Windows 8, 32 bit or 64

Choices, choices, I am upgrading XP to Windows 8. Running on an AMD Athlon 64 bit 2.4 GHz processor (That`s an upgrade on my 1.8 GHz AMD). So the question really is which version do I use 32 or 64. I haven`t a clue but it`s not too difficult to stuff it up.

If you install the 32 bit version you'll be limited to a maximum memory of 4GB. The 64 bit version will allow the use of (in theory) 16 exabytes. That's a lot. It would allow you to stick some more memory in your PC to handle large files/piccies and would also be useful if you upgraded to a new build it yourself PC.

Thanks Richard, this is a home built PC. I want to use it primarily for photos and video. Just a bit slow now with the advent of large camera files. I dropped in a new graphics card with 2 Gb of on board RAM and that`s what made me want to speed it up a bit more. I installed the 32 bit version but had a little niggle in my mind as to if it was the right decision. The mother board has 4 memory slots and says a maximum of 4 Gb of RAM.

If the maximum memory you can fit is 4GB you won't see much difference - a little bit as 32 bit Windows uses some for itself and there's about 3.5GB left for use but that's only 500MB extra. There's no downside to installing the 64 bit version but no real benefit in your case.

If you are used to using Windows XP then imho an un upgrade to a 64bit Windows 7 OS might prove to be a much more straight forward migration path and much more intuitive to use.
If you are not familiar with either Win 7 or Win 8, before you commit yourself, consider going into a local PC World or Curry's or Tesco's even and have a look at some laptops & PC's that have Win 7 or 8 installed to get a feel for each them. I strongly suspect you will favour Win 7 over 8 as the latter is more akin to a phone app in the way you navigate it.

Your graphics card won't give you much of a boost either as a graphics cards main purpose these days is in 3d applications not 2d such as photo editing.

To be perfectly honest and if your budget allows, I recommend you get yourself a new motherboard, a multicore cpu ( I think AMD still provide the best bang for buck) and a minimum of 8 gig of ram and do a rebuild.

You could probably get a cracking bundle deal for the above items if you shop around for well under £200, which should prove much better value in the long run and be ample capable of running Photoshop on a 64bit OS.

Depending on how computer savvy you are, Windows 2008 server OS converted to a workstation OS is a dream to use and supremely stable. Otherwise, Win 7 should be just the ticket for you.

These are only my thoughts however but based on years of PC building and using. Others may disagree as is there right...

Good luck....

I'm with defragged on this in that I would recommend upgrading your mobo/ cpu and getting a decent amount of RAM. then install 64bit OS.


I have multiple partitions on my machione, including Win 7 32 and Win 7 64. Lightroom,f or example, works much better in 64bit than in 32bit, reagrdless of the RAM. The extra RAM makes it even more worthwhile.

note: tonight I've just upgraded my RAM from 6Gb to 24Gb. 6Gb wasn't enough when operating on huge panorama stitched image files, and wanting to keep lightroom and other stuff open as well.

As a few software manufacturers now begin to turn their backs on 32 bit software. (Adobe to name just one.) 64bit operating system is a must.

I'm v. interested in this thread, as I need to replace my PC, currently creaking badly when using lightroom 4.

Anyone got advice on what spec machine I should be looking for to get a decent setup for lightroom etc?

Feel free to cover the basics - I used to be relatively up-to-date with this sort of stuff, but it seems to have been leached out of me and transferred to my teenagers. And don't ask why I'm asking the forum for advice rather than them

Most modern pc will run lightroom fine, what makes a difference is ram and SSD to run lightroom cache and spend money on a decent monitor

We always buy off the shelf, whatever is current technology with possibly a different video card and more RAM added before delivery. Our local computer shop deals with it all at an incredibly low price, so we concentrate on photography and let him concentrate on computer hardware.

Now, if someone finds playing with the hardware interesting or fun, then that's fine too!

My main PC is a windows 7/64 machine with an Intel I5 quad core processor and 6GB of RAM. It runs Lightroom 4 / 64 bit version just fine. A good (calibrated) monitor is a must, and of course some backed up storage for all those images. I am however developing an unhealthy interest in a 120GB solid state drive for the operating system. And based on Smeggy's point, maybe I need more RAM!

I'm with defragged and smeggy, you would be better off on a 64 bit OS (preferably Win 7 unless you really like the look of Win but the 4GB RAM limitation of your current motherboard is an issue and a motherboard upgrade does seem favourite.

Paul

I use an SSD boot disk. Win 7 boots in about 40 seconds from power on.

Cabstar is right about RAM for Lightroom though. It eats it up. I was regularly getting slow downs of workflow with 6GB.

bear in mind with SSDs they have slow write speeds so not automatically the best for the LR Cache. I had mine on one of my SATAIII HDDs.

however, since maxing out my RAM to 24GB, I've been experimenting with a RAMDisk.

I've created a 4Gb RAMdisk using this

[ur]http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk[/url]

It's free for disk upto 4Gb. that still leavers 20Gb regular RAM,and I've pointed the Lightroom RAW cache to it.


Results so far seem very good on the few RAW Files I've edited so far.

Biggest change that speeded Lightroom up for me is a workflow change. Leave NR, Sharpening, and lens corrections ( CA, fringing, etc ) until you've done all the other edits.

This will greatly speed things up.

I'm fortunate my laptop has two hard drives and a built in 32gb ssd, I replaced one if the hard drives with a 256gb ssd so have cache in the 32 the catalogue in the 256 and the raws in the had. Works really well and then I have 16gig memory.

Thanks very much everyone, I think a very sharp learning curve is around the next corner. I think it has to be a new Motherboard and processor with a lorry load of RAM. I often wondered why I came to grief with Photoshop and with video.