~Toughbooktalk~

Just bought a CF-31 Mk2. Heartland has the Win7 restore disc in both 32 and 64 bit flavors. I know with the CF-30 the general consensus is to stick with 32 bit primarily because of availability of more mature drivers. However, was wondering if this recommendation was the same for the 31? (The Mk2 has the i5 second generation processor 2520.)

It's not just the drivers. 64bit is slower than 32bit until you get 6gb of ram. They are about equal at 6gb. At 8gb 64gb is slightly better. So for 64bit, you also need 8gb of ram.(more money). 99% of software most people use, never needs 64bit. So you end up spending more money for an OS and ram combination which you never need.
I stand by my original statements, unless you have specific software that needs / uses 64bit, Stay with 32 bit.

One caveat involves what specific model you have..
Does it have the discrete ATI graphics? On a CF52 with ATI graphics, the graphics uses shared memory and not it's own.
This may cause a performance hit, if the video uses 1gb of your 4gb installed on a 32bit system..

I am not 100% on this...Anyone want to check it out and verify?

Thanks Shawn. It has 8gB ram and doesn't have the discrete graphics card. Most of its use will be MS Office 2014 suite SW.
Sounds like 32 probably still is still the way to go.

I agree 32bit should be fine with less headaches.

I agree it should be fine, as long as you don't need anything above 4GB as a 32 bit OS will not address memory above that limit. With 8GB available, 1/2 of what you have will be unused. Personally, I run 64 bit because it is a bit of a pet peeve to want to use what I paid for. I have not had any issues with drivers on the Toughbooks themselves, but from my experience at work 64 bit printer and scanner drivers for older devices are a bit of an issue. If you have all newer peripherals, you should be golden whether you use 32 or 64.

I have not run any direct speed comparisons on the same machine, but I do not notice a difference between my 32 bit or 64 bit machines. As Shawn already pointed out, with smaller amounts of RAM, 64 bit is dog slow. Personally, I go with 4GB and 32 bit or I jump to 8GB and 64bit. That is likely why I have never seen the difference.

I had the same problem with my Kodak printer. It's a great printer but no 64bit drivers. So when I want to print in color I put in my spare caddy with W7 32bit.

I run W7 64bit with 16GB memory on my CF-53 but it's no faster than my W7 32bit. Both boot to windows in 18 seconds.