[mdlug] [Fwd: Re: [opensuse] 64 bit vrs 32 bit advantages speed etc.]

[Aaron Kulkis]

Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
>>>> Has anyone run benchmarks on an identical system with 32 bit vrs 64 bit?
> 
> I haven't run "benchmarks", but I've run tests.  The plain and simple is
> that for the *vast* majority of workloads 64-bit offers no noticeable
> advantage, and usually a barely measurable difference.  I've even seen
> 64-bit run slower than 32-bit, especially if your application deals
> mostly with parsing and dealing with strings.
> 
> The real advantage of 64-bit is a larger address space,  which most apps
> just don't need.   It *might* be faster at some other things, like
> context switching, but not necessarily so, and it is going to depend on
> a myriad of other factors.
> 
> A good rule is to run 64-bit if you have an app that can effectively use
> a BIG address space, like PostgreSQL,  otherwise it probably isn't worth
> the bother until everything is 64-bit (since doing the
> this-is-32bit-that-is-64bit dance on a host is a pain).
> 

Righto.

Harware vendor create so much hoopla about how
a top-end CPU are *supposedly* needed for mundane
I/O-bound tasks (such as file serving and print
serving) when in fact, the best performance for
any budget is a moderate, or even dirt-cheap
CPU and used the money saved to purchase more
memory, more disk drives (to allow more read/write
head seeks to be performed simultaneously AND
to eliminate head seeks back and forth between
code and data) and in a medium-sized or larger
business environment, more network connections.