Oldfriend wrote:what I don't get is, will a 64 bit system benefit in performance with just a 64 bit OS or do the rest of your software have to be 64 as well?
I'm guessing all the imbeded features with the OS will run better?
Well if you're an AMD fanboi you have no choice other than to go 64 bit :P
I would assume that windows would itself would benefit which would lead to slightly better performance for all programs. The cool thing is that VS 2005 allows you to select the target CPU to compile for. So even if you don't tweak your code for 64 bit you can still get a lot out of the compiler optimizations.
as for your 64-bit question because of AMD's X86-64 push, The OS itsself will haul in both 32bit as well as 64-bit.. This really helps considering you might want to use the old app's ( if you consider Anything released basically to this day old )
as of RIGHT NOW not all manufactures have jumped on board with FULL 64-bit support for there hardware.. this is a sad fact, and hopefully will be Getted Fixed soon...
As for the performance,
this is the Game Farcry Comapred form 32-bit to 64-bit.
There is no reason to go Win XP 64-bit at this time. Performance is nearly identical, but if it's ever different, it's lower. Lots of hardware doesn't have drivers yet either. I think it's useless for 99.9% of people to use Win XP 64-bit now, and probably for at least another 6 months.
Well if I were you I would use the Maxtor 300 GB HDD with 16MB cache as a secondary drive and get a WD Raptor for your boot drive, the Raptor is insane, I love mine
[size=92][color=#0000FF]Hugh Hefner for President[/color][/size]