I want to run Vista 64

OK I have a machine sitting here presently running Vista Home Premium, It has a dual core Athlon 64 on an Asus M2N-SLI deluxe board with the most current bios
I just dropped 4 gigs of ram into this thing and was aware of the address limitations of a 32 bit os
Both xp pro and Vista HP 32 bit can only address 3.5 gigs of ram
This is why I want to run vista HP 64 bit, I can get it at a good price but I need to know this

I love Firefox and Thunder bird and I was wondering if they would run on this, I also need to run the Second Life viewer since I have an account with them
Can Vista 64 run 32 bit apps, I remember Win 9x would run 16 bit apps , is it done in the same way

Heres my specs

Asus M2N-SLI deluxe mobo
Amd Athlon 64x2 6000+
4 gigs Mushkin ram
Evga gforce 8800gts 640 meg only one card
XFI extreme music sound card
500 gig seagate sata 2 hd
Samsun dvdrw drive
Gosh and a floppy drive :)

I know there are 64 bit drivers for my components I am just concerned about my apps

Thanks in advance :)

I am running the 64bit version of windows Vista and so far everything that will run on the 32bit version has run fine on the 64bit version. In fact the only thing I think you need to be concerned about is 64bit drivers for your devices and peripherals. If the program will run on 32bit vista I say you have a good chance of it working fine on the 64bit version.

The only game I really run is the second life viewer, I have virtual land there, Just think WOW or the Matrix and you have an idea of what Second life is
All I need to do now is find the setting in my bios for address remapping above 4 gigs so that when I do load Vista 64 it can use all 4 gigs
Hang on folks 64 bit computing is almost here :)

Format, I'm not sure the board supports re-mapping. There's no mention of the option that I can find in the manual, and Google finds other people saying they can't find an option for it.

If that's the case, you'd need more than 4GB of physical memory in order to be utilising addresses above 4GB, and the real memory in the reserved address space would still be "lost".

I haven't seen anything that wont run on vista 64 and if it did it was strictly because it wont run on vista either 32 or 64 and all of my games run under 64 bit. Any that don't run under 64 again are because they don't like vista,32 or 64 seems irrelevant.
Firefox and Thunderbird have been 64 bit capable since early XP 64 bit.

thanks folks, I am going to run out and grab Vista 64 bit on the weekend
Now about address remapping, I have seen this on my older Asus A8N-SLI boards unless I am mistaken and the boards only support up to 4 gigs of ram, The M2N-SLI deluxe is supposed to support up to 8 gigs of ram , So I figure it should have the option, Unless a bios update is coming out, Asus support is flaky and I am considering another brand of board
I thank Platypus for checking into it , I am going to check myself
Well I am off to my computer store :)