64-bit vs 32-bit

[Freddie Cash]

On Tue, August 1, 2006 10:10 am, Daniel Axtell wrote:
> I'm building a 64-bit sempron desktop system for a novice user who's
> used to Windows.  I know it's possible to set up a chroot environment
> to run 32-bit plugins for the browser, but for a non-sophisticated
> user that seems like it would be hard to maintain updates, etc.
>
> Will there be much of a performance hit if I run 32-bit Kubuntu on a
> 64-bit machine?  It seems like a simpler way of handling the plugin
> problem.

An Athlon64/Sempron is both a 64-bit CPU and a 32-bit CPU.  It's also
an optimised 32-bit CPU.  Don't know about now, with the
Pentium-M/Core CPUs, but when the Athlon64 was first released, it was
the fastest 32-bit CPU around.

Why do you think there would be a performance penalty to run the CPU
in 32-bit mode?

The only real benefit to running a 64-bit OS is to gain access to more
memory.  If you don't need more than 4 GB of RAM, then there's really
no big incentive to run a 64-bit OS.

----
Freddie Cash, LPCI-1 CCNT CCLP        Helpdesk / Network Support Tech.
School District 73                    (250) 377-HELP [377-4357]
fcash-ml at sd73.bc.ca