Hey guys, i plan on building a computer for me and my brother as both of ours are starting to get pretty old and they're cheap dells. i am pretty good when it comes to computer, just fairly new at building them and installing OS's.

Now my question is, probably a very 'noob' question, is what do i need? i plan on getting vista, but i don't know what the difference is between 32 bit and 64 bit.

my computer will be used to play some games, mostly music stuff, and internet. on my computer now, i have windows xp, but nowhere could i find whether it was a 32bit or 64, which woulda helped alot.
basically my question is, what do all you guys have? thanks for you input!

I have 64 bit - but for most people it's not necessary and there's still a shortage of 64 bit drivers for some hardware.

If you plan on using your old hardware, make sure that there are Vista drivers for it - both 32 bit and 64 bit don't always have compatible drivers (like if you've got an older printer that you want to use - it may not work with Vista).

In short, unless you've got a pressing need for 4 or more gB of RAM, 64 bit isn't needed for most anything that you run these days. I've got it because I'm always tinkering and it was the next step for me.

great thanks alot for that info. Thing is, i have a friend that has a 64bit home premium version of vista that is willing to give it to me if i buy windows xp 32bit. i haven't realized that 64 bit seems like fairly new when it comes to OS's. i'll probably end up going with the 64 bit on my brothers computer, and then basically use his as a guinea pig to see if i want 32 or 64 bit when go about building mine. thanks for the info!

I've been using 64-bit since Vista was released and I haven't had many compatibility problems. Drivers may be an issue if you have old or exotic hardware. Whether or not those drivers will be any good is debatable. 64-bit OS's have been around for a while but are fairly new in the consumer markets. If you have 4GB or more or RAM and you've checked driver compatibility, go for it.

Less than 4gb of RAM will be a problem??..

No, you can use 64-bit with all RAM amounts. However, the main reason to run 64-bit is to get the boost in the amount of memory your system has available. Also, 64-bit data takes up more space in memory. I can easily see people going to 64-bit Vista with less than 4GB of RAM to get the various security benefits.

Here's an article about 64-bit Vista. Keep in mind that it is out of date and the author now says that Vista 64-bit is a good choice unless you use programs that will run only in 32-bit. Vista can emulate a 32-bit environment using WoW64 making this a relatively minor issue.

Link

Thank you for a link - it was very interesting article....

Personally, I use 64bit Vista with 2gb of RAM... And I see it being completely enough for me these days... - Usually computer uses less than 1gb of RAM and up to 60% of 2gb when working on some projects... When needed, I'll probably buy more RAM...

Thanks again for a reply...

4 gB of RAM is "sort of" the cutoff for using 64 bit OS's because there's additional overhead with 64 bit systems. In general, if you upgrade a system with 4gB of RAM from 32 bit to 64 bit you won't see any significant improvement (did it myself).