32 or 64 bit Mandriva

[Gilboa Davara]

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 10:51 AM, Omer Zak <w1 at zak.co.il> wrote:
>
> Currently I use 64-bit Debian Squeeze and Debian Wheezy (testing) on few
> machines, and I am not aware of any problems.
>
> However, if you have less than 4GB memory and no plans to add more
> memory, then you'll get no advantage from moving to 64-bit.  Application
> binaries will also be a bit bigger due to the 64-bit pointers, and since
> virtual memory is being used, this means also a bit slower work.
>
> --- Omer


Actually, in my experience given sufficiently recent GCC version (==
distribution) any machine with >= 2GB will see a 0-30% performance
increase (depending on the software used) due to the added GP
registers tends to negating the effect of the added memory usage due
to 64bit pointers / etc.
E.g. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_natty_pae64&num=1
Beyond that, some types of application (E.g. virtualization) work far
better on x86_64, regardless of the amount of memory.

- Gilboa