waitwaitwait... you guys are getting it all wrong.. the 32bit makes the exe you're running to use 2gigs of ram.
when im playing a game, im mostly listening to music while steam, keyboard and mouse software, antivirus, nvidia and some other software are still running. these program's take around 1.7gb's of my total ram.
so when i run a game running in 32bit, the game is not locked to 2 gigs of overall memory but rather 2 gigs of additional memory. so 1.7gigs of various programs + the 2 gigs of extra memory.. thats why there are games that require 4gigs of ram while still running on a 32bit exe. you could also run the game with 3gigs if you close you're steam, anti virus and other stuff.

so having a 64bit for this game is only good for those who have 4gb's or more memory availble.

ps : a 64bit version will also mean open cities..

... the link that guy posted says basically the same thing

So, I most likely can't (Todd did say "not at the moment") run Skyrim on my WindowsVista 64 bit?

I hope they do in the next 4 months or so..

Darn, I wanted those mods =(

Question: I am thinking of upgrading near the end of this year, and I am thinking that I may as well look at switching from 32-bit to 64-bit Windows 7, since the lousy hardware check forces me to buy a new Windows version anyway.

What is the fundamental difference between 64-bit and 32-bit? What kind of incompatibilities can I expect? How is compatibility with older games, in general? I have 4GB RAM presently; would it make sense (on a computer used solely for gaming) to increase it to 8 or 16?

Did you read http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/86886-32-bit-vs-64-bit-comparison.html?

Hmm that's a good article, and answers all of my questions. Thanks!

You can thank "wat docdude" for that, as they originally posted it above. Glad it helped

I doubt Skyrim will be more than 6,8 Gb's in size. A rig with 12 or more RAM (not completely odd those days, plus memory is very cheap as of today) could fit nearly all (if not the entire game) into memory, and even that wouldn't be necessary in any case.



Both the OS and the app must be 64-bit in order to fully benefit from it. If something fails in that equation, the app is restricted to 32-bit mode.



That. And open cities. And no loading screens between exterior/interior transitions. And more objects/items/foliage/trees/etc in screen...

Seriously. I'm amazed how people underestimates RAM capacity. Plus, talking about mods, even without having gigantic mods installed, my modded Oblivion copy crashed every once and then due to reaching the RAM limit. That'd have never happened if it were a 64 bit .exe.

Yep, right. They will make a 64-bit version and exclusively for it they will change the game's architecture. For PCs. Sure. /sarcasm

Truth is, while they use that old consoles, they will never need more RAM. It's only the mods, as the previous guy said.

But, by the way, I am a programming student, and as far as I know, you need just to recompile a program for it to use 64 bit. At least in Visual Studio (that is part of XNA Game studio (Xbox API)). Probably for performance boost you might need some optimisation. But I'm not that experienced, so I might be wrong...

so is skyrim made for the PC, then ported to consoles? or the other way round?

We will know that for sure as soon as we get to see if there is a “Press START” message at the main screen of the PC version -__-

Don't worry, It will run on the 32-bit Vista, but won't use all the features of a 64-bit system.

JimC

Jim means that it will run on 64-bit Vista, but behave like a 32-bit program.

There is a free program out there called 4GB Patch. It will set the flag in the Executable file to allow 4gb of memory in 64 bit systems. It doesn't always work for some executables however. Hopefully it does as this is a HUGE improvement in resource allocation. Now if your system only has 4GB of RAM anyway, you aren't likely to see a huge boost as the OS already keeps a nice sized slice of that for its own operations.

Brain cramp! Like he said! :wink_smile:

Yeah, if Steam released sales figures PC gaming would probably receive a HUGE boost.