32bit or 64 bit

[dowlass]

Hi, new to all this VM stuff so pardon me if my descriptions are anyway incorrect.

Question: if my Host OS is OSX 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) running on a 64 bit Intel iMac, and I want to install Windows 10 as the Guest OS..... do I need the 32 bit or 64 bit Windows version?

(My Mac is actually partitioned with SnowLeopard on one partition and Yosemite on the other - I use SnowLeopard 95% of the time)

Thanks

[socratis]

Whatever you feel like using. VirtualBox can run on 32- and 64-bit hosts and the guests can be 16-, 32- and 64-bit ones. It really doesn't matter.

One thing that might influence your decision, is that if you go with a 32-bit guest, you can only appropriate and allocate about 3 GB of RAM to the guest. Anything more than that is not understood by the guest.

And finally, 10.6.x can only go up to the VirtualBox 4.3.x series. I'm not really sure how well they handle the latest Windows 10 updates. Even the test builds for 5.1.x may have issues with the constant updates of Windows 10 from MS.

[dowlass]

Thanks, scoratis!

I suppose what I was getting at is whether you can 'mix-and-match'..... i.e. have a 64 bit guest running on a 32 bit host. Or whether if your host is 64 bit it means you MUST use a 64 bit guest?

Good point about 10.6 having VBox limitations - definitely something to bear in mind. Maybe I'd be better trialing it on the Yosemite partition.

cheers

[socratis]

Or whether if your host is 64 bit it means you MUST use a 64 bit guest?

the guests can be 16-, 32- and 64-bit ones.

[mpack]

Or whether if your host is 64 bit it means you MUST use a 64 bit guest?

Even on a physical machine you don't need to install a 64bit OS just because the CPU is capable of it. A VM is no different.

[dowlass]

Even on a physical machine you don't need to install a 64bit OS just because the CPU is capable of it. A VM is no different.

You're showing up my ignorance...