64 bit machines

[Jay1b]

Currently developing with VS2005, i'm due to change my development machine shortly.

Ideally I would like 8 Gb+ Ram in the new system, but i'm aware that 32 bit OS's can only support 4 GB. So I was considering getting a 64 bit machine to support higher amount of Ram.

Could someone please tell me whether this is likely to cause a problem developing software to run on 32 bit machines?

Thanks

[Kasracer]

When you're doing development on a 64-bit machine your binaries will work fine on a 32-bit machine as long as they're not compiled for 64-bit only.

For example if you're developing a C++ application then make sure you distribute and test a 32-bit version of it. If you're doing .Net development then the application automatically can make sure of both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures without any intervention on your part and you wouldn't have an issue.

The only thing to watch out for is to make sure you're not setting up an installer that contains 64-bit only components. Just make sure you have a 32-bit machine around to test out.

Also, another thing to mention is that Visual Studio will not take advantage of anything more than 4GB of ram as it's still a 32-bit application (as far as I know). Many 32-bit applications will run fine on your system but won't be able to take advantage of a larger memory pool; only 64-bit applications can. However, if you have 8GB of ram then it's theoretically possible for 1 32-bit app to use 4GB and another 32-bit app use the other 4GB thus helping you multitask.

I do most of my main development on a Vista Ultimate 64-bit machine and testing as well as some mobile development on a Vista Home Premium 32-bit machine (laptop). All of my projects work fine being transfered from one to the other.

[Jay1b]

Thanks, thought as much. But just wanted to double check before buying a new machine :)

[Pino]

8 gig?

isn't that a little excessive?

[penagate]

You can never have too much RAM!

[03myersd]

8 gig?

isn't that a little excessive?

Look at the new mac pro? It will come with 32GB if thats what you want...

[Kasracer]

8 gig?

isn't that a little excessive?
Depends on what you want to do. I have 4GB but would love to get more in my 64-bit system.

Gaming, compiling, 3D rendering, video editing, etc all take quite a bit of ram. While my compiles usually take under 30 seconds for most of my own software projects, I regularly multitask and have 5 instances of VS open, Photoshop, IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, VirtualPC with additional browsers, etc.

The more ram you have the faster things are especially when you like to leave all your stuff open :)

[Jenner]

HD Video editing... Oh yea... being able to dump that 12gig monster video file all to RAM, have 64-bit pointers pointing to it all and processing some global effects on it... priceless. Goes like 1000x faster.

Games are definitely slamming against the 32bit 2gig program limit as well. A 64bit OS relieves a lot of that bottleneck. Heck, I've been having games like SimCity top-out at 2gig for years.

[Kasracer]

Crysis requires you to install a patch from Microsoft to help ease the memory limit in 32-bit Windows I believe :) (don't remember what it did exactly)

[Jay1b]

Well I'm running on a 2 year old HP workstation at the moment with 4gb and it still hangs. I usually have 3-4 VS instances open, IE with 10-15 tabs, Dreamweaver (although I hate it), not to mention the light weight tools likes SQL Management Studio, Outlook etc...

Also as the designers have 10gb in there Mac's, I want at least 8gb on principle... ideally 12 gb for one upmanship ;)