[mdlug] Time to jump to 64-bit?

[Dan Pritts]

whatever performance you gain will be unnoticeable.  The additional
registers don't seem to make much difference.

Even wanting more memory isn't necessarily an issue.  Assuming your
system has PAE support (not sure what all is required for that,
just an appropriate kernel or hardware or ??), you can even add
memory over 3.5G or whatever the actual practical 32-bit limit is.
PAE memory access is slower than real 64-bit but really pretty damn
fast.

Only at such point as you have processes that want more address
space than your OS can offer (2G or 3G depending on how your kernel
is built) will you have a reason to go 64-bit.


On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 12:44:29PM -0400, Ingles, Raymond wrote:
> My main system is Athlon X2 based, quite capable of running 64-bit
> Linux. But I've been sticking with 32-bit versions for now. I only have
> 2GB RAM in there anyway.
> 
>  I understand that the 64-bit instruction set has extra registers and
> such, which can provide a boost of a few percentage points in some
> tasks. But I've heard that there's problems with Flash support, and I
> use Wine and some emulator stuff to run older Windows games. Overall, I
> don't know if the benefits of 64-bit would outweigh the drawbacks in my
> case.
> 
>  Any opinions or suggestions?
> 
>  Sincerely,
> 
>  Ray Ingles                                       (313) 227-2317
> 
>        "TRAB PU KCIP! TRAB PU KCIP!" - Milhouse Van Houten
> 
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danno
--
dan pritts
danno at umich.edu
734-929-9770