Should I install the 32 or 64 bit Vista Ultimate on Imac??

[mileslong]

hello,

i'm about to reinstall vista ultimate on my Imac since my beta version has expired. i also have to move the partition of boot camp to make it larger. when i first installed boot camp and vista last year i used the minimum space on the windows partition and only installed the 43 bit version of vista. i remembered hearing that there were some problems with the drivers or something with the 64 bit version.

anyway, i now have a retail version of vista ultimate but i want to know if its cool to install the 64 bit version this time around or is it safer to just go with the 32 bit version?

i have a 20" intel Imac.

thanks for your help!

 

[LMO]

Generally you are better off with the 32-bit version. Boot Camp does not provide drivers for 64-bit Vista, and they can be pretty hard to find.

Performance comparisons I've seen do not give the 64-bit version much of an edge over the 32-bit version, with the exception of floating point operations.

You can address more RAM with 64-bit, but individual apps are still limited unless they have been specifically compiled for the large memory model.

 

[velocityg4]

There really is no purpose for installing the 64bit edition on the iMac since its RAM capacity does not exceed 4GB. The main purpose for the 64bit system is to use RAM in excess of 4GB as that is all that is accessible by a 32bit system.

As mentioned by an above post boot camp also does not provide 64bit drivers making it more difficult to get all hardware functioning correctly.

There is also compatibility problems for software. As some programs that do function under the 32bit Vista do not work correctly or at all under the 64bit version. One specific example I ran into recently was Zonealarm Firewall that is incompatible with the 64bit version of the OS. Other security programs have similar difficulty due to the way Vista protects its core system files. The system actually prevents most any attempt to alter these files. While zonelabs was able to get their firewall working in the 32bit edition, they have not spent the time nor resources to use the 64bit edition of Windows Vista, due to the low potential client base.

 

[mileslong]

thanks guys, you have been a huge help. decision made!