64bit Vs 32bit?

Main difference in the amount of RAM they can access - 32bit is for the most part limited to dealing with 4GB of RAM max.
 
there really isn't any reason to not use 64bit.
I have since 2007 and had no real problems at all
when I first changed over , I had to wait about a month for 2 drivers to get updated, but that was back when vista 64bit had only just come out, there are no problems these days.
 
32bit should have been dropped years ago. Theres no need for it on the consumer level. Most PCs all now have more than 4gb RAM.

MS should just have started doing x64 OS from Windows 7 onwards.
 
djkav said:
32bit should have been dropped years ago. Theres no need for it on the consumer level. Most PCs all now have more than 4gb RAM.

MS should just have started doing x64 OS from Windows 7 onwards.
Click to expand...

Would have caused problems for the Netbook market at the time. Besides, there's bound to have been plenty of embedded hardware etc that was/is running x86 CPUs.
 
I don't understand why we don't just skip straight ahead to 128bit and then stick with that as a standard for 20-30 years, then we can have a clunky cross-over to 256bit before steamrolling ahead to 1KB.
 
One said:
I don't understand why we don't just skip straight ahead to 128bit and then stick with that as a standard for 20-30 years, then we can have a clunky cross-over to 256bit before steamrolling ahead to 1KB.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing this is a joke, but 128 bit addressing would be ridiculous.

It would allow you to address 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 bytes of RAM.
 
Cromulent said:
I'm guessing this is a joke, but 128 bit addressing would be ridiculous.

It would allow you to address 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 bytes of RAM.
Click to expand...

You just know that 2-3 decades down the line we're going to have the same clunky transition to it though. :D
 
Cromulent said:
I'm guessing this is a joke, but 128 bit addressing would be ridiculous.

It would allow you to address 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 bytes of RAM.
Click to expand...

Yeh, as Billy once said, who needs more than 640K memory, eh?
 
Still tons of 32bit only cpus out there, it's all about timing transitions, i.e when best time to fully move to 64bit software.

In tech terms you have more registers, the areas in the cpu that store and process instructions, bit like system memory, or cache, so you don't need to be calling so much from the system memory. There will be plenty more technical differences also, it all gets pretty complex and I don't claim to know a hundredth of it. But basically different architecture that should allow for faster calculations per clock cycle. And also the increased memory as stated above.
 
I've noticed that, somewhat ironically, 64-bit Windows allows us to address more memory yet I've found 64-bit software uses more disk space.

Take Windows 7 installation images for example - about 2.4GB for 32-bit and 3.1GB for 64-bit. That's an increase of about 29%.

CPU-Z 32-bit is about 2.3MB, 64-bit is about 2.8MB - increase of about 22%.

ESET antivirus 32-bit is about 62.2MB, 64-bit is about 69.4MB - increase of about 12%.
 
darael said:
I've noticed that, somewhat ironically, 64-bit Windows allows us to address more memory yet I've found 64-bit software uses more disk space.

Take Windows 7 installation images for example - about 2.4GB for 32-bit and 3.1GB for 64-bit. That's an increase of about 29%.

CPU-Z 32-bit is about 2.3MB, 64-bit is about 2.8MB - increase of about 22%.

ESET antivirus 32-bit is about 62.2MB, 64-bit is about 69.4MB - increase of about 12%.
Click to expand...

Memory and disk space are two different things.
64bit is better.
Disk space is not an issue, drives are massive and programs are tiny.

If you have to ask 64bit is the way. 64bit is always the way to go, unless you have a specific reason to go 32bit, like a an old 32bit CPU, or an extremely poorly updated program.
 
Glaucus said:
Memory and disk space are two different things.
64bit is better.
Disk space is not an issue, drives are massive and programs are tiny.

If you have to ask 64bit is the way. 64bit is always the way to go, unless you have a specific reason to go 32bit, like a an old 32bit CPU, or an extremely poorly updated program.
Click to expand...
Not really, because to load a 64-bit program not only takes longer due to the size, but also consumes more memory due to the larger file size.

Regardless of SSD drives that can read and write at speeds of about 500MB/sec, extra time is still taken to load - whether that's 1 second or 1 millisecond. At the end of the day, lots of larger files to load into memory can only mean one thing - a reduction in responsiveness. This is noticed more when using a harddrive.
 
darael said:
Not really, because to load a 64-bit program not only takes longer due to the size, but also consumes more memory due to the larger file size.

Regardless of SSD drives that can read and write at speeds of about 500MB/sec, extra time is still taken to load - whether that's 1 second or 1 millisecond. At the end of the day, lots of larger files to load into memory can only mean one thing - a reduction in responsiveness. This is noticed more when using a harddrive.
Click to expand...

Yes really,
And no it does not mean less responsiveness as programs are loaded once, but carry out processing many thousands of times.
64bit is not just about memory space allocation, it's faster processing as well.

Memory and storage are very different. And the fact the programs are slightly larger is of no consequence. They still outperform 32bit.
 
I think the larger program sizes is partly to do with changes in variable sizes between 32 and 64bit, like ints are 8 bytes wide in 64bit and generally 4 bytes in 32bit, there are a few other differences also. Also larger runtime libraries and possibly poorer compiler optimisation could lead to larger program sizes. I do know that there is a lot going on behind the scenes to code, link, compile and load an exe.

You would have to do some benchmarks to see exact program loading times.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom