The Differences and Advatages of 64-Bit CPUs

[Nominus Experse]

So I recently discovered that my laptop has an AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core TL-50 1.6GHz Processor, which, as I understand, means it makes use of 64-bit technology.

What might be the differences and/or advatages/disadvantages of having a 64-bit CPU?

[snacks]

By any chance, is it a Dell? ?

[Nominus Experse]

By any chance, is it a Dell? ?

Yes, why?

[o_O]

Each byte of memory in your system is assigned an address. The address is usually stored as an integer, which is usually 32 bits (4 bytes).Consider that a 32-bit integer can be represented by a string of 32 digits, each of which can be a 1 or a 0. If each possible combination of 32 1s/0s is equivalent to one possible memory address you have defined a finite number of memory addresses (or bytes) that your processor can support.

For a CPU of <i>n</i> bits, that number just happens to be <i>2ⁿ</i>, so The max memory that is supported by a 32-bit CPU is <i>2³²</i>, or 4GB. For a 64-bit processor, the number is <i>2⁶⁴</i>, and clearly this is a stupid amount higher than with 32 bits.

You only need to look at a graph of <i>2^x</i> to see how much greater the memory space of a 64-bit processor is. In reality though, we really aren't very far at all into using the extra 32 bits, so your motherboard is the limiting factor in how much memory you can take.

Dual-core is a whole other kettle of fish though.

[snacks]

The reason I ask is I have a Dell 1501 with the same processor.

[Nominus Experse]

So there isn't really any real advantage to 64-bit processors and software for the common person, such as myself?

[XxSephirothxX]

From my experience, the advantage is a slight speed boost with some programs etc. The disadvantage is a hellacious time finding good 64 bit drivers.

[o_O]

The speed increase is likely to come as a result of a dual core processor actually being able to multi-task properly. It essentially means that each core can perform a separate task instead of one core either postponing one task, or scheduling the tasks so that they get equal processor time.

And there is certainly an advantage to having 64-bit, if you want to go over 4GB of RAM.

[Nominus Experse]

There is no smurfing way I'm cramming more than 4 Gigabytes of RAM in this laptop.

Maybe if money were more prevalent in my pockets, but at the moment... such is not the case.

[o_O]

If I were you, I'd be more pleased about the fact that it's a dual-core CPU. That actually does make for decent speed increases when the CPU is under high load from several different processes.

[Rostum]

Yeah the only real advantage I can see is if you want to put like 16GB of ram in your machine (which is something I'd consider down the road for the applications I use, like maya and realflow).

[Nominus Experse]

Plus watching 2 graphs dip and weave is much more entertaining than simply 1 core, har har har...

[Samuraid]

64-bit processors and operating systems will become a lot more relevant for most users as the amount of RAM in computers increases. At the current rate of things, it won't be long before 4GB of RAM or more becomes standard in most new computers.

As a side note, you don't necessarily need a 64-bit CPU to use over 4GB of RAM. If you have an operating system such as Linux^* or Vista SP1 you can use more than 4GB of RAM through physical address extension.

* You might have to compile PAE support into your Linux kernel. I don't know as I haven't personally tried setting up such a system.

[crono_logical]

* You might have to compile PAE support into your Linux kernel. I don't know as I haven't personally tried setting up such a system.

Yeah, you can go up to 64GB RAM with 32-bit CPUs in linux, if you have a CPU that supports PAE and you've compiled it in I've only tried it out on a server with 6 GB RAM though