64-bit vs 32, speed difference

Alan Chandler alan at chandlerfamily.org.uk
Mon Apr 13 07:09:17 UTC 2009


On Sunday 12 April 2009, Justin wrote:
> The address space (4GB) issue can be worked around with the bigmem
> kernel (I think the server kernel in Ubuntu). Speed wise, you'll see
> a difference in some apps and none in others. Multimedia, especially
> video, is one area where 64bit gets a small boost. Still, you're not
> likely to ever see anything close to even a 10% difference with
> 64bit, so it just depends how much the convenience means to you.

WHen I first got my Core2 duo, I switched over to 64bit, but after a 
short while I had to switch back to 32bit.  The main reason was the 
flakeyness of using Flash.  Because flash is a 32bit binary with no 
source, all sorts of tricks are needed to get it to run with a 64 bit 
user space - and these would seem to break quite frequently.  For that 
reason alone I went back to 32 bit.  I haven't really noticed any 
slowdown.

I think if I had a server, I would use 64 bit - but not on the desktop.

-- 
Alan Chandler
http://www.chandlerfamily.org.uk





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