[ottothecow]

Which version of Windows 7 should I install on my new A6-3500 llano build?

I know the memory thing won't matter with my 4GB of RAM but I've been using the 64bit version of Win7 on my E6750 desktop with only 2GB of ram and it has been great...

Are there any downsides to going with the 64bit version for an HTPC?

[baldmosher]

As long as all your cards come with 64 bit drivers, x64 will always be much, much better than x86.

And if they don't, standard W7 x64 drivers usually work, and if not, 32bit drivers often still work OK in W7 anyway! (Not so much in Vista.)

My only experience is on my Elitebook 8530p which easily runs 5x faster on W7 x64 than it does on XP x86 - not a direct comparison but ateotd if you're running a 64bit processor you're just wasting all that extra power if you're only running 32bit instructions.

(NB: standard PCI cards are only 32bit - not sure if that matters!? Beyond my knowledge)

[Beer40oz]

X64

[baldmosher]

Yeah, what he said!

[ottothecow]

Sweet, done.

I wanted to go 64 but I wasn't sure if there were any xbmc/htpc specific reasons (my old box ran ubuntu)

[Orclas]

I know the memory thing won't matter with my 4GB of RAM but I've been using the 64bit version of Win7 on my E6750 desktop with only 2GB of ram and it has been great...

I also think you got it backwards. Windows 64bit does run on 2Gb (it's basically a performance thing), but 32bit can't use more than 4Gb. Reducing overhead, you're down to 3.5 and you still need to subtract any GPU RAM still.

If you install Windows7 32bit on a machine with 4GB, the system manager (or whatever it's called, am on an XP machine right now) will actually even state "Installed memory 4GB (3GB usable)".