Re: [gentoo-user] 32bit or 64bit

[Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 10:52 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/16/12, Nilesh Govindrajan <contact@nileshgr.com> wrote:
>> So the same old query again I guess.
>> What architecture should I use for a machine with 3GB RAM and a 64bit
>> processor?
>>
>> I believe 64bit should be given serious consideration only if RAM is gt or
>> = 4 GB, even there 32bit is allowable with PAE if I'm not wrong.
>>
>> So what is recommended? There are as such no special use cases to go 64bit
>> for me.
>>
>
> Why 32? ... Flash, win32 codecs, probably Wine but not sure as it has
> been years...

64-bit WINE worked for me. Even for running 32-bit WoW. (Though I was
running a multilib profile. Uncertain if that had an impact.)

>
> Why 64? ... Virtualization...
>
> Depends on what you want and/or need.

IMO, it's worth the 'overhead' to run 64-bit, if only for the greater
number of GPRs and other architectural improvements. There's honestly
a lot of good stuff in x86-64 beyond the larger address space. The
increased address space also helps long-lived programs avoid address
space fragmentation.

-- 
:wq