Need Hardware/Software Advice

I am in the process of looking at getting a new system before my current rig dies on me. I have looked everywhere I can trying to find the best possible deal. I am not much of a gamer, and do not deal with multimedia editing functions very often. I will need a system that can handle L-Edit and Cadence CMOS design titles easily; they can be pretty intense some times. That being said, I do want a better system than what I current have (listed below):

I've looked everyone I could think of, Newegg, Dell, HP, etc,) and am finding it very difficult to find 32-bit systems anymore. This brings me to my problem. Here are the basic hardware specs for a system I am interested in at HP.com

The OS can be changed to vista 32-bit, but the processor (Dual-Core processor E5300) is 64-bit. Everything I have now, my backup images and all my software titles, are 32-bit. What happens if I use a 64-bit processor with 32-bit software; meaning, how limited is this going to be? What's the point There was another system, with similar specs, that offered the same dilemma; 32-bit OS but required 64-bit hardware?

I need advice on this. Are my images useless? Should I just go ahead and bite the bullet and convert everything over to 64-bit? A friends that I asked was of that opinion, that's it's time to upgrade to 64-bit. If I do that there is another issue here. The system is only offered with Vista, 32 or 64-bit. And, well, Vista is known to be crap. There are recent threads here about that. He suggested I use Windows 7. And the system does qualify for free upgrade to Windows 7. That means I have to wait until 10/22, right? That is not something I really want to do, but I don't want to use Vista. Of course all this is dependent on if I chose to go with 64-bit.

Any help at all would be appreciated.

 

You may want to edit your Windows serial out though.

 

About all of the processors built today support both 32 and 64 bit os. So having a 64bit capable CPU does not preclude you from installing and using a 32bit os with it. You just won't be using all of the processors address space that you could with x64.

Most 32bit programs work fine on 64bit systems with the syswow emulater. I noticed in your sig you have sandboxie. It does not work on x64 and is not going to work according to them, but their are alternatives. The ones that don't work on 64bit now will work in the future or go out of business, because 64bit is the future.

It really boils down to what you want. There are alternatives to the vast majority of apps that will not run on 64. I will bet you though, that nearly all of your apps that you have now except for 16bit apps will run on x64. You say you have some programs that are intensive. Will they benefit from the fact that you will have access to HUGE amounts of ram vs approx a 3g max on 32bit? Will they benefit from your processor being able to process millions of calculations more per second? Will you need the extra memory capacity available in 64bit in the future? If the answer is no, then stick with 32bit. Eventually 32bit will become obsolete just like 16bit did. But we have a little ways to go before that happens.

 

The only advice I have is spend the dough on a core2duo or i7. AMD is ok and all (its glory days are gone) but I can tell you, the new intel core2's and i7's are just beyond comparing to any of the AMD chips. And I used to be an AMD fan when they had the better product, so no fan boy, just use what is best at the moment.

If your budget restricted, AMD does have some very good buys lol.

Sul.

 

Your stoking the flames now.

 

Thank you very much. I am bummed about SBIE. That has been my most trusted app. I knew that but didn't ever think I'd have to upgrade. It sounds to me like you're saying I should update to the 64-bit, which I don't like because of the work it requires. But I accept it as an eventual inevitability.

 

I am not recommending either way to you. 64bit has it's advantages. Whatever software compatibility issues that exist for 64bit now, will be reduced greatly in the near future. It has already reduced a lot in the last couple of years. Like I said everything is moving in that direction. If 32 is all you need, then stick with it. It will get you by for the next several years at least for sure. BTW I really don't think switching to 64 will require as much work as you think it will. As far as buying your pc, wait till next month if you don't want to have to deal with upgrading from vista to 7.

 

lol, nothing against AMD really. They pwned Intel for some time, and I still have a dozen or so of thier athlons around. But when I decided to get a core2, I was flat out stupified at the difference, and this coming from an FX55 Athlon. They are just 'mo fast' right now I think.

As for 64 bit, I don't see the advantage really unless you want to utilize more RAM or you have a newer program that utilizes it. I have used it, and cannot tell the difference in day to day use other than some of my programs won't work lol.

Sul.

