32 and 64 BIT Processor – What they are and difference between them

Science & Technology
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You have probably seen the 32bit or 64bit options when you are installing windows or downloading an app and if you were given an option to chose between a smart phone or a computer with a 32 or 64 bit processor, you would definitely go for the 64bit smart-phone or computer right? sure you will — probably because you have an idea or were told that a 64bit processor is better.

But hold on!! Why do you think a 64bit processor is better? even if it is what’s the difference between them? or a better question is what’s a BIT? — Aright let’s start from the last question by finding out what a bit is.

What’s a BIT?

Okay am gonna make this as simple and fast as i can. A BIT is the smallest unit of data in a computer. A bit has a single binary value, either 0 or 1. So 1 bit can express up to 2 values and 2bit=4 values and 3bit=8 values and so on. Mathematically nbit=2^n and so on.

When working with processor a BIT refers to the number of memory the processor can address at a time — for example a 1bit color display will only display Black and white because 1bit=2 values where one of the value is white and the other is black. A 2bit color display equals 4 different color because a 2bit=4 values.

So when you set 8,16 or 32bit color display for your graphics card, the processor will only address that 8,16 or 32bit to your graphics card displaying only the available numbers it can get from that BIT And this is why a higher bit color gives more image quality.

32bit and 64bit processor

From our previous knowledge of BIT, one can easily say that a 32bit=4billion values because 1bit=2^1 which equals 1 and 32bit=2^32 which equals about 4billion.

When converted a 32bit=4billion values which equals a maximum of 4GB/memory. With this, it is pretty clear that a 32bit processor can only handle/address 4GB of memory. This means that in a normal working condition of a 32bit processor, the numbers of ram the processor share to all the running applications will not exceed 4GB of ram if brought together and calculated.

This also means that a 32bit processor is limited to only 4GB of ram and if you slot in a ram value higher than 4GB, it will be completely useless because only 4GB will be usable.

On the other hand a 64bit processor can handle up to 16billionGB of ram because 2^64=a very large value which when converted equals 16billionGB of ram. On-like 32bit processor, a 64GB processor the total of shared ram can exceed 4GB.


Difference between a 32bit and 64bit processor

[ul]
[li]A 32bit processor can handle only 4GB of ram while a 64bit processor can handle more than that.[/li][li]A 32bit processor can only run a 32bit operating system while a 64bit processor can run both 32 and 64bit operating system, but when a 64bit processor is running a 32bit operating system it will behave just like a 32bit PC.[/li][li]A 32bit processor equals less ram which equals less multitasking while a 64bit processor equals more ram which equals more multitasking[/li][li]In a 32bit operating system one particular application/program can not take up to 2GB of ram while in a 64bit operating system, it can take more than.[/li][/ul]

Post source:
www.techeda.com

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am i allowed to bust this myth?

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Myth?? sure… Explain why it’s a myth

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before 1995, it was actually a fact that 32bit processors could not handle more than 4GB ram, however when intel released the pentium pro processor that year, they added PAE (physical address extension), this allows a 32 bit proccessor to address more ram.

however microsoft did not adapt their 32bit operating systems, and since microsoft operating systems are still the dominant operating systems in personal computing, many users have had to live with this problem, so technically its the OS that has a problem accessing more than 4GB and not the underlying hardware

i stand to be corrected thus i will call in @Gio , @TerribleWaste and @Deorro

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Forgive my blondeness but you should have tagged me too. @Pre is like that new highschool kid who has just discovered that his hand can do better than my puthy. He is just learning and I like newbies in tech.

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Wow talk about not learning anything even the differences are too shallow,from the way they handle registries to caching capabilities.Hii ni explanation ya kijana wa kuuza vitu za comp imenti.

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apologies for not tagging you, i have made a mental note to always tag you in tech matters where i need collaboration and a second opinion.

on the bold italic part, kuwa mpole kwake, we all started from somewhere, the only difference between us and him is that we started coding during the days of ms-dos when you have to explicitly define what was to be loaded in high memory, so we had to learn how processors work, this days all these things are obfuscated from the end user , do you remember autoexec.bat?

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Wachana na mambo ya autoexec.bat. I started hating windows when they decided to include MS-DOS in Windows User Interface and NOT a stand alone as it used to be. When we could boot our comps in DOS only by pressing F8 when booting up.

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thanks for that

feelings za nini?? if somebody is an NV it doesn’t mean their knowledge on tech stuff is also scarce

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Alright i will accept that… I will consider myself a newbie

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the biggest mistake you can do is undermining yourself because you’ve been undermined

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sasa umekuwa motivational speaker

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:D:D:Dnatetea tu NV, amekaliwa sana na elders yet info anapeana hapa ni invaluable

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:D:D:D

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I remember using DOS to start up Mario and Rayman and guys would come tell me, “wah, how did you do that?!” I’d start explaining to them this thing is in the hard disk already you just have to tell DOS where it is exactly and it will start, all I got was blank looks.

Pity I forgot how to use MS-DOS apart from the little ones like chkdsk and diskpart

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There is a workaround to this PAE. Tried it once on a laptop running windows 7, maybe I was just too eager but nothing much came out of it. Switched to a 64 bit system anyways.

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yes i remember the patch which Microsoft had released to modify the windows 7 kernel with some windows server 2003 code, but they had to pull it down .

is that the one you tried?

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Yap, that’s the one. The machine had to have hardware enabled DEP

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If you can’t create a bootable flash drive using ONLY your bootable installation CD and Ms-Dos then you know nothing about computers. NOTE: No additional tools or applications, just MS-DOS and your Windows CD then copy/paste command.

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Yah i remember this method where you have to use the Command prompt… But my favourite is the wlan command.