On Aug 24, 2005, at 1:48 PM, Ryan Finnie wrote:
On Wed, Aug 17, 2005, at 19:31 +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I am at a loss why someone would put together a 64 bit
system intended to only run a 32 bit OS and software.
Do you have the urge to allocate >4GB of a memory to a process? If
not, most of the reason for using a 64bit OS are gone. In fact,
running a 32bit OS on a 64bit amd64 processor is probably going to
be slightly faster than a 64bit OS for many things.
Going 64-bit means that you can have pretty much unlimited memory in
your machine, and you get to use the extra registers on the CPU.
Running in 32-bit mode leaves most of the CPU registers unused along
with a lot of instructions that you can't use either. However, if you
don't have a need to run in 64-bit mode with 64-bit software, 32bits
is fine enough for now on the desktop. ("All that anyone will ever
need on the desktop is a 32-bit CPU...")
Now on a server, 64-bit may be more useful to you. I see 64-bit chips
in the desktop as a future upgrade path for most users, and not
something they need today, whether it be a Linux, BSD, Mac, or
Windows user.
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