 

I agree with your statement. Like you said "a newer program that utilizes it". IMO as time goes by more and more apps will be developed to take advantage of that extra capability. Like Adobe Photoshop for example: I don't use it, but my brother does. He said that app will use every single bit of the 8G of ram he has and then starts paging to a scratch disk.

 

don't hurry photoshop users to get 64 bit,i'm on a 32 bit windows with 8 gig ram.
photoshop will use all the available ram with the help of a RAMDISK.
So photoshop use the remaining 5 gig as a scratchdisk,this is much faster then any ''outside'' disks.
Also much cheaper then paired raptors in raid config for use of a scratchdisk if compared with the costs of the ramdisk software,which is peanuts !!

 

Free Ramdisk apps:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/Ramdisk-Gavotte.shtml
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/VSuite-Ramdisk.shtml

 

These softwares are only for creating a ramdisk from the ram recognised by the OS,in windows its 4 gig on a 32 bit system.
The convenience of a ramdisk with photoshop is there if the ramdisk software is able to use the ram beyond the regular 4 gig,which is invisible to the OS.
I have for example 8 gig ram installed but windows can only see 4 gig,so thats not a problem if the ram software can use the remaining free ram,in my case 4 gig.
Most ram softwares can only make a ramdisk from the ram used and recognised by the OS,so here you cut on the available ram used by the OS and applications and that is not a good thing.
A very good ramdisk software which solve the mentioned restriction is Vsuite ramdisk from Romex as mentioned by Pliskin in the second link.
http://www.romexsoftware.com/

 

What other ways can you take advantage of a ram disk?

 

You can run your browser cache in it, i've got my whole Firefox profile in it also which makes it every bit as fast as Chrome. I had my Outpost logs in it when i had that installed, because there's millions of writes to them each session. I have FTP cache/logs there, you could put the WinRar temp directory in it.

You can even drop full portable apps totally in RAM just to name a few.

 

It would be nice if you could install a modern game on one. I would think the performance would be awesome.

 

I'm not a gamer, so i'm not sure what their bottle neck is whether it's disk reads/writes, GPU/CPU utilization etc and how much it would benefit running completely in RAM but you could possibly do it. I made a post here with info and a tool for moving Outpost logs to RAM using a file system junction. The same method could be used to map the games program files and user directories over to RamDisk.

Also when you install it, you might be able to chose another disk besides C so in that case you could try installing it to the R RamDisk drive directly.

A third option, Sandboxie allows you to set it's container to another drive, so set to R and install the game in Sandboxie. I had my Sandboxes in Ram when i had it installed, but i didn't try any games.

 

In my experience, providing you have at least 2gb of ram you will only notice a marked increase in game performance from either an upgraded cpu and gpu combo, or from a newer hdd. Other than the obvious performance a new gpu brings, the main thing I notice is that newer hdds with newer chipsets able to utilize new hdd peformace, is pretty much faster everything. Faster loading, reading, writing, all the things that are tangible.

What is the difference between 60 frames and 90 frames in a game? Sometimes it is hard to tell. But what is the difference between 15 second load time and 5 second load time? It is much more tangible.

I like to play with Ram tools, and have used many over the years in different experiments. For specific purposes they can work great. But I am not so sure a game would benefiet unless you could get the maps/levels into ramdrive so that they load fast. But then, I only dabble in games and such, so it is just my limited findings.

Sul.

 

Ramdisk get from the OS a drive letter so its seen as a normal drive,i guess you can install most applications into it but temporarely though.

 

I've tried running COD4 in Sandboxie - which is running inside a Ramdisk; and didn't really notice much difference. No benchmarks, but it didn't feel faster. Even felt laggy now and then.

-----------------------------------------------​

And yeah, Sandboxie 64bit situation sux.

 

Ok I guess I was just assuming that if everything was in ram and not reading/writing to hard disk that the performance would be a lot faster.

 

Also man I know if I were looking at getting a new computer right now man I'd either wait until Windows & comes out or check with the supplier and see what options they give you on an upgrade. Not that Vista is as terrible as some people make it to be but from what I've read Win 7 is supposed to be a big improvement so you might keep that in mind to.

 

32-bit software on a 64-bit system is no problem at all. For the past five years I've had nothing but 64-bit CPUs and have never used a 64-bit OS other than Ubuntu. Don't worry about it, everything will be OK