I fail your sentence as I'm a computer engineer

To run 64 bit OS, you need 64 bit processor and 64 bit motherboard
Core 2 Duo and above is 64bit. Dual-Core is 32.


Maximum addressable memory in 32 bit BUS line is 2^32 = 4,29,4967,296 bit or 4Gb
Maximum addressable memory in 64 bit BUS line is 2^64 = 18446744073709551616 bit


Applications run faster NOT because of more RAM.. my gosh
On 32 bit OS, adding two 64-bit numbers requires 2 cycles
On 64 bit OS, adding two 64-bit numbers requires only 1 cycle

So theoretically, the instructions would run twice faster
You could do everything up to twice faster "theoretically"


The only disadvantage is driver support for old 32-bit hardware and 32-bit PCI cards.
But nowdays, more and more devices are 64-bit compliant

And by next year, everything will be 64bit
32-bit will extinct just like dinosaurs


Many people are already running 64-bit with no driver clashes.




Edit: For TS
Of course, XP and Vista both have 32-bit and 64-bit versions


We faced the same problem when we were using windows 95, didn't we?
Windows 95 had 16-bit and 32-bit versions. Later no more 16-bit..
32 bit runs up to to times faster than 16 bit
16-bit supports only up to 65536 bit of addressable memory

This post has been edited by prolog: Nov 1 2008, 05:12 PM