Windows 32 bit vs 64 bit Speed test and performance Comparison
Overview:
64-bit windows gets almost four times the score of 32-bit windows this is absolutely insane when i look back at these numbers so you know those times you have to go install something on your computer and you sometimes see that option to install either a 64-bit or 32-bit version well today we’re going to be checking if these two options differ in performance so from the outside these two laptops might seem like the same two ordinary windows laptops but in reality they both run different architectures on the left is the 32-bit version of windows 7 and on the right is the 64-bit version will this inconspicuous change effect performance.
1.Startup
well we’re about to find out so while the startup test is playing out i wanted to point out a couple of things firstly the reason why i’m using windows 7 and not let’s say windows 10 is because the 32-bit version of windows 10 has virtually zero program compatibility so i had to switch to an older os and as usual these are both on the same exact hardware like all my previous tests but i am aware that the 32-bit version of windows 7 can only use 4 gigabytes of ram so i made sure to limit the amount of ram used in the 64-bit version as well now even though we all know that 64-bit software is superior in every regard nowadays i wanted to see how much of a difference it made on performance compared to a 32-bit os if there even is one so back to the startup test i know startup is in everything but i always found it as the most interesting test in any comparison because well it’s where it loads up all the system resources and it could give us a broad idea of what to expect so off the bat the 64-bit version of windows does win the startup test and it wasn’t by a second or two it was by a mere seven to eight second time period and i can’t say for sure but i imagine that with more programs and files on the computer the difference could be even bigger.
2.Storage Test:
following the startup test i wanted to see how much storage was being used up on both of these laptops and honestly this was the result i was expecting in this case older technology takes up less storage so if you’re looking for an operating system that takes up less storage make sure to get a 32-bit operating system okay just kidding don’t actually do that but still there’s an interesting win for 32-bit windows
3.Ram Management
next up is ram management both capped at 4 gigabytes to make it fair and the first thing i wanted to do was a chrome test to see how many tabs it takes for both of these to reach 3 gigabytes and honestly not too much of a difference surprisingly 32-bit windows beat out 64-bit but only marginally by two tabs and another expected results so while both laptops are idle and not doing anything other than having task manager open the 32-bit version of windows took up less ram than the 64-bit version i’d assume because 32-bit windows takes up less system resources to
4. Cpu Management:
start cpu management i want to check what percentage of the cpu was being used up in task manager when the os was doing nothing and yeah really nothing to report here i usually add this test to see if anything significant happens in the background while the os is running but not this time unfortunately but something that actually is significant is the heat of the cpu so after observing the lowest temperature of the cpu while nothing was happening in the background the temperature difference between both laptops are actually very large 64-bit windows winning by a 7 degree difference which was something i definitely wasn’t expecting and the same can be said while both cpus were at their highest temperatures under a stress test albeit the difference was much smaller
5.Battery tests:
here’s another one of my favorite yet more difficult tests to conduct the battery tests and as usual i have a variety of different applications open in the background to drain the battery including office applications websites videos etc etc and i came into this test with absolutely no expectations because on one hand you have an architecture that is more modern but on the other hand you have one that is older and takes up less hardware resources and i was really curious to see what the results were in the end which is why i find these videos interesting to make even if filming and editing can be a big pain but anyways i’m just going to cut the video since this doesn’t drag on for too long and we can finally see that the 32-bit version of windows finally shuts off but moments later keeping in mind that the uncut footage you see is being sped up by 40 times 64-bit windows decides to give up as well and it won by a four to five minute margin.
