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Cacodemon345

Why some people stick to 32-bit OSs when their systems are 64-bit compatible?

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A problem that I found is that some people stick to 32-bit OSs even if 64-bit compatible.

Even some stick to 32-bit apps in 64-bit OSs.

Why people do this?

And what benefits are actually gained by using 64-bit OSs?

Edit:What benefits are actually gained by using 64-bit CPUs?

And what differences are actually found between 32-bit and 64-bit CPUs.

Edited by Cacodemon345

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Most OS's these days only run at 64bit , especially Mac. 64 bit means more memory and quicker more responsive experience.

 

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14 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

And what benefits are actually gained by using 64-bit OSs?

Some applications, and most video games nowadays require 64Bit OSs.

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Some people still rely on a handful of 16-bit applications, which will run in a 32-bit OS, but not a 64-bit one.

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Because 64-bit still sucks especially on Linux distros.  It's pretty much less compatible and less stable with anything I actually use and I never saw a tangible performance improvement  on stuff that works for both (if anything it degrades - DOSBox in particular has to shut off some performance-enhancing stuff on 64-bit apparently).

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64-bit means more responsiveness and in short better performance for more powerful PCs while doing various tasks. The limitations of the 32-bit arhitecture are also lifted, such as the memory restrictions. Aside from only few people nowadays, 32-bit is no longer used, especially by gamers. Could say it's basically obsolete.

 

As about "Even some stick to 32-bit apps in 64-bit OSs." - Afaik not all programs have 64-bit versions, so maybe that's a reason I suppose. Other than that, I doubt anyone uses a 32-bit version when 64-bit is available.

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At first, I installed 32-bit Windows on this thing because I made the false assumption that it was too old to handle 64-bit. I later realized that, while it's pretty old, it's not THAT old.

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I highly doubt that anybody would use 32-bit versions nowadays since 64-bit lifts all the limits of 32-bit while also being preferable for developers to work on. Unless there is only a 32-bit version available to use, pretty much everyone would go for 64-bit especially since about every OS out there only run at 64-bit. There's also that most modern games and software require 64-bit OSs to run, which shouldn't be much of an issue since most people would have a 64-bit OS as it is.

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1 hour ago, Cacodemon345 said:

And what benefits are actually gained by using 64-bit OSs?

Edit:What benefits are actually gained by using 64-bit CPUs?

And what differences are actually found between 32-bit and 64-bit CPUs.

64bit means more native memory allocation, which while doesn't have an intimidate effect yet (outside of high-end games), it does mean that the OS itself has more RAM to fuck around with, especially for hard-drive caching. Just because you aren't using RAM, that doesn't mean the OS isn't. There's also the slightly more invisible (at least nowadays) improvement; more addressable memory for hardware resource allocation.

Meanwhile a 64bit CPU itself has a few extra aspects to it (outside of being able to process 64bit values as a single instruction), namely you get more registers to work with, allowing for native 64bit code to work with more complex vector operations, and the like, much more efficiently. I'd start listing off extension differences but most of those are just because we are developing 64bit CPUs now, not 32bit.

 

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12 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

64bit means more native memory allocation, which while doesn't have an intimidate effect yet (outside of high-end games), it does mean that the OS itself has more RAM to fuck around with, especially for hard-drive caching. Just because you aren't using RAM, that doesn't mean the OS isn't. There's also the slightly more invisible (at least nowadays) improvement; more addressable memory for hardware resource allocation.

Meanwhile a 64bit CPU itself has a few extra aspects to it (outside of being able to process 64bit values as a single instruction), namely you get more registers to work with, allowing for native 64bit code to work with more complex vector operations, and the like, much more efficiently. I'd start listing off extension differences but most of those are just because we are developing 64bit CPUs now, not 32bit.

 

I know these,but the problem is,how it is beneficial to the end user?

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If they are talking about existing programs, sure there's no benefit. New software can take the features into account, however, and that's where the benefits come in.

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I had accidentally installed a 32-bit OS until a friend pointed out to me that my PC can run 64-bit.

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4 hours ago, DaIcemann76 said:

Some people still rely on a handful of 16-bit applications, which will run in a 32-bit OS, but not a 64-bit one.

Well it's a good thing that virtual machines and emulators exist then. ;)

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I'm not sure why some stay with 32-bit OSes.  But if it works for them, well... *shrug*

 

I moved over to 64-bit Windows pretty early, but I stuck with 32-bit Linux a bit longer.  This was because I wanted to first learn all I could about the 32-bit compatibility packages for Slackware's 64-bit counterpart.  These days I run 64-bit OSes on all but two of my computers.  The exceptions are one that doesn't have a CPU that can handle it, and my Raspberry Pi 2, which also doesn't have a 64-bit CPU.

 

Well and my TI-99/4a and Atari 400, but that's besides the point :-P

 

The only downside I noticed is that I have slightly less free RAM using a 64-bit OS on my laptop because of the larger memory footprints.

 

5 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Even some stick to 32-bit apps in 64-bit OSs.

Simple: not all of my programs have 64-bit versions available, and some can't easily be replaced with something else that does.  A few of my favorite VSTs immediately come to mind.

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16 bit support was pretty much the sole reason I ran x86 windows as long as I did, since there's a lot of weird 16 bit programs I would run for various things, but there's now nicer ways I can run them, so I just don't bother with x86 windows anymore. Haven't since I started running windows 8 and later windows 10. I'm amazed there's still an x86 version of w10, honestly. Nowadays everything sucks up so much memory its painful to want to use x86 windows.

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I use a lot of 32-bit versions of programs on my 64-bit OS because in my experience, for some reason the 32-bit versions run faster.

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1 hour ago, CARRiON said:

Funny this thread pops up and now I read NVIDIA is ceasing support for 32-bit drivers.

Just noticed some articles on this matter. At least only a few people still use 32-bit OSes nowadays. On a similar note, looks BIOS will be dead by 2020 as well and a full transition to UEFI will be made: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/intel-to-kill-off-the-last-vestiges-of-the-ancient-pc-bios-by-2020/

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2 minutes ago, Agent6 said:

Just noticed some articles on this matter. At least only a few people still use 32-bit OSes nowadays. On a similar note, looks BIOS will be dead by 2020 as well and a full transition to UEFI will be made: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/intel-to-kill-off-the-last-vestiges-of-the-ancient-pc-bios-by-2020/

BIOS will have to be faded out eventually as it only supports up to 2TB of storage. UEFI will indeed be the norm.

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43 minutes ago, Agent6 said:

Just noticed some articles on this matter. At least only a few people still use 32-bit OSes nowadays. On a similar note, looks BIOS will be dead by 2020 as well and a full transition to UEFI will be made: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/intel-to-kill-off-the-last-vestiges-of-the-ancient-pc-bios-by-2020/

Well,this seems somewhat like an statement made somewhere on the Ubuntu Wiki,

"One day UEFI will replace BIOS completely,without being fully backwards compatible with it."

Well,FreeDOS will be forced to die.

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