[mythtv-users] Any advantage going to 64 bit?

[Gary Buhrmaster]

> Is there an advantage to me running in 64 bit?

Code compiled to run on 64-bit machines may
be faster due to the additional registers that can
hold temporary values, and the registers can now
do native 64 bit operations.  Code (and heap/stack)
size will likely be larger, which may impact the cache
hit ratios.  So, as always, YMWV.

If your system actually has more than 4GB of
memory, 64-bit is a win (PAE mode allows access
to more than 4GB in 32-bit mode, but there is
a few percentage of performance overheads).

It is possible that CPU intensive processes such
as transcoding would be measurably faster in
64 bit (but I am unaware of any benchmarks to
actually demonstrate it either way).

I would never recommend doing an upgrade from
32-bit to 64-bit.  Save the data, and reinstall
(unless you are in it for the adventure).

Gary