32 or 64 Bit?

[PennyRoyal]

I just built a new system and am ready to install Sabayon 4.1 KDE when it's available. I don't want to work ON the OS, I want to USE it. Which will give me the least amount of grief/maintenance and be most reliable... 32 or 64 bit? Is there a noticable advantage to 64 bit? I'm not talking benchmarks here, but rather everyday use. I do play Unreal Tournament online quite a bit and I think it is 32 bit...

My stuff:
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P
Core i7 920 O.C. to 3.33 Ghz
Cooler Master V8 CPU Cooler
Corsair 12GB DDR3 @ 1333Mhz
GEIL GMCEC01 Memory Cooler
BFG NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 OC 1GB PCIe
2 x Maxtor 1TB SATA II
PIONEER 20X SATA DVD
Corsair 850w Power Supply
Cooler Master HAF 932 Case
SAMSUNG 2443BWT 24" LCD

Thanks... PR

[wolfden]

for every day usage you won't notice a difference

64 has slowly been getting native stuff like flash and java. New users and multimedia find 32 bit easier. Good news is, they are both livedvds so you can try em out for yourself.

[albfneto]

Well, i see your configuration.
you have a powerful system.
my system is an AMD X2, 64 bits.
i use only 64 bits systems and packages, including 64 bits Vista, an all of my linuxes (multi boot) are 64 bits.
in my personal opinion, in modern comps, i do not see advantages in using older 32 bits linuxes and systems.
therefore, remenber that you have 6 Giga RAM.
32 bits systems not recognize more that 3 Giga!
32 bits is now only for old machines...
Nowdays, the antique incompatibility between some packages is quite rare,
since the packages are fully updated for 64 bits.

[PennyRoyal]

Hmmmmm.... Good point on the ram... Hadn't thought of that.

Thanks for the reply.

[kodiakmax]

The whole 32bit vs 64bit argument has been going around for quite some time. Most people probably won't see a difference between a 32bit and 64bit environment as most programs just doen't need the wider 64bit registers yet.

As for the memory support it is not that big a deal. A 64bit OS can directly address more than 4G RAM, but even for this there is a solution at least for Linux with HIGHMEM64G.

Large memory support is not the only thing a 64bit OS is good for. If you do video processing, work with large databases, or large file manipulation/transfers (greater than 4Gb), then a 64bit OS might be for you.

However, currently there is better codec support on 32bit OSes currently for multimedia. Although with Sabayon I rarely come across media that doesn't play. The only real issues I have are the new vids that use WMA9.

[Thev00d00]

Personally Ive been using 64bit for ages, always have, I notice about a 10% speed boost in anything that is relitievly intensive and larger gains on multimedia encoding and 3d rendering, gimp and inkscape are faster too imo.

There is native 64bit flash, Java now too, and you can laways run 32bit stuff on x64 if needed, there is no reason to go for 32bit nowadays.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Just seen the following recent article, which is relevant to the discussion even if it refers to Ubuntu rather than Gentoo/Sabayon: Ubuntu 9.04: 32-bit vs 64-bit benchmarks

[kodiakmax]

Nice link Fitz. It pretty much lends proof to what I was saying. Most average users won't see a difference for everyday computing. Their Flash support is going to take a hit and woa the one who can't get their Youtube fix

But, if multimedia work is their thing then x64 is the way to go.

Once 64 bit Flash is mainline though there will be absolutely no reason for anyone to stay 32bit.

I'm running x64 here and have been for quite some time. I am more than happy with it.

[Thev00d00]

64Bit ftw!