Legit Reviews

To what extent does an operating system improve gaming performance?

I'm told that on a 32 bit OS its pointless having more than 4GB of RAM - apparently you need a 64 bit to allow for up to 8GB of RAM; and yet I'm told that 64 bit doesn't necessarily make gaming more efficient. All the while I'm under the impression that you can't get enough RAM when it comes to boosting game preformance. what do I make of all this?

in regard to the above; what Windows 7 OS would be best suited for gaming?

A game does not necessarily take advantage of the 64 bit instructions in the 64 bit operating system, but it will (probably) take advantage of the more than 3~4 GB RAM that you install.

An example I can give is my Macbook Pro on Win 7 32bit - it only recognizes 3 out of the 4 GB RAM, however, my desktop on Win 7 x64 sees all 6 GB.

So where would more than 6 GB of RAM come into play?

Games will rarely use that much. 6GB will come more into play on how many programs can be open at once. or if a certain program requires that much.(that's the extent of my knowledge on that one) Games can take advantage of a 64 bit OS if they are written to do so, just like if a game was written to use more than one core.

That's a hard question to answer. Right now, most the the AAA titles aren't using all of the RAM except in some isolated cases. But I remember at GDC this year, I attended a talk that mentioned that since users were starting to get quad cores and 64bit systems with 6 GB of RAM installed by default, developers should start making more games that take advantage of these benefits.

So I would say that, 95% of games now don't use all the RAM, but they will soon. The main use of huge amounts of RAM are for 'power' users, especially with graphics programs.

I was think just that - games down the track would definitely cater to more resource. However - in terms of today's games - given that a 64 bit would consume more resource, or at least take up more space on the the hard drive, a 32 bit might be more appropriate anyway?

A 32bit binary and a 64bit binary are roughly the same size once compiled and linked. What matters is that a 64bit binary cannot work on a 32bit architecture OS because they call instructions that don't exist on the 32 bit machine. In general, additional development work needs to be done to make 64 bit versions of software.

Just get Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. On new egg at least there is no price difference between the 64 and 32bit versions, so there is really no reason not to get the 64bit version.

As for game performance, anything over 4gb should not make a difference unless you are running multiple apps.

Typically game performance is limited by your Graphics Card, and then maybe by your processor, then maybe the ram. But with todays cpus and large amounts of ram they are rarely the issue.

I only now of Grand Theft Auto IV, which takes up more than 4 gigs while playing, it's sometimes at 5gig, so I upgraded to 8 gigs and it ran a lot smoother, but thats still the only game I noticed a change. Some games do have a 64 bit binary e.g. Crysis.
I agree with Sttm, there's no reason not to go 64bit, as far as I know.