stiffdogg06
New Member
Ok well I was "thinking" about getting vista when the SP2 comes out... But I know there is X64 ultimate version an a x86 version? Whats this x86 version? I have a x2 3800+ which supports X64 OS... Thanks for the help!
wiki said:The main disadvantage of 64-bit architectures is that relative to 32-bit architectures the same data occupies slightly more space in memory (due to swollen pointers and possibly other types and alignment padding). This increases the memory requirements of a given process and can have implications for efficient processor cache utilization. Maintaining a partial 32-bit model is one way to handle this and is in general reasonably effective. In fact, the highly performance-oriented z/OS operating system takes this approach currently, requiring program code to reside in any number of 32-bit address spaces while data objects can (optionally) reside in 64-bit regions..
Currently, most commercial software is built as 32-bit code, not 64-bit code, so it can't take advantage of the larger 64-bit address space or wider 64-bit registers and data paths on 64-bit processors, or, on x86 processors, the additional registers in 64-bit mode. However, users of free or open source operating systems have been able to use exclusive 64-bit computing environments for years. Not all such applications require a large address space or manipulate 64-bit data items, so they wouldn't benefit from the larger address space or wider registers and data paths; the main benefit to 64-bit versions of applications that wouldn't benefit from them would be that x86 versions would be able to use more registers.