At Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:53:01 -0500 (EST) CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org wrote:
I have a really silly question... but just want to ask...
I have one box on my home network that is x86_64 capable... My other boxes are all i386. As this x86_64 machine can, at most, house 4 GB of RAM (currently only has 1 GB) - is there any advantage to my running x86_64 on that machine instead of i386... Long story as to why I am asking - but before I go off and moveit down to i386 - just wanted some opinions :)
With only 1gig of RAM there is little reason for 64-bit addressing -- 1 gig is well within the range of 32-bit addressing (yes, you could set up a large swap partition and have lots of virtual addressing, but swapping like 8 gig of VM in and out of 1 gig of physical RAM would be painful).
Also, 64-bit apps tend to be a little larger then their 32-bit versions (fatter pointers, integers, etc.). With 1 gig memory will be a wee bit tighter (modern 64-bit machines would normally have lots more RAM...).
With what is obvious and 'older' 64-bit system, being limited to 4gig of RAM (which is still just within 32-bit address space), going 64-bit with this system would not buy you much. If you want a consistent operating environment, especially if you don't want to maintain two separate sets of updates, keeping all of your boxes at 32-bit for the time being probably makes sense. If and when you upgrade things, going 64-bit might make sense.
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