[Advice] The 32/64bit question, and my specific needs?

[Poolboy]

Hey peeps, so much great advice here, and always specific to our style of gaming. So thanks in advance.

Here's me ~


New rig being built, Q6600, 8800GT card, all the other standard goodness that comes with that level build. But then... when it comes to OS, and how much RAM, etc it's a bit foggy.

I will be playing 5x WoW on this single computer (i dont use maximizer at the moment). My monitor, for now, is an average crt, sigh. On to lcd ws as soon as i can. I want to be able to play stuff like Age of Conan when released, etc etc.

So, am I to understand that 64 Vista is basically redundant at this point? Nothing is truly written games-wise to utilize all of it's features and capabilities?

Basically, I've heard most of you say that XP 32bit is more than fine for WoW, but will I be behind the 8 ball with other games that hold my interest? I dunno, what's a current 'benchmark'? CoD4, Bioshock, Crysis? Like I said... Age of Conan is a big one it looks so awesome that it makes my pants fit funny, the wait for this game has been killing me for years LOL.

Thoughts?

Cheers
PB.

(sorry for being a nub.)

[Wilbur]

If your machine is going to have >3GB of RAM then you need a 64 bit OS otherwise you won't be using all your RAM.

Ideally for a 5-character machine you'll want 4GB RAM so 64 bit WinXP is probably your best bet.

Enjoy.

[Remote]

I can't speak for other games, but for WoW, running 5 copies at once tends to be mostly CPU heavy. I have a similar machine, and I never see much RAM used up, and the graphic is never really strained. However my CPU is always at least 90 percent...on a quad core 2.4ghz.

[Wilbur]

Overclock your CPU then nub. a Q6600 can easily jump to 3.0GHz even with stock cooling.

[Remote]

Overclock your CPU then nub. a Q6600 can easily jump to 3.0GHz even with stock cooling.

It is overclocked now you condescending bastard!

<3

[Wilbur]

Muha! :-)

[aetherg]

There is no real difference between 32-bit and 64-bit when playing WoW.

DO NOT get 64-bit Windows XP. I use it (I keep meaning to reformat but am too busy leveling) and it is absolutely awful. It is incredibly difficult to install due to poor support for SATA drives out of the box. It continually blue-screened after installation (during OS startup), and took me about 30 hours of hacking at it, doing partial installs and manually replacing files with copies from the install CD to get it to work.

Once it's running, it works decently, although it still has bad hardware support (due to poorly-tested 64-bit drivers, even from major companies like Creative), and absolutely does not run any faster for most apps.

Stick with 32-bit Win XP until Vista SP1 or SP2 are out, then switch.

[Remote]

I'm very pleased with the SP1 beta for Vista. Without it, Vista is a huge pain in the ass...32 or 64.

[Wilbur]

There is no real difference between 32-bit and 64-bit when playing WoW.

You mean aside the maximam RAM that a 32 bit install can read?

On newer components a 64 bit install is fine. Its just the older kit that no devs can be arsed to write drivers for that has problems.

[aetherg]

No, my machine had very recent stuff when I built it a year ago. XP 64 had major problems with the SATA 10K Raptor HDD; the biggest pain was just installing it.

Even now, I have to reboot once a day to fix my sound card (SB X-Fi, not some old junk), which randomly stops recording (kind of a problem when I'm leading raids) and/or starts inserting really loud pops/crackles into my output. According to forums, it's mainly a 64-bit driver problem.