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Are there slam-dunk arguments why 64-bit is always better for applications? If so, I haven't seen them, and neither have various people I follow who seem to kno

• JohnTHaller 9y ago
  There aren't. For most apps, producing 32-bit-only is preferable. If you're going to produce 32-bit and 64-bit, you should make available a stub installer that downloads the right one or an installer with both in it because most users have no idea if their OS is 32-bit or 64-bit. Mainly because they don't even know what that means.
• krylon 9y ago
  When our CAD people work on large 3D models, Autodesk Inventor will happily gobble up 32 GB of RAM, and if they had machines with 64 GB, I suspect it would make good use of those, too. Also, I am told editing high-res graphics and video benefit both from the larger address space and the ability to use more RAM. But I admit, these are the exception to the rule. Having used both Linux and Windows in 32 and 64 bit versions - in a few cases on the same machine -, I did not notice a difference in performance[1]. If the performance hit due to 64bit is really that substantial, I could imagine the larger number of registers (and possibly larger caches) make up for that. [1] Possibly, as so often in the days before SSDs, I/O was enough of a bottleneck that the difference between 32 and 64 bit code became unnoticeable.