HI name is Jason and I work for a Microsoft dept (software order dept and replacements)and I am upgrading my computer with a Windows Vista 64 bit platform next March ish..SO I was wondering will the BOINC software run on a 64 bit platform OS? If yes has there been any known issues? Also is there any benefits to the processing of the work units. Is it any faster? AS well I will be planning with upgrade to 64 bit platform OS I will be adding 8 gigs of ram to the computer. Will that make any difference to the project? I run the program all the time. 100% cpu usage allocated.. Quad core 2.4 GHz..A reply to my inquiry will be appreciated Thanks JAson

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Hi Jason.
These questions about 64 bit have been answered in various places on this board and our alternative board here, but the info is a bit scattered.

So, yes there IS a 64 bit version of BOINC, (all versions can be seen here, on the BOINC download page at the Uni of Cal., Berkeley), there ARE issues, and, for this project, 64 bit systems don\'t make much difference.

The \'issues\' are mostly to do with getting around the extra security measures in Microsoft\'s Vista, for which a new version 6 of BOINC was developed and released earlier this year. This separates the program and the data sections of BOINC, and also separates the graphics display from the data crunching, so that problems with displaying data (e.g. low ram, bad drivers, etc), are less likely to crash the crunching part.

This project uses supercomputer programs from the UK\'s Met Office, which is huge, written in Fortran using lots of floating point maths, and has a very wide range of values from the smallest, (e.g. sulphate particules), to the largest, (such as water vapour), so, even though ALL of the models are 32 bit software, there\'s not much advantage in going to 64 bit versions. (Which WAS tried a couple of years ago, but the models produced were very unstable.)

There was, (prehaps still IS), a different type of VERY high-res model being developed at a different UK Uni which used about 4.5 Gigs of ram per model.
Our contact there has left that project, so there\'s no info on what\'s happening now.

Generally, the most our models need in ram, is about 1 Gig max per model, (the hadam3 models), so for a quad core, 4 gigs for 4 models, plus a gig or 2 for the OS suffices. Cache size is important for fastest modelling, with conflicts in ram access bottle necks, (e.g. Intel\'s use of the Northbridge chip to control ram access), slowing down the speed when running 4 models at a time.

There is info on installing version 6 here, and info on backing up the new version in my sig below.
Finally, there is info on lots of things in the 5 README posts at the top of our alternate board mentioned above.

edit
Missed a bit.
You can run either a 32 bit OR a 64 bit version of BOINC on a 64 bit OS, but not all projects have 64 bit models (work units).
This project, like some of the others, will send a 32 bit model to a 64 bit BOINC, but here there\'s only one type of model available, as can be seen on this page.

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Backups: Here