11.04 32 bit or 64 bit for 64 bit AMD sempron

[J]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 21:04, Ric Moore <wayward4now at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-05-12 at 11:04 +0200, Thierry de Coulon wrote:
>> On Thursday 12 May 2011 07:36:54 am Jon Anderson wrote:
>> > Should I use the a 32 bit or 64 bit 11.04 when I have a AMD sempron 64
>> > bit processor. Can I use either or am I restricted for some reason
>>
>> >From what I found in Wikipedia:
>>
>> "In the second half of 2005, AMD added 64-bit support (AMD64) to the Sempron
>> line. Some journalists (but not AMD) often refer to this revision of chips
>> as "Sempron 64" to distinguish it from the previous revision."
>>
>> If your processor really is 64 bit, I don't imagine any restriction. I would
>> say that if the 64 bit live CD works a 64 bit install should as well.
>
> I found that with only 2 gigs of memory, 64bit did nothing extra for me,
> plus the additional grief using it. If you have equal-to/greater-than 4
> gigs, then 64bit would be good.

Yep... I think people tend to think:  "64 bits = 2*32 bits so it must
be faster!" but it's not necessarily any faster, just handles larger
amounts of memory.  As Ric says, if your system has 4GB or more, 64
bit is the way to go (PAE works up to 32GB but the only benefit I can
find for PAE over 64Bit is just that you don't have any of the 64bit
app issues).

FWIW, I run 64bit on everything I have that supports it and the only
issue I've noticed that was directly attributable to running 64bit was
getting a working Flash player, but with a few notable instabilities,
Adobe's experimental 64bit flash player works fairly well. (for a
fairly loose definition of Well.)

Cheers,

Jeff