32-bit or 64-bit ?

Question

I bought a new PC which does not come with any operating system installed. I have to buy Microsoft windows 7 or 8.
PLEASE HELP WITH ADVICE. I need three questions answered please:
1 -Windows 8 Professional 32-bit or Windows 8 Professional 64-bit ? Is my new Intel i3 a 32 or a 64 bit ?
2 - I know I can purchase Windows 10 right away but I want to try the PC first with an operating system I am familiar with. I know I can then download Windows 10 for free but until when will Windows 10 be available for free from Microsoft ?Thank you very much
3 - Any other advice you can give me will be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

Yes the i3 is 64bit capable.



I would recommend you go with a 64 bit OS. The modern trend in technology is now 64 bit. Just make sure first that all of your software AND external hardware (printers, scanners, etc) are capable of running on the 64bit platform. That should be the only thing to stop you from not going the 64 bit route.



As for your Win 10 question - the offer expires July 2016. Which means you have 6 more months to make a decision to take advantage of the free upgrade.

Answer 2

A 64 bit OS is the best choice in 90% of the cases, even some smartphones use 64 bit Operating Systems. And you can also run 32 bit software on a 64 bit OS if you wish, it provides backward compatibility; but you can't run a 64 bit app on a 32 bit OS.



You mentioned that you bought a new PC so it definitely has to be compatible with a 64 bit OS.

Answer 3

With an I-3 processor it might be 64 bit? BUT....do you know how much ram this computer has???

If it has less that 4 gb- get 32 bit.

You answer a couple questions:

1- what is brand and model number?

2- do you know if the processor is 32 or 64 bit?

3- how much ram?



If you can not answer these questions- then play it safe and go 32 bit. 32 bit will work fine on either system. 64 bit will not work on a 32 bit system.

Answer 4

Any current computer and most other computers from the past 10 years can do 64-bit. Any computer that has 4 GB or more RAM should have a 64-bit OS because 32-bits can only address 4 GB and minus the space of the OS leaveing about 3 GB usable regardless of any unusable RAM over 4 GB.



Personally I run 64-bit Linux on a 6 year old i5 650 3.2 GHz, 8 GB RAM, GTX 750 Ti graphics. There is Linux Steam for gaming, LibreOffice for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, gimp for graphics editing, Google Chrome for Netflix, Firefox does Hulu. And there is something called PlayOnLinux that can run many Windows programs.

Answer 5

64 bit

Answer 6

32-bit versions of Windows are limited & 64-bit versions supports for storing billion GBs of RAM,so its better option to choose 64 bit.

Answer 7

64 bit is vastly superior, to check if your current machine in 64 or 32bit: press windows key + r and type msinfo32.

Then Look for system type it will either say x86 based pc (32bit) or x64 based pc (64bit) 32 bit is often referred to as x86. But in general and laptop or Desktop (does not matter which) with 4gb of ram or greater is a 64 bit operating system. as for upgrading to 10 I find its an improvement from 8 but it has it flaws also, as for downloading it. Anybody running windows 7, 8, 8.1 can download windows 10 for free through windows update. hope this helps :)

Answer 8

64 bit would be a better choice.

Answer 9

64 bit is always better, go 64

Answer 10

32 bit is mainly for laptops but get 64 bit for pc (desktops)

Answer 11

I can't and won't recommend windows 8 Evan Microsoft won't!



And you did not tell us the name or model so I can't look up your processor.



Windows 10 is not free for a clean install!



Until you install 7 or 8 and activate it

Answer 12

64bit.