I was wondering if the games will run on a 64 bit computer that actually runs on 64 bit windows etc. Most 64's like mine still run on 32 bit programs and thus really only max out 4 gigs of ram. So if you get one like mine, more ram means nothing. If I moved up to true 64 (64 windows etc) will the GOG games still work? Fairly sure the DosBox one's would, but the newish stuff and mid to late nineties stuff?

The Infinity Engine games and Arcanum worked on mine, can't really comment on other ones yet.

All GOG Windows games are 32bit so barring hardware issues yes they will work.

I don't really follow.

GOG games run fine on 64 bits Windows as do other software.

Worst that can happen is that the program is constrained to 4 gigs of RAM, even if the OS isn't.

However, that's more a problem for libraries and such (which might be used in programs where the programmer would like to take advantage of more than 4 gigs of RAM) rather than existing application software (which were coded to use 4 gigs of memory usage or less anyways).

I have been 64bit since the day Vista came out and have never had a problem with GOG games. I haven't bought all of them though, of course. Quite a lot though.

Most 32-bit applications are limited to 2GB, even on 64-bit Windows. This probably describes most 32-bit GOG games. They run just fine on 64-bit Windows, which has a lot of facilities specifically for handling 32-bit applications.

"Large address aware" (LAA) 32-bit applications can use more memory. On 64-bit, they can use 4GB. There are tools you can run to tell whether an application is LAA.

Because applications compete with Windows services for memory, you want more than 4GB on 64-bit Windows if you can get it: 4GB for a big LAA application like Photoshop or The Witcher 2, and something left over so Windows won't fight it for memory.

Honestly, unless an application needs more RAM or registers than you can get with a 32bit binary, there's not usually much point in compiling in 64bits. Now, there may be some trouble if things move to 128bits at some point in the future, but for now there's really no compelling reason to run everything in 64bit mode.

Most games here are probably only going to get somewhat more bloated in terms of memory usage rather than any particular performance enhancement.

Given the current rate of increase in RAM size, I think 128 bit is quite a long way in the future :).

It's not just the RAM increase that drove things from 8 to 16 bit and from 16bit to 32bit etc., you get to do more things in a given cycle and typically have more registers available for use.

That being said, I doubt very much that we'll be moving to 128bit any time soon as doing so would be quite involved and computationally I don't think we're anywhere near the point of needing it.

That's what I meant,..if on 64 Windows the GOG games worked ok. I have 4 gig of ram but was thinking of upgrade later to 64 Windows ( on new computer) and a bunch of ram for games like Skyrim, etc.

Yes they work OK, even Skyrim which is a 32Bit (so a bunch of ram won't help it)

I've had 64 bits Windows for over 2 years now and had no problem running software that was compiled for 32 bits (though I lamented the lack 64 bits support for some libraries which precluded me from using them to make 64 bits applications).

Like Olnorton said though, most applications today don't use huge amounts of RAM as 1-4 gigs of RAM seems to be the most common amounts of RAM found on new regular machines (of course, you can put crazy amounts of RAM on a machine now, enough to rival the space on a hard drive just a couple of years ago, but it isn't the norm).

At this point in time, applications that rely on gargantuan amounts of RAM are of greater interests for people making their own server-side utilities on a server that has gargantuan amounts of RAM.

For someone who is strictly a user, getting more RAM is mostly useful for running multiple applications in parallel without the memory getting bogged down.

There are a couple of threads about working/non-working games on 64-bit Windows and on Windows 7 in general:

"gogs not working on windows 7"
"gog.com games working on windows 7 64bit"

Basically: there are no games known to work on Windows 7 32-bit that don't work on 64-bit. Good news!