Windows 8 Upgrade for 7, Vista & XP

I second that. I have been in IT since windows were what I wanted in my office. 32 bit vs 64 bit is primarily addressing. Most 32 bit OS's could only address about 3.5 gig of memory natively (before you flame me, yes there are some exceptions/caveats to this such as PAE).

It is true that with a 64 bit OS you will not see much difference unless you have a large amount of RAM on your PC (over the previously mentioned limit for 32 bit OS's). Personally I run 8 gig in my laptop.

Virtualization is great. I run two VM's on my laptop (a 32 bit XP for legacy apps that I support and a 32 bit Win 7 with my e-mail and data. I boot to a 64 bit OS on my main PC and run some apps there, but nothing that can't be quickly restored if I have to wipe the system.

The advantage of VM's is that it is easy to back up, and if something gets corrupted, it is a easy restore. Plus, when I upgrade laptops, I just install VMware workstation and copy over my images - done.

Micro$oft has a brief explanation at the link below.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/...and-64-bit-Windows-frequently-asked-questions

 

A 32 bit OS can only address 4GB of memory. This is not only RAM but all of the other memory in a system. (Graphics RAM, PCI memory, ACPI, etc). This is why you will see lower than 4GB on a 32 bit OS because after all the other memory sources are addressed, it addresses what it can of RAM.

A 64 bit OS has the ability to address 16EB (exabytes) of memory. So it would be able to see all of the RAM installed in the system in addition to all the other memory sources available. Unless of course you can put a shit ton of RAM in your system.

 

My experience with any of the windows mobile OS's was always a horrible one. I went droid and everything was wonderful. When the latest version of windows mobile came out My first thought was what a god awful looking OS it was compared to Droid and I-Phone OS's. Now It looks like they have taken that horrid looking OS and moved it to there Desk/lap-Top platforms. Based on the info presented in front of me I will stick with my windows 7 prof & not be moving to windows 8. That being said If I was still stuck on Vista, I would use this opportunity to get off of it at a decent Price.

 

THIS!!! And I see that Google works well for you haha. I came across the same article

 

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My mainboard/CPU don't have access to, nor do they allocate the ram on my 1GB video card. That 1GB is accessible only by the processor on the video card. So if I am running 32bitOS, and have 1GB of video memory, and 4 GB of ram, all is good, because the OS has nothing to do with the video card's memory. Now if you are talking about SHARED video memory, where the graphics card is built in to the mainboard, then I will agree with that statement. Otherwise, no.

 

The OS absolutely has to allocate video memory. Along with RAM. The MOBO and processor have nothing to do with the video ram but the OS needs to understand how to use it. This is where the allocation of video memory comes in, at the OS level, not hardware.

 

I don't know very much, but I have a toshiba laptop that is about 3 or 4 years old with Windows Vista, according to my system properties I have 2 GB of ram on a 32 bit system. What would change if I upgrade to windows 8? Any improvement? Also, what would I lose during the transition. I don't want to have to take all of my files off and stick them on thumbdrives or something.

I really want to upgrade, any advice would be appreciated

 

It's not even available yet

 

Performance wise, not sure how well it would work.

Your windows settings and personal files will transfer over. Programs/applications will not carry over.

 

It's expected in October.

 

My specs:
Phenom X6 1055t @ 4Ghz
M4A89GTD Pro w/ NB @ 2700
4GB DDR 1600 @ 7-8-7-24
Crucial 64 GB SSD.


Your arguements fail because outside of the hardcore O/C'ers, I believe I have one of the faster setups you can put together. 4GB of RAM and I never fill more than 3, I do photo editing, gopro videos, all faster than shit. Why? SSD > RAM IMO. Now I'm not saying that SSD's are faster, but... I could disable the page file, but why when the SSD can process at 300mbps? I'd never notice it.



Now, back on topic. Windows 8, hmmmm.... lets see....

Win95 fail, Win98 win, WinME fail, WinXP win, Vista fail, Win7 win....Win8-well Do I see a pattern here?

 

Wrong. The OS doesn't even control the video memory. It sends the data thru the pipeline to the GPU on the video card and the VIDEO CARD stores the information in the memory. Been there, tested it a long time ago when this discussion came up on the computer forums I was on at the time. We verified that the system recognized the on board memory, but did not "recognize" the memory on the video card.

Graphics ram and system ram serve very different purposes. System ram holds data for the CPU to work on, graphics ram holds textures and frames that the graphics card will work on and needs to work on, the CPU cannot access the graphics ram and the graphics card cannot access the system ram without going through the GPU/CPU respectively.

What this means is that the CPU does not need to recognize nor allocate the memory on the graphics card, because the GPU controls it.

 

Doesn't the GPU work through the SB anyways? Theoretically completely bypassing the CPU/NB altogether.

 

Boycott M$!! http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/microsoft-tries-to-block-linux-off-windows-8-pcs/9572
They also blocked the Open Source Foundation Website as a "gambling" site L O L Feeble attempt M$


snapshot4

 

If you go into the properties for your video card in device manager there will be memory ranges that the OS has allocated on the resources tab. The OS writes the pixel data into the video cards memory and the GPU processes that data and sends it out the interface to the monitor.

I understand graphics RAM and system RAM are very different. I agree that the CPU cannot access graphics RAM. I never said the CPU allocates graphics RAM as it's the Operating Systems job to allocate graphics RAM for it's use.

 

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/microsoft-windows8-secure-boot/

 

The point that I was trying to get at it that with a 32 bit system, if you have a 1GB video card, it does not count towards the 4GB memory limit, which is what was being said earlier.

 

My brain hurts.

So if I have a 32 bit system running on a 2 gb of ram, will windows 8 improve anything or is a just a flashy upgrade of features?

 

I would highly doubt it, its more flash and show which equals to using up more resources (cpu and memory).

 

I've been running windows 8 at work for the past 3 months, and could not be happier with it. I have had very little problems to speak of. I say go for it, its way better than 7.