Hi guys,

Has anyone tried using LTspice on Windows 7 64bit? I'm needing to get a new laptop for work purposes and I'm trying to figure out if it is a bit risky to go 64bit. I would really like to be able to go with more than 4GB RAM though.

Any experiences?

 

I am using it on a 64bit platform. Works great.

 

Excellent - one more tick on my list

 

I would like to lay your worries about going 64bit to rest.

Windows and most linux distributions handle 32 and 64 bit software seamlessly on a 64bit processor.

I use Ubuntu linux. It is free, and I have yet to find a windows program that I need that I cant run through WINE or Xwindows.

If you really want to see the speeds possible with a new pc, I would give it a try. Windows is so bloated and such a resource hog it really slows things down.

Get yourself a win7 system, and try a dual-boot with ubuntu. You can run both. But dollars to donuts says you spend more time in ubuntu.

 

ltspice was although designed for windows systems, it is designed so conservatively that it will run on pretty much anything. It was actually coded with running under wine in mind.

That being said it will never be a very fast compiler because of this limitation. It's not multithreaded and it doesn't take advantage of the latest in technology. It howeve works juuuuuuuust fine.

 

Ahh, not multithreaded?

With a schematic being the active window, click on Tools, then Control Panel.
Then click the Spice tab.
In the Engine box, select the maximum number of threads you wish to run; it's the 2nd option.

 

Hmm, never noticed the option before, it's active as described on my machine, doesn't work as you might think though. Running a simulation even with those options only saturates one core on my machine. Doesn't touch the other three.

 

Very interesting.
Might ask around on the !Yahoo LTSpice User Group.