Could you explain this whole 64 bit computing gargain to me?

[articquad]

So leopard looks kinda cool, I guess. I mean, it looks cool and all, but not necessarily that much of a leap from Tiger.

 

So what's this whole "64 bit computing capability" that apple keeps talking about?

 

I currently have a 17" iMac C2D (2GB) and I'm kinda interested in upgrading it when Leopard comes out, but iLife '07 seems more interesting to me.

 

Thanks!

[Adrian Fogge]

The main benefit from 64-bit computing is the ability to address greater amounts of memory by individual applications.

 

Additionally, you can see higher performance when it comes to dealing with floating point calculations commonly used in digital video, photography, databases and other scientific applications.

 

As far as specific performance increases, it has been very difficult to do a direct benchmark comparison because of different operating systems, driver compatability issues and lack of comparable applications.

[Superhai]

For most people the big advantage of 64 bit (on intels) will be when application use the extra registers on the cpu. The ability to adress more memory will not beneift very many (the legacy modes support PAE already and is 36 bit, and who of you have more than 64 GB of mem in your computer) for a long time. Certain apps which do large number calculations might benefit from 64 bit registers and memory operations. But remember that the FPU is already at 80 bits and SIMD (SSE) have 128 bit registers (which now the common for most floating point operations).