[ale] 64bit or 32bit

[Solomon Peachy]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 02:45:17PM -0500, scott boss wrote:
> does 64bit perform better?  Only if the complete stack (application,
> os, drivers, hardware) can support it.  If any one item in the stack
> doesn't use the 64bit-ness then 32bit at that point is good for you
> across the board.

Depends on what you mean by "perform" -- strictly speaking, there's no 
inherent benefit to going 64-bit beyond greater memory addressability, 
assuming everything else stays the same, but in the x86 case, the 64-bit 
mode doubles the numbers of registers which usually makes quite a 
difference.

So if you're doing any sort of number crunching or anything else 
computationally intensive (including compiling!) then you're generally 
better off running 64-bit, even when you have <4G RAM.

 - Solomon [been using 64-bit userland for a few years now]
-- 
Solomon Peachy        		       pizza at shaftnet dot org	 
Melbourne, FL                          ^^ (mail/jabber/gtalk) ^^
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
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