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PostPosted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 8:38 am 
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Damian,
Excuses, excuses! Heh. Yeah, I definitely am not in the same league (or the same country) as you for encoding and streaming stuff. I may have to get that way to FINALLY get my 1000+ movie and TV DVD collection on hard drives and then I will have to deal with those pesky issues than have frustrated you.

In the meantime, you do a disservice by not recommending 64bit for the vast majority of users out there. I have had both Win7 32Bit and 64Bit on dual boot on the same computer and 64 bit was so much more useful that I cannot in all conscious telling anyone to run 32bit any more. So consider recommending 64bit for most users but tell them that there could be issues with some of the more esoteric codec and video players out there.

Funny thing is that CCC my codec of choice runs GREAT under 64bit. It must be all the encoders that give you grief.

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 8:59 am 
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John Pombrio wrote:
Damian,
Excuses, excuses! Heh. Yeah, I definitely am not in the same league (or the same country) as you for encoding and streaming stuff. I may have to get that way to FINALLY get my 1000+ movie and TV DVD collection on hard drives and then I will have to deal with those pesky issues than have frustrated you.

In the meantime, you do a disservice by not recommending 64bit for the vast majority of users out there. I have had both Win7 32Bit and 64Bit on dual boot on the same computer and 64 bit was so much more useful that I cannot in all conscious telling anyone to run 32bit any more. So consider recommending 64bit for most users but tell them that there could be issues with some of the more esoteric codec and video players out there.

Funny thing is that CCC my codec of choice runs GREAT under 64bit. It must be all the encoders that give you grief.


Well, actually, let me split off here as I think you may be mixing my x64 vs x32 recommendation:

x64 - Basically every OEM PC comes installed with x64. If you are looking to build you own PC and aside from doing general PC stuff you plan on doing CPU Intensive stuff or processes that could benefit from greater memory, then x64 is the way to go. For my desktop PC I use x32 currently, but am just waiting to build a replacement PC in the coming months of which I will then move back to x64. My desktop PC is my workhorse.

x32 - from a pure HTPC standpoint (I am talking about using an HTPC for media playback, no encoding, etc...), I still recommend x32 as there is zero benefit of using x64. An HTPC for this type of use only need 2GB of memory to be honest, and really anything over 3-4GB is overkill. Along with this, I have seen quite a few people who built x64 HTPCs and then have issues/conflicts/confusion with players/codecs. Since there is zero benefit for this type of use, why bother when there is no gain (and I have tried running a W7 x64 HTPC). As far as codecs, some issues I see is someone downloading an x64 codec and trying to use with an x32 player, and vice versa. Also, there are other scenarios where you must use an x32 player (Arcsoft Video Decoder, Reclock, etc...). Not saying that an x64 HTPC is impossible/unmanageable, far from it. But as I said, since there is zero benefit for this use, there is just potential to add confusion that is unnecessary.

Ultimately when W8 comes along it will only be x64, and at that point you won't have to worry about the confusion of x32 vs x64

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 10:36 am 
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At least with Vista64 I had real issues since WMP is 32-bit and WMC is 64-bit, caused massive headaches getting both versions of codes installed and working correctly. This was a couple years ago so it may have changed and Win7 may have improved things. I agree with Damian, there is a specific use case for HTPC's running 32-bit OS.

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 11:01 am 
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yakuza wrote:
At least with Vista64 I had real issues since WMP is 32-bit and WMC is 64-bit, caused massive headaches getting both versions of codes installed and working correctly. This was a couple years ago so it may have changed and Win7 may have improved things. I agree with Damian, there is a specific use case for HTPC's running 32-bit OS.


Still the same for W7. If you actually want to use the x64 WMP you have to do some digging to find it, the x32 WMP is the one that gets used by default. The internal WMC player is x64

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 10:51 am 
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I give up. I was looking around for codec incompatibilities with 64 bit operating system and what I found was that most of the apps were quickly migrating to 64 bit operations as pretty much EVERY computer and MOST OF THE HTPCs come with Win7 64bit. Hell, even the cheap Zoltec with an ATOM uP and 2GB RAM uses Win7 64 bit.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/review ... _hd_review

If you are stuck with 32bit operating system due to the way you kludged your HTPC together years ago, fine. But for cripes sake, there is a reason why Win7 64 is the ONLY operating system being installed these days! All computers are being built not just with 64bit compatibility but are 64 dependent and running 32 bit actually degrades their performance. As time progresses and more and more apps use 64 bit (AND multi-core), you are going to be wondering why everyone else gets so much better results than you do. 32bit is no way future proof, its a step back to XP days.