6.wi-fi speed test:
moving on to the wi-fi speed test like usual i did a trial of 10 tests on speedtest.com and picked the highest download and upload scores for both laptops and for the download speed 64 bit windows wins by about six megabytes per second i’m not entirely sure why this is the case because i’m not aware of anything that 64-bit technology has that would give it the upper-handed wi-fi speed but what’s even funnier is that in upload speed it does even better this time beating out 32-bit windows by 8 megabytes per second so something fishy is going on and i don’t know what it is
7.Opening Applications:
And to see how loading times compare on both os’s i opened a bunch of applications at the same time on both starting off the control panel and 64-bit windows loads it up first while 32-bit windows needs a moment or two to load up the icons now i did speed up the rest of this so we don’t sit around waiting for the applications to load but next i tested a series of office 2016 applications starting off with word as you can see 64-bit windows managed to beat out 32-bit windows and there’s actually quite a large delay in between which is kind of concerning next was powerpoint and it was the same exact deal 64-bit windows loaded up first of all there was a pretty large gap in between while waiting for 32-bit windows to load up and remember that these are the same files and programs being loaded up on both of these laptops edit it to the millisecond so i could be as accurate as possible and the final office application i tested was xl and surprise surprise it was the exact same deal once again the application loaded up first on the 64-bit version of windows and loaded up dead last on the 32-bit version with a large delay in between i don’t know if this is microsoft purposely trying to slow down the application so that people would ditch their older computers but i mean what you just saw was three applications opened up at the exact same time with the same exact results and the final thing i wanted to open was a pdf file on both of these and even though 64-bit windows did win once again at least the time difference between both laptops was much smaller i think next time when i do something like this i’ll probably choose applications with more variety in terms of what they do because i mean we just opened three office applications so kind of my fault so moving away from application opening
8.Audio Editing
i did render a pretty simple audio project in audacity and both 64-bit windows was like blazing fast and it completely rendered the entire audio project by about two or three times the speed of 32-bit windows now for something like audio editing where it’s not as heavy as let’s say video editing i was quite surprised by this result i mean audio editing at least in my case is not very heavy on the cpu or the gpu speaking of video editing
9.Video Editing
let’s move on to video editing so using a video editor called vsdc video editor how many times i’ve said video editor i created a 1080p 30fps video project and the laptops will both be rendering about a two and a half to three minute video of some music and video put together so which one was faster well 64-bit of course man i’m so surprised it won by about 30 to 40 seconds keeping in mind that the footage you see is being sped up by six times the original speed i wouldn’t say it completely destroyed 32-bit windows but still it did a decent bit better and here’s a quick.
10. Web Browsing
web page loading test of youtube.com remember this is a web-based test so no cpu or gpu loads in this one and really i didn’t expect one to destroy another in this test even though 64-bit windows did better than 32-bit windows they were so close that i doubt a different architecture affected speed so let’s just move on next on the list is transferring a file from a usb to the laptops themselves and i’m just going to cut this short 64-bit windows 1 but only by 6 seconds considering that this is not sped up footage so this test doesn’t really signify anything a six second difference doesn’t really mean anything in the real world if i did the test again there probably would have been a chance where 32-bit windows beats out 64-bit windows there’s always percent error in all these tests and last test before we get into the benchmarks is the virus scan test again sped up footage but in terms of scanning speed unlike..
11.File Transfer & Virus Scan
file transfer 64-bit windows did way better than 32-bit windows and not by just like a mere 6 seconds rather 40 seconds so wow there is a result i wasn’t expecting and finally we’re on to the benchmarks now first benchmark i did was done on cpu-z and here we just take a second to look at the results in other words wow this is incredible so according to cpu-z 64-bit windows has close to double the score of 32-bit windows in terms of single-threaded performance but don’t worry guys it gets even better because in multi-threaded performance 64-bit windows gets almost four times the score of 32-bit windows this is absolutely insane when i look back at these numbers at first i didn’t think anything of it but looking at the score side by side i’m honestly blown away like seriously these numbers are ridiculous and last benchmark i wanted to do was 3dmark vantage to test the gpu performance an older version of 3dmark yes but for this hardware it works fine.
Conclusion
so what are the results well it wasn’t as crazy as cpu-z 64-bit windows was ahead by 70 points in the cpu maybe the ridiculous difference in speed was there in cpu z because chrome was open in the background in 32-bit by accident but i really doubt that uh but anyways for gpu performance 32-bit windows was ahead in this regard but only by 12 points so i don’t really think this means anything in the real world at least for the gpu okay so the verdict here is basically this don’t ever get a 32-bit version of windows just don’t ever it only won in storage gpu which wasn’t even that big of a difference and ram wise and even with the ram i didn’t even consider the 4 gigabyte cap that 32-bit windows has 64-bit windows consistently kept winning in every test i threw at it no matter what unless you consider the ones i just mentioned for 32-bit unless you so badly need 16-bit program compatibility if you all even know that is or you are an extremely extremely low-end hardware don’t ever get the 32-bit version of windows then that’s my verdict.
