Hi
I've been hearing alot about these latly and as im planning on building a new PC this summer, 64bit is in my oprions. What exactly is the difference? For example, how is a 64bit 3Ghz CPU better than a 32bit 3Ghz CPU?
Falcon
At a basic level, 64 bit processors have a larger address space which means they can theoretically handle upto 18 billion GB of memory (as opposed to 4GB for 32-bit processors).
Integer arithmetic is also significantly faster and you can expect 64 bit CPUs to generally outperform 32 bit CPUs when it comes to running standard 32 bit applications.
The real performance advantage comes when 64 bit applications are used e.g 64 bit versions of Windows XP.
These links provide some more info and benchmarks etc.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/...49,pg,1,00.asp
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1884&p=17
http://devrsrc1.external.hp.com/STK/partner/64what.pdf
http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/specials/...9117877,00.htm
cheers,
dave
Hey, thanks for those links. After scanning theough the articles (i'll read them properly when i ahve more time) I hacve realised that for an average user (i.e. me) there isn't anjy real reason to upgrade to 64-bit at this moment in time. At most I will gain a small speed increase which doesn't seem worth the extra money. has anyone actualy gone from the 32-bit to a 64-bit system? What do you think? Is there a noticable difference? or a hidden advantage?
Thanks
Falcon
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