My last post for this topic.

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 11:38 am 
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John Pombrio wrote:
I give up. I was looking around for codec incompatibilities with 64 bit operating system and what I found was that most of the apps were quickly migrating to 64 bit operations as pretty much EVERY computer and MOST OF THE HTPCs come with Win7 64bit. Hell, even the cheap Zoltec with an ATOM uP and 2GB RAM uses Win7 64 bit.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/review ... _hd_review

If you are stuck with 32bit operating system due to the way you kludged your HTPC together years ago, fine. But for cripes sake, there is a reason why Win7 64 is the ONLY operating system being installed these days! All computers are being built not just with 64bit compatibility but are 64 dependent and running 32 bit actually degrades their performance. As time progresses and more and more apps use 64 bit (AND multi-core), you are going to be wondering why everyone else gets so much better results than you do. 32bit is no way future proof, its a step back to XP days.

My last post for this topic.


Sigh...no one is saying you cannot use x64 for an HTPC John. Simply put there is no benefit for the HTPC use (assuming the HTPC is just being used for video playback and not much else). For example, you mention multi core use. Yes, this is important for encoding, but for pure media playback this becomes a lot less important, especially since most video processing can be offloaded to the GPU. My dual core HTPCs barely hit 5% CPU usage during video playback (including full HD content) because of DXVA (so I don't know what better results I am going to be wondering about?). Because of this mixed x32/x64 structure though you still need to keep that in mind with an HTPC, make sure you use the correct player, grab the correct codecs, register correctly, etc... Once again, not saying that you cannot use x64 with an HTPC. For someone who wants to build an HTPC for pure media playback right now it doesn't get any easier then x32

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 15, 2011 4:25 am 
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Over on AVSForum there was a debate about x32 vs x64 for an HTPC. Below is an interesting post regarding this and why x32 is still viable for an HTPC. When all applications become x64 applications (my guess you will see this when Windows 8 is released as I have a feeling W8 will not support x32 applications) then this will become a moot point. Original post here

Quote:
There is still a lot of apps for HTPC use that still are 32 bit (TMT, XBMC, Reclock etc) and MPC-HC if HD bitstreaming is required. On a 64 bit system this goes to the WinSXS 32bit ->64bit emulator

On desktop systems used as HTPC with dual channel memory and large on die memory cache, this is moot and it is down to preference as to which bitdepth is preferable.

Nettops such as the Atom and Zacate are interesting for HTPC use as it offers the the possibility of running completely passive. I find this very desirable for living room use.

The main stumbling block is the reduced memory bandwidth which is single channel and clocked at a lower speed. Additionally the GPU competes with the CPU for the same memory channel.

The overhead of the 32bit to 64bit emulation makes itself felt on a nettop in the form of sluggish UI response. Using a 32bit OS avoids this overhead.

Nettops and netbooks are one of the main reasons why 32bit W7 is still around.

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PostPosted: Sun Apr 08, 2012 5:55 pm 
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dbone1026 wrote:
Depends on how you use your HTPC.


Yeah, but the OP had a tablet

1) 64 bit is the future
2) Memory is cheap (max it out!)
3) The only way to use more than 4GB is with 64bit OS
4) The only way to go from 32 to 64 in the future is to do a complete re-install

For something like an HTPC where you are basically using it like an appliance - fine. But for something being used as a general purpose computer that you are running a wide variety of software on, why would you limit yourself to 64 bit? And why for the $40 or so wouldn't you put 8GB in there and enjoy it! Window's isn't the smartest at using extra memory (it's caching still sucks and it does lots of disk access even with lots of free RAM) but extra RAM does help.

MaximAvs wrote:
I have a tablet PC (HP TX2525nr) that is running Vista Ultimate 64bit.


Does that tablet have integrated graphics (say, from Intel)? If so, You probably have only about 2GB of useable RAM for your OS - more memory would make an astonishing speed difference for you... The problem with my work provided Lenovo t400S - it's always been a dog. I haven't used a machine with integrated graphics in so long I forgot to check - the integrated graphics is taking 1GB of the 3GB of memory - and Windows 7 is a DOG - more RAM is on order and I get to fight to get the machine re-imaged with Windows 7 64 bit :oops:

Friends don't let friends install new computers with 32 bit OSs....


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