking at the list of apps you quoted in the first post, I would expect compression to be faster with 64 bit code (but unless you compress huge files several times an hour it probably won't really make a difference to your life :-)) Decompression is always quicker than compression so I wouldn't expect to see much difference there (it might be possible to measure a difference but it's not going to be huge!) Media Player should be able to play HD video more smoothly (but given the clock speed of a modern CPU you probably won't see the difference) and Excel should be able to recalculate sheets more quickly (again, probably not too important for a spreadsheet with your home accounts but really important when you have huge spreadsheets with lots of complex calculations) 1
3s-gtech Posted March 24, 2011 Posted March 24, 2011 The current Windows Server is 64Bit only Corrected.
zag Posted March 24, 2011 Posted March 24, 2011 I'm into home theater and I've done some tests with MPC-HC specifically and there was absolutely no difference in cpu usage between 32bit and 64bit versions and operating systems.
Arthur Posted March 24, 2011 Posted March 24, 2011 7-Zip / WinRAR You should install the 64-bit versions of 7-Zip and WinRAR so that their shell extensions integrate with Windows Explorer (the 64-bit version being the default). Last time I ran IE(8) in x64 it neither supported Flash Adobe have a 64-bit beta version of Flash Player on their Labs website. http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10_square.html 1
Michael Posted March 24, 2011 Posted March 24, 2011 Corrected. That really depends, as Windows Server 2008 is available as x86 and x64. 2008 R2 is x64 only and not exactly a totally new OS. I suspect the next version of Windows Server to be x64 from the start.
somabc Posted March 24, 2011 Posted March 24, 2011 You will see better performance with 7-zip in 64bit. Media Codecs are generally not as good on 64bit so I would stick with 32bit Codecs / Media players for now.
Michael Posted March 24, 2011 Posted March 24, 2011 Updating to newer versions of WinRAR or 7-Zip will offer even better performance on a 32Bit OS as they'll support Dual or Quad CPUs. It makes compressing and extracting that little bit quicker.
manlypullock Posted January 25, 2017 Posted January 25, 2017 Technically x86 simply refers to a family of processors and the instruction set they all use. It doesn't actually say anything specific about data sizes. The term x86 started out as a 16-bit instruction set for 16-bit processors (the 8086 and 8088 processors), then was extended to a 32-bit instruction set for 32-bit processors (80386 and 80486), and now has been extended to a 64-bit instruction set for 64-bit processors. It used to be written as 80x86 to reflect the changing value in the middle of the chip model numbers, but somewhere along the line the 80 in the front was dropped, leaving just x86. More about...Difference between x64 and x86 Pullock
Davit2005 Posted January 25, 2017 Posted January 25, 2017 I'd be careful with 64bit versions of office. Make sure they work happily with any other software i.e. SIMS, etc.. Personally I've stuck with 32bit versions of Office on top of 64bit OS.
Zoom7000 Posted January 25, 2017 Author Posted January 25, 2017 Wow, I posted this thread nearly 6 years ago, but I was just remembering it the other day as I'd been updating some of our core package assignments from x86 to x64 [emoji12]
Arthur Posted January 25, 2017 Posted January 25, 2017 I'd be careful with 64bit versions of office. Make sure they work happily with any other software i.e. SIMS, etc. We've been using the 64-bit version of Office 2016 ever since we upgraded from Office 2013 several years ago. I haven't come across any issues with SIMS so far that were a direct result of using 64-bit Office.
Arthur Posted January 25, 2017 Posted January 25, 2017 From Office 2013 or to Office 2013? Is that a trick question?
KibosJ Posted January 25, 2017 Posted January 25, 2017 We're using 64-bit office here with SIMS too, not had any problems at all. Most of our software now gets pushed out as x64 versions, Office, 7-Zip, Chrome, etc.
3s-gtech Posted January 25, 2017 Posted January 25, 2017 Is that a trick question? We've been using the 64-bit version of Office 2016 ever since we upgraded from Office 2013 several years ago. It was the several years ago bit, was just confused as to whether you'd used 64 bit Office 2013 as 2016 has only been out a smidge over a year.
Arthur Posted January 25, 2017 Posted January 25, 2017 (edited) It was the several years ago bit You're right actually. I should have worded the sentence differently so that it makes sense. Sorry. I don't think I was fully awake when I posted that. Prior to the release of Office 2016 we did use the 64-bit version of Office 2013 but only on a small number of PCs just to test. When Office 2016 was released we upgraded to that, but installed the 64-bit version on every single PC. In total we have been using 64-bit versions of Office for just over two years. Edited January 25, 2017 by Arthur 1
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