Software, Solutions and Accessories

[pauljs]

This will be the first time l have used  a pc with a 64 bit OS, can snyone tell me if I will experience any difference in my day to day use compared to 32bit ?        Thankyou.

[padgett · Accepted solution]

Depends on what you do but most people do not see a difference. It does allow more control of the operation.

[pauljs]

Thanks.

[Alan-London]

A major advantage of 64bit over 32bit is max memory addressing.

Windows 32bit has a ceiling of ~4GB (typically 3GB - 3.5GB on many platforms).

Windows 64bit varies by version but could have up to 4TB or so. (The actual theoretical max addressable is considerably more of course.)

However, as you may know, things are rarely that straight forward and we are looking at a can of worms here! That said, if you have a 64bit capable system you should ideally use a 64bit OS to get the maximum benefit. Another advantage might be where you use floating point intensive software but that too depends on a number of factors.

The only reason I can see for running 32bit is where you have a need to use 32bit software that refuses to run on 64bit.