Which is the best choice, pae or x64?

[Tim Frost]

On Sat, 2010-09-25 at 16:06 +0800, Rofail Qu wrote:
> My PC is x86 arch and has 4GB of mem.

> So, i think it support x64 as well.
> The question is, which kernel should i choose? The pae or x64?
> Which is the best choice?

With 4GB RAM, things are marginal.

If this is your desktop (or laptop) workstation, you are probably best
to stay 32-bit, and run the 32-bit PAE kernel to get access to the extra
RAM.

For a system designated to be a server, a 64-bit environment may give a
performance benefit.

>  Why?

There are still a lot of user-interface programs that don't work well
(if at all) in a 64-bit environment. 

My desktop is 64-bit, but there are a few things that I can't do in the
native desktop (even with the 32-bit compatibility packages), so I use a
32-bit virtual machine to run those applications.

By comparison, there are very few back-end applications that don't
benefit from the 64-bit address space.


> Thanks.
> 

Tim


-- 
Tim Frost <timfrost at xtra.co.nz>
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