First, I believe that a large proportion of netizens who choose 64-bit Windows7 are memory greater than or equal to 4GB. Under 32-bit Windows 7, it may show that the memory can use 3.25G, which makes many users feel uneasy. That's right, the addressable memory space is really the most notable feature of 32-bit Windows 7 and 64-bit Windows 7.
32-bit CPU (accurately speaking CPU running in 32-bit mode) can only address up to 4GB of memory, subject to this, 32-bit operating system can only recognize up to 4GB of memory, due to In the system, in addition to memory, there are many storage devices, so the real usable memory space is definitely less than 4GB, which is the 3.xxG displayed in the system properties we see.
But the 64-bit CPU has changed a lot. The 64-bit CPU has a maximum addressing space of 2 to 64 bytes. After calculation, its addressable space reaches an astonishing 16TB (treabytes), which is 16384GB. Of course, this is only a theory. From practical applications, the versions of Windows764bit are 8GB-192GB respectively. Among them, the Home Edition can support 8GB of memory, the Home Premium can support 16GB of memory, and the 64-bit Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise and The flagship version can support up to 192GB of memory.
In other words, users with memory greater than or equal to 4GB are limited by 32-bit hardware, so they cannot maximize the use of hardware resources. It is necessary to install a 64-bit operating system to maximize resource utilization.
It should be noted that 64-bit systems require 64-bit CPU support. Please confirm whether your CPU supports 64-bit before installing 64-bit Windows 7. In general, CPUs purchased after 2006 support 64-bit mode. .
If you only consider this point, for users with less than 4GB of memory, 32-bit Windows 7 is more suitable for everyone, because the 64-bit version will take up more system memory resources, and the effect is counterproductive.
Next, let's consider the computing performance.
In theory, the performance on 64-bit platforms far exceeds that of 32-bit platforms. The reason is in the data bit width with the CPU general-purpose register, the 64-bit platform is 64-bit, and the 32-bit platform is 32-bit, that is, the 64-bit platform can run 64-bit data instructions, and the processor can extract 64-bit data at a time (as long as Two instructions, extracting 8 bytes of data at a time, doubled the 32-bit (requires four instructions, extracting 4 bytes of data at a time), and theoretically doubles performance.
But running 32-bit applications on 64-bit Windows 7 won't make you feel a leap in performance. Only 64-bit applications can maximize the benefits of a 64-bit platform. But it's clear that the current 64-bit applications are far below the 32-bit platform in number, but the good news is that more and more software developers are starting to port their software to 64-bit platforms.
From the above we can see that choosing a 32-bit system or a 64-bit system is not determined by one factor. We need to consider various factors and combine the actual situation of our application and hardware to make a choice. .