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[rcjordan]

Time for a new CPU. Seems that the particular box I like has standardized on Win7 Pro 64-bit.  I assume --but don't really know-- that I'm going to have trouble porting my XP legacy apps, all 32-bit, over to 64 bit?

[KaptainKrayola]

ive been running win7 x64 for a while and haven't had any issues with any software.  the one exception is the driver for my keyboard so some of the extra buttons don't work right or don't work consistently. 

no other old school x86 apps seem to give me any trouble but i don't run a lot of old school winxp apps either.

[rcjordan]

>old school x86 apps

Yeah, the one really old app (1999) I loaded on a W7 32 bit machine worked just fine. 

The not-so-bad news is that cpu's of the caliber I need are now only $500 so I'll probably just buy it anyway after the summer is over and give it a go.

[nutballs]

in short, doubtful that you will have any issues at all.

win7 runs old apps with little to no trouble. There are sometimes some DLLs that you might need, but usually not.
On top of it, win7 has something called SHIMs behind the scenes. Basically, its a software layer that is like a translator, from old dll requests, to use the new dlls.
For mortals however it is called "compatibility mode and its a checkbox in the properties of the app when you right click on it. " goes down to win95 and usually works in my experience.

the diff between 32 and 64 should be a non-issue.

[isthisthingon]

I agree that it's probably a non-issue.  Games are a different story, as even XP 32bit to Win7 32bit can be a showstopper.  Here's a tool that can at least identify what's definitely compatible between versions and 32-64bit Win7: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/default.aspx

Try a search first then at the result page you can toggle between 32/64 bit to see if there's published compatibility data for your apps.