Final Check

[PaulMacC]

Hey, Im going to be ordering a computer within the next week and I wanted to check everything before I order it. Will this computer be good for rendering videos (HD clips) and does anyone know what operating system it is (32bit or 64bit) also what is the difference

The PC is here

[Swearwolf]

it's vista home so it's 32-bit and i dno the difference really

[PaulMacC]

Someone told me any Windows machine with more than 3gb of RAM is 64bit.

[Swearwolf]

a pc with more than 3gb ram needs 64bit to recognise the extra ram, so yeah you're right there lol

[mat64]

Someone told me any Windows machine with more than 3gb of RAM is 64bit.

32bit operating systems should be able to address up to 4GB of RAM. However this is not always the case, if for example you have graphics card with 512MB RAM, this will count towards the quota. So if you had 4GB of RAM installed along with a graphics card with the 512MB RAM your system will only be able to address 3.5GB of RAM because of this. However a 64bit operating system can address over 4GB of RAM, much more infact. This is all just from my own personal experience and understanding though, so I could be wrong.

As far as I can tell from PC Worlds' very detailed overview of that machine, it looks like you have an onboard graphics chip, so it might be that you have a 32bit OS after all. 64bit comes with it's drawbacks anyway, so it's probley in thier best interests to install 32bit.

If you want to read more into this, you can do so here.