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I am re-installing windows 7 on an old HP dv6 laptop. It was running win 7 64 bit, however I figured there might be a slight performance boost if I would downgrade to 32-bit.

I have been reading online and there is a lot of information on 32/64 bit, however rarely from a usage perspective. Which bit version would you recommend if (old) game performance is the main goal?

  1. Laptop is used for games (Battlefield Heroes, Team Fortress 2)
  2. Laptop won't be used for RAM intensive programs (photoshop, etc.)
  3. Intel Core 2 Duo T6400
  4. 4GB RAM (will never be upgraded; I read that 32-bit won't use more than 3.5GB, however full usage isn't necessary)
  5. When I bought it it was running 32 bit vista

In sincerely hope that this isn't a stupid question. I have spent quite some time looking for an answer already. Thanks in advance.

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    You could try it and check how much memory is actually available—it varies greatly from almost 4 GB to way below 2 GB, depending in the hardware installed.
    – Daniel B
    Dec 27, 2014 at 12:17
  • What would you say is acceptable? 1GB loss? Do you think the performance increase is worth it? (is there a performance increase?)
    – SuperSpy
    Dec 27, 2014 at 12:46

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I have an Acer Aspire 7720G, with a Core 2 Duo T9300 CPU 2.5GHz, NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT 1GB and 4GB RAM. It came with windows vista 32-bit. After that I installed Windows 7 32-bit, and now I have the 64-bit version installed.

  1. 64-bit has better performance. Not only from the bit perspective, but also you get to use the full 4GB of RAM. You get also a wider range of applications. But that's it. The RAM module will be with the same speed, and games will be addressed at the same speed.
  2. What's more important for games, is the graphics card. Take my laptop for example, I can run games up to 2012 games (with 20-30 fps), but still don't get the best experience.
  3. CPU is important also for games. But some games use more CPU resources and some less. For example, Dragon Age: Origins uses so much CPU resources, that you will not get that much of experience of a dual core cpu. Sometimes you get 90% CPU usage, and that's not a bug. The processor it's not powerful enough for that game.
  4. HDD vs SSD. With one sentence: An SSD is a must for upgrading an old laptop, and one that will improve overall performance, including gaming.

So, to conclude. It does not always have better performance, only you get to use more than 3.1 GB RAM. For most of the time the performance will be the same, but depending on the program, it might be better. In the 64-bit version of windows, most games need more RAM memory. But seeing your hardware specs and therefore the range of games you can play, 4GB of RAM is more than enough even for 64-bit version of windows.

For more you can check Taking the mystery out of 64-bit Windows

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  • Thank you. This answer gives me the little extra certainty I so craved ;) The link link I found earlier today and was indeed also useful.
    – SuperSpy
    Dec 27, 2014 at 14:45
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    As a programmer, you should also understand that while 4GB (or 3.5) of physical may be theoretically addressable by a 32-bit operating system, fragmentation issues usually prevent its use by any single program. You usually end up with small chunks of virtual address space scattered all over, with none of them large enough to use. With a 64-bit address space, there is so much virtual address space available that there is always some available for mapping in more physical memory (at least until we start having machines with physical memory nearing the limits of 64 bits).
    – James
    Dec 27, 2014 at 15:42

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