32Bit to 64Bit - Does It Matter?

Hi All
 
Apologies if this has been asked before.
 
I am thinking it's time to upgrade my Hard Drives for something bigger,and while I am
doing this i thought I would also go from Vista to Win7.
 
Question is,32bit or 64,does it really matter.
 
I use Sonar X1 and I also play a few games on the same machine.
 
I have an Intel Quad 6600 with 4 gig ram,Abit mainboard.
 
Thanks
 
Alan
 

As Sid mentioned, the biggest advantage is access to more than 4GB of RAM.
If you only have 4GB, you won't see much benefit.
 
If you're running a fully 64Bit system (hardware, host DAW, plugins)... you may see a slight performance increase.  That said, don't expect it to be a night vs. day differrence.
IOW, Don't upgrade expecting a major performance increase. 

win7 64 & sonar x1 32bit will give Sonar (if os has 16 gb of ram) multiple rooms of 4gb ram. Read this somewhere.

Look at it this way: the first personal computers were 8 bit, then 16 bit, then 32 bit and now 64 bit. Its the logical progression. Soon we will be talking about 128 bit. 

stickman393


If you only have 4 GB or less, then in my opinion you won't be gaining anything by going to Win 64. 

If you have >= 8 GB Ram in your PC, then Windows 7 64 + SONAR 32 is a very nice combination.

Could you elaborate stickman?
Thanks

timidi

stickman393


If you only have 4 GB or less, then in my opinion you won't be gaining anything by going to Win 64. 

If you have >= 8 GB Ram in your PC, then Windows 7 64 + SONAR 32 is a very nice combination.

Could you elaborate stickman?
Thanks

Basically, 32 bit windows can't see more than 4gb, whereas 64 bit can see up to 192gb.

The principal benefit of 64 bit is this ability to address more memory. So the reasoning is that going 64 bit but staying at 4gb isn't especially advantageous.

It's when you add more memory you start to see the difference. Not just in loading sample libraries, which has already been touched on, but less frequent use of disk-based virtual memory is a system wide benefit.

I'm not an expert here, so someone else will no doubt be able to give a more accurate response. But broadly...

Sonar itself doesn't really need very much memory to get its end of the job done. What eats memory is instruments and plug-ins. The restriction of using Sonar 32 bit in a 64 bit computer is that those plug-ins will have to be the 32 bit versions.

This means that the plug-ins (theoretically) are constrained in the amount of memory they can address. So the direct working benefits are very marginal.

Something I'd say here: I think a lot of the time, it's easy to make more expensive upgrades than necessary. There is often a lot of untapped potential in people's machines.

I've had the same basic machine since 2007. However, last year I went from 4gb on WinXP 32 bit, to 6gb on Win7 64 bit, plus an SSD system drive.

The increase in performance is tangibly huge. Higher track counts, more VST instruments playing, faster and snappier to work with across the board. That whole upgrade cost me about 250 quid.

On WIN64 every DLL(32bit)  get's to see 4GB. So system memory with 32bit Sonar is put to use.
Sonar 32bit does give you a 64bit audiomixing path. Question is, will plugins?

64bit windows & 64bit Sonar may give you 64bit plugins, wich could lead (especially in large projects) to cleaner audio with more depth due to no rounding errors only at mixdown at dithering. 

If you start a new project and use everything 64bit there will be less available plugins but with usually better quality (being VSTi's who can address large portions of RAM and higher bitrates, meaning clearer cleaner calculations wich you may hear......(or not). 

asimmd


Hi All
 
Apologies if this has been asked before.
 
I am thinking it's time to upgrade my Hard Drives for something bigger,and while I am
doing this i thought I would also go from Vista to Win7.
 
Question is,32bit or 64,does it really matter.
 
I use Sonar X1 and I also play a few games on the same machine.
 
I have an Intel Quad 6600 with 4 gig ram,Abit mainboard.
 
Thanks
 
Alan
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  

If you want to do an in place upgrade to Windows 8 on the desktop one day, install 64 bit Win 7 now. Actually, there should be no question about it. Even if you only had 1 gig of memory, run 64 bit Win 7. The only reason not to run a 64 bit OS now would be if your audio hardware/drivers did not support it.  As far as Sonar is concerned, the only reason I run the 64 bit .EXE is for large projects. I don't like the behavior of the bitbridges with my UAD plugins

what RAM would SONAR see running as a 32 bit program under a 64 bit OS?

 
Under x64 Windows, each 32Bit app can grab up to 4GB

What I was trying to say was - would I get the benefit of, say, 16GB of RAM in 32bit Sonar under 64 bit Windows?

 
If you were running multiple apps simultaneously (each could grab up to 4GB), yes.
Otherwise, no...

I am with guitartrek, I have never had a crash in X64 but had some in X32!

I just put an order in at my local PC shop for a Windows 7 64bit computer.  I now have XP Pro 32-bit.
 
16GB RAM, SSD for the OS, and a 1TB drive for the data.  I figure once prices drop on SSD's I'll get one for data.  I also read a LOT about how they fail quickly and can't afford $700 for a huge SSD right now.
I also am getting a hexacore CPU.

So I'm going from a quadcore, 3.2GB RAM machine to a pretty-much up-to-date machine.
I think the biggest benefit will be the CPU and RAM enhancements.  That is thanks to the 64-bit OS when it comes to RAM.  I think that it is definately worth the money when you consider how cheaper good parts are nowadays compared to a few years ago.  When I built the PC I'm currently typing on (which is still not a bad PC at all), it was 2x+ as much money.  If you think you need the benefit of 4x more RAM, more stable version of Sonar with large projects, etc... get 64-bit.
 
Just make sure all your drivers will be happy haha

that's because you haven't used it