[LAU] OT: 64 vs 32 bit?

david gnome at hawaii.rr.com
Wed Sep 29 05:55:11 UTC 2010


Joshua Boyd wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 10:30:12PM +0200, Fritz Meissner wrote:
>> Yes, you can install the 32 bit version. From what I have heard, the
>> performance difference is not significant, but the major benefit of 64
>> bit is being able to address more than 4 GB of memory, which is the
>> limit of what a 32 bit OS can use.
> 
> For workstation/desktop users, is that really a bigger difference than
> the extra registers or the extra wide registers?
> 
> 32bit linux can use more than 4 gigs of ram even though any individual
> program is limited.  However, I don't seem to see all that many
> audio (or general use desktop) programs, that need more than 2 gigs of
> RAM.

Not general use, perhaps, but my preferred image processing application 
(Bibble) says 2G minimum and recommends much more. It works with 48-bit 
RAW image files and has an in-memory SQLLite image database. So memory 
consumption can add up.

I have the 32-bit version, haven't tried the 64-bit version.

-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community


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