General Question on 32- and 64- bit systems

[WWGD]

Hi All,
Just curious on pros/cons of installing software designed for 32- bit systems in a 64-bit machine
(Windows 8.1*)?

* I have never been able to tell the difference, if any, between Win 8 and Win 8.1 .

 

[phinds]

Some software runs faster if you are using the 64 bit version and I believe the O.S. itself is more robust in the 64 bit version, with probably the biggest advantage being the amount of memory it can handle. Modern computers are pretty limited if you can only have the 4Gigs of RAM that are available with the 32 bit version.

 

[WWGD]

Some software runs faster if you are using the 64 bit version and I believe the O.S. itself is more robust in the 64 bit version, with probably the biggest advantage being the amount of memory it can handle. Modern computers are pretty limited if you can only have the 4Gigs of RAM that are available with the 32 bit version.

Ah, yes, thanks, I forgot, I have 6 Gigs . EDIT: Just in case, the software I am think of installing is SQL Server Express, which I believe is always a local machine..

 

[stoomart]

Ah, yes, thanks, I forgot, I have 6 Gigs . EDIT: Just in case, the software I am think of installing is SQL Server Express, which I believe is always a local machine..

The difference isn't so much in how much RAM you can have (big-mem kernels have been available in 32-bit versions of Windows and Linux for a long time), but rather in how much RAM each user-process can use, which is limited to 2GB in 32-bit kernels.

 

[WWGD]

The difference isn't so much in how much RAM you can have (big-mem kernels have been available in 32-bit versions of Windows and Linux for a long time), but rather in how much RAM each user-process can use, which is limited to 2GB in 32-bit kernels.

Thanks, what is the RAM limit for 64-bit kernels?

 

[stoomart]

Thanks, what is the RAM limit for 64-bit kernels?

The theoretical limit is 16 EiB, the technical limits for typical 64-bit architectures are 256 TiB virtual memory and 4 PiB physical memory, though most systems are further limited by hardware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing#Limits_of_processors

 

[WWGD]

The theoretical limit is 16 EiB, the technical limits for typical 64-bit architectures are 256 TiB virtual memory and 4 PiB physical memory, though most systems would be limited by hardware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing#Limits_of_processors

Wow, thanks, talk about scaling up from 32 to 64!

 

[stoomart]

Wow, thanks, talk about scaling up from 32 to 64!

Definitely! I forgot to include the PAE link in my earlier post, which talks about allowing 32-bit kernels to address up to 64 GB.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension#Design
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_GB_barrier

 

[fluidistic]

I feel none of the answers really answered the original question. I lack the knowledge to give an accurate answer, however, I had read that some programs run faster when 32 bits, others run faster when 64 bits so my guess is that it depends on how the program was coded (apparently top chess engines really benefit from 64 bits compared to 32 bits. About 40% speedup if I remember well). But it isn't just about speed.
I've read that firefox web browser is less secure in its 32 bits version than in its 64 bits version and also that it crashes left often.
In the end my rule of thumb is to always pick the 64 bits version of a program, but I'm not knowledgeable on the topic. Waiting for the gurus to reply.