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64bit versus 32bit

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Please don't start a flame war over this. It is meant as more of a Dilbert-style post with just the slightest bit of real technical content.

64-bit machines are twice as fast as 32-bit machines because they have more bits.

Believe it or not there are still some people inside and outside Microsoft that believe this.  They're probably the same folks that believe a 4GHz P4 is twice as fast as a 2GHz P4.  Wouldn't it be nice if all that was really true?

I really do love my 64-bit machines.  One of them I run with a 32-bit OS, the other with a 64-bit OS.  They're both really fast at real world developer tasks despite their seemingly slow clocks.  They're not twice as fast, but they might be if you figure out a way to factor in their inherent disadvantage: all the pointers are twice as big.  Depending on your data structures, that could be a pretty big disadvantage.

--Grant

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2004
    4 GHz P4 is twice as fast as 2 GHz P4, why wouldn't it be?

    On the 64-bit issue - are you serious? There are people who think that? LOL
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2004
    My memory doesn't run at even 1Ghz, so most of the time a 4GHz P4 (even with Hyperthreading) really just waits for memory (or disk) faster. If you don't believe me, install your favorite profiler and see how much time the average app takes in processor stalls or waiting for something.

    --Grant
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2004
    4Ghz P4? Do you have friends at intel or is your computer room unreasonably warm?
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2004
    I don't own one, but you can buy one:
    http://www.alienware.com/ALX_pages/choose_alx.aspx
    --Grant
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2004
    Well said. Now we just have to get rid of those who insist on on-size-fits-all computing.
    --Grant
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2004
    Fortunately, Intel is finally giving up the MHz game... newer Pentium Ms don't even have their clock rate in their model name. My PM 1.5 beats my P4 2.26 in every CPU benchmark.

    Another caution with 64-bit is that pointer-heavy data structures become twice as large, and could cause you to really need the larger RAM capacity...

    64-bit is still intriguing, especially pure-64-bit chips like Itanium, since their radically different architectures could mean all kinds of neat optimizations are possible :)