Upgrading from 32bit XP to 64bit Win 7. What's to know?

[metamorphosis]

OEM Win 7 locked to your motherboard says so on Microsoft site.

Yup, I was talking about XP.

Win 7 uses up more ram than XP when it loads so less ram left for software. You only have 3.5GB - 4GB to play with on any 32bit OS. Xp is limited to 3.5GB and 2GB per programe.

It's not quite like that.
See the OS ram guide in my sig.

[codec_spurt]

You won't have any performance hit going with 32-bit. It is just as snappy and efficient as 64-bit. The exception being RAM. I doubt very much you will be exceeding this limit - 3.2GB.

That limit is in place on some older versions of Vista, but not XP.
Your ram limit in XP is RAM - system resource addressing space. I have 3.6GB accessible.
But on modern machines this doesn't seem to be so much of a problem.
For example, I have a 800MB graphics card, and it's not eating into my address space. Not sure how that works but hoorah.

That sounds about right and you certainly know a bit more about this than I do. But from my anecdotal evidence - 3.2GB to 3.6GB seems to be bandied about quite a bit. Interesting what you say about the address space, because I got a 512MB card instead of 1024MB for this very reason, yet I see no hit over all. The numbers don't add up.

Just goes to show that you can study and learn for years and think you know, just to be dumbfounded by facts.

I hoorah your hoorah. 'Hoorah!'.



As for nLite. Are you using DuX's version?
I am. It is a bit brutal in places for the average user. But I think with a bit of help, most would get through OK.

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=24093

Hell, it is a bit brutal for me in places, but 90 percent the time it is a pure joy.

[metamorphosis]

That sounds about right and you certainly know a bit more about this than I do. But from my anecdotal evidence - 3.2GB to 3.6GB seems to be bandied about quite a bit. Interesting what you say about the address space, because I got a 512MB card instead of 1024MB for this very reason, yet I see no hit over all. The numbers don't add up.

I hoorah your hoorah. 'Hoorah!'.

Yeah I don't get it either.
I think it must be modern motherboards doing something, or possibly, they've found a way in drivers to use the video card memory, while hiding it from the motherboard.
Certainly 'back in the day' it was different.

As for nLite. Are you using DuX's version?
I am. It is a bit brutal in places for the average user. But I think with a bit of help, most would get through OK.

I find it's best to roll your own, according to your own personality and needs.
Also Dux's version will be way out of date by now, in terms of post-sp3 service pack updates.
I've got a nlite settings file on my website, but unfortunately nlite tends to 'forget' a lot of settings when you reload config files, so you can download it and go through it.
A lot of what nlite is good for is setting things up just-the-way-you-like-it.
Default XP is pure ugly for me now.
But then others would find my setup ugly. To each their own.
Cheers
M