Re: [gentoo-user] 64-bit system?

["Thomas T. Veldhouse" <veldy@veldy.net>]

Richard Fish wrote:
> On 9/18/06, Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm putting together a new system and I'm considering going 64-bit.
>> Is the benefit of such a system pretty much speed?  What are the
>> drawbacks of using a 64-bit system with Gentoo?
>
> You'll only notice a speed increase with applications that need to
> caculate very large numbers, like encryption keys and certain
> scientific apps.  Everything else will basically run just as fast in
> 32-bit mode as it will in 64-bit.  There are exceptions in certain
> media encoders that don't have hardware optimizations for 64-bit, that
> may actually run faster as 32-bit apps.

Applications compiled in 64-bit mode can address larger blocks of memory 
without paging.  Memory intensive applications can greatly benefit from 
this.  Another minor difference is that chess engines based upon 
bitboards (i.e. Crafty and GnuChess), when compiled in 64-bit mode will 
perform much faster due to the fact that an entire board representation 
fits into a single WORD.  On 32-bit systems, such a board is split 
between two words and there is overhead with juggling this deficit.

Tom Veldhouse


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