Anonymous
Sun Apr 06, 2014 10:29:45 am
Browsing the forum there are many times questions what version of os. should be installed, 32 Bit or 64 Bit version? Here is some basic things to be considered to make the selection. First you have to know whether your computer has a 32 Bit or 64 Bit architecture. This information is available from BIOS or opening the Systems Settings and there the System Details. In Windows you find the information from Control Panel /System and Secutity/System. The basic selection is made according to that. However there is also an alternative selection. A 32 Bit operating system can run also in 64 Bit architecture. The reason to use only 32 bit os. might be that you have both 32 Bit and 64 Bit architecture computers and you do not want to have different os.es in those machines.
The difference in these architectures is that in a 32 Bit system, data is in 32 Bit pieces and that amount of data is transferred in the data bus every clock pulse. In a 64 Bits system the amount is 64 Bits every clock pulse. This means that data transfer (little simplified) is double that efficient in a 64 Bit system, when using the same clocking speed. This does not however mean that the computer works 2 times faster, due to that there are peripherals that slow down the speed, like the R/W speed of the HDD.
There is also an other thing where these systems differ. As basic setup of a 32 Bit system, there is a limitation to address only up to 4 Gb of RAM. In the 64 Bit architecture the addressable RAM memory can be almost "unlimited"; the maximun practical size is however up to 1Tb.
This means that in 64 Bit systems big amounts of data can be accessed only using the fast Random Access Memory (RAM) if it is available in the computer. To get this benefit from a 64 Bit system compared to a 32 Bit system, there have to be more than 4 Gb RAM memory installed. Othervice there is not any benefit of having 64 Bit system to be only an ability to address bigger RAM than 4 Gbits.
To overcome the problem in 32 Bit architecture that there is the basic setup that it can address only up to 4Gb of RAM, there may have used a method called PAE. That is an abbreviation from Physical Addressing Extension where 4 additional bits are used to widen the addressing of RAM memory access. This means that up to 64 Gb of RAM can be used in a 32 Bit architecture computer. This means that the 32 Bit system's performance can be improved by having more tan 4Gb RAM installed and used in the computer.
To be able to get this faster running 32 Bit system, both the os. software and used hardware have to be PAE compatible and more than 4 Gb RAM has been installed into the computer. From Ubuntu 12.04 onwards PAE has been as default installed in the Ubuntu distros. Even if having the possibility to use PAE, and more than 4Gb RAM is installed, that do not have that additional performance improvement that a 64 Bit architecture can offer.
(To this topic someone who knows more of the Zorin distributions present PAE support situation could add updated additional information)
Zorin 8/8.1 Core and Ultimate 32 Bit, Ubunbtu 13.10 32 Bit, Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit, Asus AMD Athlon 64 Bit X2 Dual core 4000+, HP 530 Intel Celeron M 32 Bit
The difference in these architectures is that in a 32 Bit system, data is in 32 Bit pieces and that amount of data is transferred in the data bus every clock pulse. In a 64 Bits system the amount is 64 Bits every clock pulse. This means that data transfer (little simplified) is double that efficient in a 64 Bit system, when using the same clocking speed. This does not however mean that the computer works 2 times faster, due to that there are peripherals that slow down the speed, like the R/W speed of the HDD.
There is also an other thing where these systems differ. As basic setup of a 32 Bit system, there is a limitation to address only up to 4 Gb of RAM. In the 64 Bit architecture the addressable RAM memory can be almost "unlimited"; the maximun practical size is however up to 1Tb.
This means that in 64 Bit systems big amounts of data can be accessed only using the fast Random Access Memory (RAM) if it is available in the computer. To get this benefit from a 64 Bit system compared to a 32 Bit system, there have to be more than 4 Gb RAM memory installed. Othervice there is not any benefit of having 64 Bit system to be only an ability to address bigger RAM than 4 Gbits.
To overcome the problem in 32 Bit architecture that there is the basic setup that it can address only up to 4Gb of RAM, there may have used a method called PAE. That is an abbreviation from Physical Addressing Extension where 4 additional bits are used to widen the addressing of RAM memory access. This means that up to 64 Gb of RAM can be used in a 32 Bit architecture computer. This means that the 32 Bit system's performance can be improved by having more tan 4Gb RAM installed and used in the computer.
To be able to get this faster running 32 Bit system, both the os. software and used hardware have to be PAE compatible and more than 4 Gb RAM has been installed into the computer. From Ubuntu 12.04 onwards PAE has been as default installed in the Ubuntu distros. Even if having the possibility to use PAE, and more than 4Gb RAM is installed, that do not have that additional performance improvement that a 64 Bit architecture can offer.
(To this topic someone who knows more of the Zorin distributions present PAE support situation could add updated additional information)
Zorin 8/8.1 Core and Ultimate 32 Bit, Ubunbtu 13.10 32 Bit, Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit, Asus AMD Athlon 64 Bit X2 Dual core 4000+, HP 530 Intel Celeron M 32 Bit
