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My Mother Board is Intel® 945G Express Chipset (Intel® 82945G Memory Controller) & Processor is Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7400 @ 2.80GHz, 2793 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s).

I am using Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit, system showing me usable RAM is 3.24 GB, when I have used 32 Bit Windows 10 then also show 3.24 GB.

My questions are:

  • Why it is happening?
  • 32 bit or 64 bit: which is best for me?

Actually I want to know which is perfect for me 32 or 64 bit Windows 10 Pro according to my Mother Board & Processor?

Abhishek Kundu
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    What exactly is your question regarding point 1? What did you expect to happen? We can't answer 2 until we are sure what you mean. – LPChip Aug 31 '15 at 07:48
  • Actually I want to know which is perfect for me 32 or 64 bit Windows 10 Pro according to my Mother Board & Processor? – Abhishek Kundu Aug 31 '15 at 08:25
  • Again, what do you mean with "Why is it happening?" – LPChip Aug 31 '15 at 08:55
  • Unless you need legacy 16 bit apps or old 32 bit apps that just blow up in 64 bit, you'll want 64 bit for performance and security. As for the usable RAM, they are less from installed physical RAM due to [hardware shared memory or chipset limitations](http://superuser.com/a/54072/57822) – Martheen Aug 31 '15 at 09:13
  • You need to figure out how much physical memory is installed and add that information here. It seems likely that you have 4 GB of physical memory. My interpretation of your first question is 'why do the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 10 both show the same amount of usable RAM?' - is that about right? – boot13 Aug 31 '15 at 10:27

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For the first part, I can only guess. You don't specify how much RAM you physically have installed, but based on your chipset and CPU I'm guessing you're using integrated graphics and have assigned 768MB (3/4 of a GB) of RAM to graphics processing. That would be consistent with having 4GB of RAM installed and both 32-bit and 64-bit OSes only showing about 3 and 1/4 GB available. If you put in a dedicated graphics card with the same 768MB of VRAM and turned off the integrated graphics, you'd get access to all 4GB in a 64-bit system, but 32-bit would still have the same limit it does now because the OS needs to be able to map the graphics memory into its address space (along with other drivers, but those other drivers typically require only tiny memory ranges)

For the second part (your actual question), I can only say based on what we know so far and what I speculate above. Your motherboard and processor are almost entirely irrelevant here; they can run 64-bit and 32-bit equally well. Given that, I would recommend going with 64-bit unless you use 16-bit software or are absolutely sure you will never upgrade the machine. Here are my reasons:

  • 32-bit-on-32-bit-OS is slightly faster at most tasks than 32-bit-on-64-bit-OS, but is also less secure. Meanwhile, there's an ever-increasing body of 64-bit software, which will often be faster than its 32-bit equivalent or at least make the difference irrelevant.
  • While 64-bit OSes can't run 16-bit programs without emulation, there are very few 16-bit programs still in use and it's unlikely you have any of them. Meanwhile, as mentioned, the number of 64-bit programs is growing, and 32-bit OSes can't run them.
  • If you ever add more physical RAM (which you should; it's a cheap way to substantially upgrade a computer and even a full 4GB is kind of low today; 3-and-change is worse) then a 64-bit OS will be needed to take advantage of it; if you used a 32-bit version of Windows now you would need to re-install the OS after upgrading the RAM.
  • Similarly, if you ever upgrade the machine by adding a dedicated video card, you won't get any RAM back if you stick with a 32-bit OS but you will with a 64-bit OS.
  • 64-bit takes more install space than 32-bit, which could be a concern if you have a really small SSD, but on a typical SSD or almost any HDD the extra few GB doesn't matter, and the advantages of 64-bit outweigh its cost.
CBHacking
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