Sat, 22 May 2010 15:28:54 -0400, Adam Ruppe wrote: > On 5/22/10, retard <[email protected]> wrote: >> On a 4 GB system you lose 600+ MB of memory when using a 32-bit >> operating system without PAE support. > > You can run 32 bit programs on a 64 bit operating system. The point > isn't that 64 bits is useless in general, it is just that most > *applications* work just fine as 32 bit binaries.
I can't believe the 64-bit processes are twice as large. Typically the binary size is only a fraction of the amount of data processed by the application. Moreover, most of the memory allocations contain array like structures for storing bitmaps, I/O buffers etc. For example, if you're storing 8-bit pixels in a game, you're not forced to use int64 data type on a 64-bit architecture.
