Hi friends!
Not long ago, a friend of mine asked me on Facebook the difference between a 32-bit and a 64-bit system. I know many of us have heard of both the terms, but not many of us are sure about what it technically means. So, lets have a deeper insight into this topic today.
The Data bus connection:
A data bus is a computer component/sub item responsible for transferring data between one sub item on motherboard to another and also between CPU to other sub items (like RAM).
32-bit vs 64-bit:
Earlier, 32-bit systems were prominent. What I mean by saying 32-bit system is that in a 32-bit system, 32-bit data can travel through the data bus at any given second and this is the size of data your system's CPU can handle on RAM.
Now comes 64-bit data bus. As implied, it is double of 32, so it means a 64-bit data bus is twice as wide as 32-bit data bus and hence can handle twice the amount of data on the RAM.
When to use what:
Well, this question can be best answered most efficiently and effectively by 'you'. For web-surfing and normal office activities, you will not notice much difference. Hence, for normal home users, 32-bit systems are great( 'great' as they also cost less!!)
But, consider this, a 32-bit system can support only up to 4GB of RAM. So in future, if it is likely that the applications you use/ work upon will require more RAM, then it's better to switch to 64-bit machine( FYI: a 64-bit machine can handle up to 128GB of RAM!!)
Note of caution:
Programs written for 64-bit have do not have backward compatibility, i.e. they cannot be run on 32-bit machines. But (except for some antivirus programs, you can add them as comments), most programs written for 32-bit run on 64-bit too.
In this posts, we learnt about one of the fundamental questions in Computer Organization. In my opinion, every computer user should have basic knowledge about his/ her system, and this one's one of those fundamentals. The follow up of this post will be how to determine what version your system is running and to find out if your system's processor is 64-bit capable or not.
Till then, play around with your OS!
Not long ago, a friend of mine asked me on Facebook the difference between a 32-bit and a 64-bit system. I know many of us have heard of both the terms, but not many of us are sure about what it technically means. So, lets have a deeper insight into this topic today.
The Data bus connection:
A data bus is a computer component/sub item responsible for transferring data between one sub item on motherboard to another and also between CPU to other sub items (like RAM).
32-bit vs 64-bit:
Earlier, 32-bit systems were prominent. What I mean by saying 32-bit system is that in a 32-bit system, 32-bit data can travel through the data bus at any given second and this is the size of data your system's CPU can handle on RAM.
Now comes 64-bit data bus. As implied, it is double of 32, so it means a 64-bit data bus is twice as wide as 32-bit data bus and hence can handle twice the amount of data on the RAM.
When to use what:
Well, this question can be best answered most efficiently and effectively by 'you'. For web-surfing and normal office activities, you will not notice much difference. Hence, for normal home users, 32-bit systems are great( 'great' as they also cost less!!)
But, consider this, a 32-bit system can support only up to 4GB of RAM. So in future, if it is likely that the applications you use/ work upon will require more RAM, then it's better to switch to 64-bit machine( FYI: a 64-bit machine can handle up to 128GB of RAM!!)
Note of caution:
Programs written for 64-bit have do not have backward compatibility, i.e. they cannot be run on 32-bit machines. But (except for some antivirus programs, you can add them as comments), most programs written for 32-bit run on 64-bit too.
In this posts, we learnt about one of the fundamental questions in Computer Organization. In my opinion, every computer user should have basic knowledge about his/ her system, and this one's one of those fundamentals. The follow up of this post will be how to determine what version your system is running and to find out if your system's processor is 64-bit capable or not.
Till then, play around with your OS!
Good job mate!
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