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 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.
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.
I used Windows 7 Ultimate (RTM) for the following tests.
A 10K PowerShell script was used as test file for Notepad, PrimalPad and the the PowerShell ISE.
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.
| Test | Windows 7 32 bit | Windows 7 64 bit |
| Install time | 22:46 minutes | 24:30 minutes |
| Install size | 8.54 GB | 10.5 GB |
| Memory used default | 33% | 41% |
| Notepad reference file | 852 Kb | 1408 Kb |
| Powershell ISE ref. file | 88732 Kb | 93228 Kb |
| Primalpad 64 ref. file | N/A | 10348 Kb |
| Primalpad 32 ref. file | 9388 Kb | 9892 Kb |
| Primaltools.com in IE | 20616 Kb | 21312 Kb |
| Copy 2.49 GB ISO from NAS | 14:52 minutes | 14:46 minutes |
| Copy 2.49 GB ISO to NAS | 21:34 minutes | 16:29 minutes |
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.
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.
What’s your experience with 64 vs 32 bit?
Small correction.
A 32 bit OS can address two blocks of 2 Gb (2048MB) of memory for a total of 4Gb.
IN memory extensionmode 1Gb of SYS memory area can be mapped into USER memory fro 3 Gb possible of user memory.
All of this is only about what is directly addressable. 32 bit hardware can install 4 Gb of directly addressable memory. Windows (with no memory adjustments) can address all 4Gb as 2Gb for SYSTEM and 2Gb for User.
If you can install 4Gb on a 32 bit laptop you should always install the max for best performance. Many laptops let you use software to turn off memory to save battery when traveling. Whentravelling turn off all bu 1Gb of memory for best battery life. Play with setting to find your “sweet spot”
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A 32 bit OS can use a 4GB address range in terms of hardware. Windows 32 bit is only able to USE 3.25 GB, depending on other hardware devices on the system that are mapped into the address space. For the normal user the available memory is the crucial number, not the hardware address range.
The battery consumption of memory chips is pretty negligible compared to screen backlighting 🙂
So turning down your brightness gives you better results.