So I've built my budget gaming machine.... its an ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 SLI skt 939, with an Athlon x2 4800+ @ 2.6ghz with 4Gb of OCZ Ram low latancy RAMand 2x 9600XXX in SLI - runs Fear2 at max thankfully at a much better price than your average gaming pc... either way I like building these things for fun and sque.....eezing them to a point... question; I've loaded the PC with 4Gb of DDR Ram (maxing the OS and most softwear on the market atm) XP pro see's 3 of the 4Gb and I'm cooking on gas... But I'm keen on trying 64-Bit processing and games such as FEAR2 claim to be 64-bit enhanced - I know that Vista is High on RAM as a basic overhead and I'm currently, with all my tweaks at 486Mb before loading a game, so have 2.5Gb spare of my 3Gb that Win XP Pro can see to play with FEAR2. Should I move to a 64 Bit system to see a gain? XP is not DX10, so I'm tempted to move to Vista64 or WIN7 And live with the RAM that it eats to see the 64 bit / dual core gain, that XP lacks now and try Vista64 or Windows 7 to help future proof and improve my gaming Rig? let me know what you think...
Not really, 64bit=4GB+ of memory but the program has to be designed to make use of x64 instructions to see any improvement. But overall, yes, you now have drivers and quite many applications and a few games who are slightly faster when using x64. Also, forget Vista get W7.
IMHO, if you are using 4 GB or more memory, get a 64-bit OS. It doesn't matter which you prefer. You should see a noticeable improvement in performance migrating to a 64-bit OS if you run memory-intensive applications or games. If you can wait for Windows 7 (out on Oct. 22) then wait for it. It is faster and more stable than Windows Vista.