[mythtv-users] Upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit and maybe a distro switch?

[John Drescher]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 1:20 PM, Doug Lytle<support at drdos.info> wrote:
> Jos Hoekstra wrote:
>>
>> If you're not, what's the reason to wanna go to 64 bit? As long as you
>> don't use more than 3 GB RAM I see no reason to
>
>
> Just an FYI, 3GB of RAM isn't a limitation of a 32bit OS, I'm running
> Mandriva 2008.1 32bit with 8GB.
> Doug
>

You can use more than 3GB of ram with a 32 bit OS but you do so with a
high latency penalty that you would not have if you were running under
a 64 bit os. With 32 bit you also miss 1/2 the SIMD registers, 2/3 of
the GPR registers so in theory 64 bit will be faster for optimized
code. Although I admit the large caches of today's processors have
reduced the need for more registers.

John