Paintshop Pro X6 - x32 and/or x64?

[Davidk]

Having downloaded what I thought was a 32-bit Paintshop pro X6 program exe, I found that when installing on a laptop the installer offered 3 versions to choose from: 32 bit, 64 bit or 32-and-64bit. Can some one clarify how that happens, and if the choice is offered, which one is best??

Davidk

[LeviFiction]

X6 included the first 64-bit version of PSP.

64-bit lets you gain access to more RAM than a traditional 32-bit program. But only if you have 64-bit version of Windows. Also the 64-bit version does not run 32-bit plugins (most plugins are 32-bit because that was the only option for the longest time).

If you don't have 64-bit Windows you can only install and run the 32-bit version of PSP. If you have 64-bit Windows then the big question is do you use a lot of plugins? If not, you may prefer the 64-bit version for some potential memory improvements.

[Tadjio]

Also, to add to LeviFiction, the 64-bit version cannot usually access scanners successfully.
Only those with 64-bit drivers can be used.
In practice, I find it works fine to scan to a TIFF file and then load the TIFF file into PSP X6 64-bit.
I only use 64-bit as I don't use any plug-ins but I do want any speed / performance improvements.

[Davidk]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the feedback. The laptop is a 64bit item and it does have 64bit windows 7 loaded. I assume that the program exefile can detect that to offer the alternatives, but I asked the question because someone may positively have known. As for extra memory - not necessary to get faster memory access - each one being 64bits or twice the 32bit limit for every memory access (8 bytes instead of 4). Ergo, twice as fast for anything coming from RAM, but no change for anything from an hard disk.

From the comments, it seems that the 64bit program has no apparent advantage over the normal one and may have drawbacks depending on plug-ins. I would have thought that the memory access item would have made it seem to be faster in some modes. So, some examples of plug-ins that might be affected???

Davidk

[LeviFiction]

64-bit does offer some speed improvements in certain places. The program itself doesn't work any faster, but memory intensive functions (especially on larger images) should perform faster. RAM is faster than HDD all the time. So the more RAM a program is able to use, the less it relies on "Paging" which is writing memory to the HDD. So we've seen speed improvements on things like the Media brushes, and various commands.

64-bit does have its advantages over 32-bit, otherwise why would anyone bother?