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64-bit?

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jcw122

Member
Joined
Jun 25, 2004
couldnt figure out which catigory to put this in so i put it here....anyway...what makes OS's running on 32-bit not as good as 64-bit ones?
 
OK, simply put, the difference between a 64 bit CPU and a 32 bit CPU, in principle, is that a 64 bit CPU can calculate larger numbers right in the registers, while not having to move register contents offboard (into cache/memory) to do further calculations. (The registers are 64 bits wide instead of 32)

Fewer I/O operations = faster processing time = more complex things the computer can do in the same period of time

This may be a little oversimplified, so correct me if I am wrong.
 
For ONLY being 64-bit, you can work with larger numbers and you can address more than 4gb of memory. That is all.

For x86-64, you get twice as many general purpose registers, which will give you a general speed boost regardless of whether you need to work with numbers larger than 2 or 4 billion or use more memory. Seems that it ends up being about 10-20% of a boost.
 
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