32 or 64-bit?

Steve Mann wrote on 2/16/2012, 6:04 PM

I am having a "discussion" with my brother over whether he should install the 32-bit or the 64-bit version of Vegas. His PC is capable of 64-bit and he is running Windows 7 Ultimate, but he insists that here's no advantage of installing the 64-bit version.

His planned usage would fit into the definition of Windows Movie Maker - he will never use any plug-ins.

So, is there any other advantage to 64-bit over 32-bit version of Vegas?

Comments

fldave wrote on 2/16/2012, 8:43 PM

I fairly recently upgraded to Win 7 64bit, but only have Vegas 8, so am running 32-bit Vegas. I think the main difference is memory addressing, 32-bit is limited to 2 GB per program or so. Whether the newer versions of Vegas use the increased headroom would be the question. It would be great to work with a 4 GB Dynamic Ram, if that was possible.

I just completed a 36 hour render with Vegas 8 32 bit on a 64-bit machine, it worked well.

ushere wrote on 2/16/2012, 9:15 PM

hi steve, (fancy seeing you here ;-))

what's he going to lose installing 64bit rather than 32? it'll make better use of any memory over 4gb he might have installed.

Steve Mann wrote on 2/16/2012, 11:08 PM

He is simply being stubborn. He insists that since he only has 4Gb of RAM, then 32-bit is all he needs. And since he wouldn't know what a plug-in is, I doubt that 64-bit-only plugins will ever be used. So, I am at a loss to answer his question of, "why should I install the 64-bit version?"

ushere wrote on 2/17/2012, 12:20 AM

because he CAN!

tell him to think of all the poor people who DON'T have that option ;-P

Grazie wrote on 2/17/2012, 12:58 AM

In providing answer I'm pursuing the following.

In my continued search for stability, in VP521, I'm starting to be aware that having 32 and 64 installed leads to instability. I've uninstalled any previous versions iterations of VP11 and have now elected to go with only the 521 install. So far the hangs and crashes are few. Maybe it's because VP11, and 521 in particular, needs elbow room that having access to my 16gb of memory has forced the issue? Have we reached the Event Horizon for 32bit?

I'm conducting a series of Plugin Tests to confirm or deny this, but presently 521 is holding out.

To add credibility to my claims, I got an "Out of Memory" warning on just one QT render Template of mine. I did an exhaustive x86MemTEst 6 hour Purge Test on my RAM from a bootable USB stick, and my RAM is clear and GoodToGo. So, no memory issues, and in 521 all "appears", thus far, stable.

Could it really be something as simple as that? Don't install or use 32bit?

G

dxdy wrote on 2/17/2012, 8:09 AM

I am running 521 (64 bit) almost exclusively. I watch memory usage pretty closely, and it is very, very rare for the system to hit anywhere near 4GB of the 12GB on the machine. If I have a lot of other stuff open (IE9, Excel, PhotoShop Elements, etc.) it can approach 6GB.

I suspect that Vegas 11-64 is truly a 32 bit application, although they have run it through a 64 bit compiler to make a 64 bit version. I am not complaining, I just wonder how much quicker the application might be if it was truly using all of the RAM that is available instead of whatever disk swapping they do to keep it in a 32 bit space.