What is gained from a 64 bit program comp 2 a 32 bit

[KG]

Approximately what would I gain, if anything, from installing the 64 bit "WordPerfect_Office_X5"
compared to installing the 32 bit, on a Dell XPS 8300, specs = XPS 8300 Intel Core i5-2300
processor, 8GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz, AMD Radeon HD 6450 1GB DDR3, 1TB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200
RPM, and Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit?
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[Yousuf Khan]

Approximately what would I gain, if anything, from installing the 64 bit "WordPerfect_Office_X5"
compared to installing the 32 bit, on a Dell XPS 8300, specs = XPS 8300 Intel Core i5-2300
processor, 8GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz, AMD Radeon HD 6450 1GB DDR3, 1TB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200
RPM, and Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit?

Probably nothing much. If you have really large documents that are
bigger than 4GB, then you'll need to use the 64-bit version. However,
there are advantages to running 32-bit programs inside a 64-bit
operating system that aren't available to the program in its own 32-bit
OS. The big one is that each 32-bit app will see it's own private 32-bit
address space, meaning that it'll be able to see its own address space
upto 4GB in size.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Tim Slattery]

Probably nothing much. If you have really large documents that are
bigger than 4GB, then you'll need to use the 64-bit version. However,
there are advantages to running 32-bit programs inside a 64-bit
operating system that aren't available to the program in its own 32-bit
OS. The big one is that each 32-bit app will see it's own private 32-bit
address space, meaning that it'll be able to see its own address space
upto 4GB in size.

That's what a 32-bit app sees in a 32-bit system. That's what Virtual
Memory is all about. The difference is that more of that virtual
memory space would fit in physical RAM in a 64-bit OS with plenty of
RAM. That means faster execution.

 

[Paul]

Approximately what would I gain, if anything, from installing the 64 bit "WordPerfect_Office_X5"
compared to installing the 32 bit, on a Dell XPS 8300, specs = XPS 8300 Intel Core i5-2300
processor, 8GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz, AMD Radeon HD 6450 1GB DDR3, 1TB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200
RPM, and Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit?
*****************
Thank You (e-mail address removed)

What would concern me, is several of the reviews mention "freezes or crashes"
as a "Con". Would the 64 bit version exude stability ? Remember, this is Corel
we're talking about.

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1207676528492#tabview=tab5

In terms of speedup offered by 32 bit versus 64 bit computing, think about
what typical operations the program might use. In an Office application,
the code will have a lot of branching, and not a lot of data crunching.
This is unlike a photo editor or movie editor, which may use 64 bit
math operations to advantage. I would not expect a benchmark run in 64 bit mode,
to give much of anything over a 32 bit version.

Based on my experience with Corel in the past, I wouldn't want to edit
a document that requires 2GB of internal RAM storage, because the program
would crash before I could do a save :-( Chances are, you'll only be able
to edit relatively tiny things, before stability becomes an issue. In which
case, using 64 bit for the ability to extend the size of stored info in system
RAM, would be a waste of time. Very few programs have proven stability, such that
it's worth taking a chance. (In my own software collection, an older version
of Photoshop is the only one that gets an award for stability.)

It's the Corel approach to software development, new features over stability,
that guarantees "code ships before its time". Sorta like shipping grape juice
instead of a fine wine.

There is mention on the Corel page, of a "free trial". If that was available
in 64 bit mode, and you didn't have any Corel product already installed
on the machine to cause conflicts, maybe you could run the trial and
test the stability for yourself ? As long as the trial is *completely*
uninstalled before you use the paid version, then maybe that won't cause
later problems.

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1207676528492#tabview=tab7

Paul

 

[Yousuf Khan]

That's what a 32-bit app sees in a 32-bit system. That's what Virtual
Memory is all about. The difference is that more of that virtual
memory space would fit in physical RAM in a 64-bit OS with plenty of
RAM. That means faster execution.

Actually a 32-bit program would share the one 32-bit address space with
all other 32-bit programs running with it, in a 32-bit OS. In a 64-bit
OS, the 32-bit program would have that entire address space to itself,
and all other 32-bit programs would have their own entire address space
too.

It's got nothing to do with virtual memory, though virtual memory plays
a part in it. You can't have more than 4GB of virtual memory in a
standard 32-bit OS. Although there are special tweaks to let you get
upto 64GB with something called Page Address Extensions (PAE), but it's
not an easy tweak to program for.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Tim Slattery]

Actually a 32-bit program would share the one 32-bit address space with
all other 32-bit programs running with it, in a 32-bit OS.

Wrong. Each 32-bit process in a 32-bit machine has its own Virtual
Memory space of 4GB. How much of that VM space is in physical memory
varies from moment to moment. Bits and pieces of *many* 4GB VMs will
be in physical memory all the time. The programs know nothing about
that, they simply see a 4GB space.

 

[Paul]

Actually a 32-bit program would share the one 32-bit address space with
all other 32-bit programs running with it, in a 32-bit OS. In a 64-bit
OS, the 32-bit program would have that entire address space to itself,
and all other 32-bit programs would have their own entire address space
too.

It's got nothing to do with virtual memory, though virtual memory plays
a part in it. You can't have more than 4GB of virtual memory in a
standard 32-bit OS. Although there are special tweaks to let you get
upto 64GB with something called Page Address Extensions (PAE), but it's
not an easy tweak to program for.

Yousuf Khan

The technical capability exists, to provide each process with its own space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_table

"Address space or process ID information is necessary so the virtual memory
management system knows what pages to associate to what process. Two processes
may use two identical virtual addresses for different purposes. The page table
must supply different virtual memory mappings for the two processes."

How Windows does it, is another question.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tims/archiv...dows-memory-management-revealed-part-one.aspx

"On 32-bit (x86) architectures, the total addressable memory is 4GB (2**32 bytes),
divided equally into user space and system space."

"There is one single 2GB system space that is mapped into the address space for
all processes; each process also has its own 2GB user space."

HTH,
Paul

 

[me again]

What would concern me, is several of the reviews mention "freezes or crashes"
as a "Con". Would the 64 bit version exude stability ? Remember, this is Corel
we're talking about.

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1207676528492#tabview=tab5

In terms of speedup offered by 32 bit versus 64 bit computing,...

Most of that speedup comes from being able to keep the whole program in RAM.