Different work (Apps/tasks) use the CPU in different ways and some projects (CEP2) would not benefit to any significant amount at all. On the other hand some projects can utilize 64bit better and will thus benefit (perhaps 10 or 15% faster). So not everyone will be releasing 64-bit applications.

The big thing is the RAM, as you mentioned. But why it's big is because of the number of cores/threads being crunched on. This is increasing. The 3.2/3.5GB limit would get hit very quickly on an x86system trying to run 12 CPU tasks. Throw in a couple of GPU tasks and a few desktop apps and you have no chance. So as long as there is no loss, why not go with a 64bit app?

PS. Not too keen on that Primegrid and Collatz pie size.

Aedazan,

if you have 24GB of ram running on a 32 bit operating system. Chances are the most memory the operating system will notice is about 3 - 3.5 GBytes. This is on Windows. If you are running Linux with pae kernel than that goes up quite a bit.

If you have 24 GB of ram on a 64 bit operating system. then it'll recognize all 24 GB for processes. I think that goes up to 4TB of RAM.

Now if you were running 32 bit applications, then each process can use up to 2 GB of memory. So, say you were running 64 bit os you could then run 12 32 bit processes that were using up the max memory. With that said, none of our applications use anywhere near that value.

Here is a reference on windows and the limitations for memory and operating system bits.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

-Uplinger