Long story short, our PC was built with a lot of RAM (around 12GB) but the 32-bit version of Windows 7.

As I understand it, that is essentially preventing us from enjoying some of the higher-end mods and even things like the hi-res texture pack (which just doesn't work for us - we get weird textures and almost-instant CTDs).

So we've got someone who can reinstall Windows 7 as a 64-bit. Hooray!

I'm curious, though, how this will affect stuff like Steam... Will a re-install count against the number of times we can install Skyrim or something? We've never switched computers since getting Steam, so a bit shaky on how it all works. I would guess that, once we've got the new Windows installed, we would just sign in onto our Steam account, redownload Skyrim for free, and then go through the whole process of reinstalling Mod Organizer and all our mods... sigh.

But is there anything else to it?

There's no limit to the number of times you can download and install Skyrim once you've validated your copy through Steam. Install your 64-bit Windows, reinstall the Steam client, then log in to your account and reinstall the games in your library. Then the fun of reinstalling all of your mods can start ...

As an FYI, a 32-bit operating system is physically unable to address anything more than 4GB of RAM. Any amount above that is not even seen by the OS. Your game is probably crashing with 32-bit Windows because everything's crammed into that 4GB, and Skyrim doesn't have enough memory left to run properly. Upgrading to 64-bit Windows will allow Windows to load itself into that extra RAM you've got installed and give Skyrim that much more memory to use.

It is hard to say how much improvement you will get with the 64 bit version of the OS. But at least you can access all of you memory.

If we knew more about your computer than we can give you a better answer.

Great to know, thanks Gator Country!

Erzherzoghans, what would you need to know? Graphics card stuff, I'd imagine... anything else that would be handy? Later today I can post my dxdiag if that's not overkill.

Actually, i don't thing the 4GB RAM limitation will cause CTD's in that matter you described above.

Except you open a huge amount of windows and also have other stuff loaded, running on the background.

Obviously heavy texture mods that are loaded to your GPUs VRAM can cause problems like that.

Also, Skyrim is very CPU dependent. Anything lower than a dual core processor, can degrade your gaming experience. Also not the best thing, if you wanna use high end mods, as you described above.

And, talking about mods, this game is far more GPU dependent and in particular VRAM dependent then anything else. !!!

So, if you have a dual core processor, and a GPU with 1GB of VRAM, extra system Ram will do little help here.

Even if you have double the RAM, you don't wanna go for the scenario, for swapping your GPU ram with with your system Ram.

For the reason, that VRAM (GPU ram) is always faster than system ram, you will encounter your minimum framerates may be quite low and some stutter may be apparent.

When the VRAM limit is hit, textures starts compressing what's in the VRAM buffer and tossing out things used for caching.

Typically, you can go a couple hundred MB above what the game would require if you had a higher VRAM card without issues, but there WILL come a point where you can compress no longer,

and you will end up using virtual memory of some kind, and performance will DECLINE !!!.

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However, having 12GB of ram, and not using those, is not a wise choice. So a 64 bit OS is what you need here.

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> Later today I can post my dxdiag if that's not overkill. <

Just, if you tell us your CPU and your GPU, i thing it would good enough.