HTPC w/ Windows 7 Prof - 32 or 64 bit?

[s1175290]

I'm in the process of building a HTPC and wanted to get some additional feedback on 32 bit vs 64 bit OS.

I will be running the following:

Athlon X2 250
cheap Biostar Mobo http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813138137
2 or 4GB of DDR2 @ 1066
OCZ SSD boot drive
WD 1TB Green (or equivalent)
Bluray TBD

This machine will primarily be used for DVDs, Blurays, streaming audio, Hulu, and infrequent encoding. I'm planning on using onboard video (assuming it's sufficient), but may upgrade to a 5650/5750 down the road if necessary.

Based on my research, it looks like I won't have much to gain by going with the 64bit version. It also looks like I may only increase my headaches in having to track down the occasional driver (or find a workaround). My inclination is to just go with the 32 bit version.

Any thoughts? Should I just go with my instinct (32 bit)? I guess I just want to make sure I'm not overlooking any potential benefits of going 64 bit?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[notposting]

I ended up going 32-bit on my HTPC with W7 Pro (Athlon X2 4450e, Radeon 4350, WD 640GB Blue etc). For exactly the reasons you mentioned, not so much drivers at this point but codecs, and not wanting that extra variable to include if troubleshooting.

Don't think 64-bit would be that bad but went with 32 for the HTPC (and 64 bit for both desktops).

 

[JackMDS]

I do Not care about what I do not have (I.e lack of drivers to stuff that I do not use).

So, I simply Tallied up what I am going to use.

I found out that I can get all the x64 drivers that I need, thus I went on with x64.

 

[Binky]

I have two HTPC machines running Vista-64 and Win7-64 with no problems at all. As long as it's modern hardware, you should be fine with either 32 bit or 64 bit. There aren't really any extra (driver) headaches for a basic machine.

 

[Gulzakar]

I'm using Windows 7 64...surprisingly no issues.

I'm using Ripbot to encode my HDDVD's to disk too.

 

[s1175290]

Thanks for the feedback. I think I'm going to go with W7 64. I'm using that on my main rig and I haven't had too many issues. Now that I stop and think about it, most of the issues I've had to troubleshoot have actually been related to my processor, MB, and RAM, and have had nothing to do with W7 64.

Since my wife will be using this a lot as well, I'm trying to avoid the phone calls at work regarding "Why won't this stupid thing work?" I'm sure it's still bound to happen, but I just want to minimize the calls.

 

[Alienwho]

I'm running win7 64bit on all of my computers, including my HTPC with tv tuners and all the scary things that might have cause problems and I have no problems at all. I see no reason not to run 64bit.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I am looking to update to Win7 64bit on my HTPC (currently running Vista 32). I will lose access to an older dual tuner that I have, but it is time to replace that tuner anyway at this point with something that supports digital cable (most of my recordings are from my HD-PVR tuner at this point anyway, only things I have it record in SD are old shows which also have a time conflict with a HD show).