Advances of a 64-bit over a 32-bit Operating System?

2048Megabytes

2048Megabytes

Active Member
This is not a question solely about Windows XP versus Vista. What advances in techonology have been made with a 64-bit operating system over 32-bit operating system? I am curious about Linux 64-bit versus 32-bit Linux and Windows 64-bit versus Windows 32-bit systems.

From what I know it's solely better graphics with 64-bit and the operating systems capability to use more Random Access Memory.

Can anyone give me more information concerning this subject?
 
With the GNU open source OS known as Linux has a 64bit distro the remaining is 24bit not 32bit like seen with Windows 98, NT 3.1, and newer versions. The first 64bit version was released in 2005 being XP Pro there.

As far as graphics compare what you would see in WIN95 and compare that to 98, ME, 2000, and XP to get an idea of improvements. The transition to 32bit was a simple upgrade to the next version of Windows from 16 to 32bit then seen in 98. Since that time the market has been saturated with nothing but 32bit games and apps for Windows, Apple/Mac having their own.

At this time still 64bit is still the "Great Experiment" since it hasn't received much of any real support only until lately where companies are now making 64bit drivers available for their hardwares with the release of Vista. As far as memory it simply recognises and makes a large amount of physical memory installed available for use while the 32bit architecture in Windows mapps memory addresses out to hardwares when going over the 3gb to 3.25gb limitation. A good article on the 3gb barrier can be seen at http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm
 
Reading that article makes me chuckle. I can see 64-bit operating systems will definately be the future. But as for right now the software available is mainly all just 32-bit compatible. Extra Random Access Memory over 3 gigabytes really does nothing since 32-bit software can't utilize it.

Is my above statement correct?
 
There are a few 32bit versions of Windows that do actually utilize more then the commonly described 3gb barrier like Windows Server 2003, 2005, and what was originally going to named Vienna namely Winserver 2008 due out next year. The 2003 server version can use upto 32gb of memory according to information seen due to being a networking not desktop OS.
 
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