[DM-MUG] 64 Bit

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 2:15 PM, AB <anastasia_prittee at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> The Mac Pro Quadcore 'Xeon' I use has 3 G RAM. if I take a plunge to put
> 16G of RAM, it will definitely be faster when multi-tasking.
>
> The speed of the hard drive, known as RPM and the buffer speed (correct me
> if I am wrong) can also impact the overall performance of the computer. A
> hard drive with 5200RPM and is standard. An upgrade of a hard drive with
> 7200 RPMs and higher transfer rates will perform better. This means files
> will open and copy onto the drive faster.
>
>
We're getting a little off the topic of the original email here but more RAM
helps even single-tasking users because the operating system uses RAM to
speed up access to frequently used aspects of the system. For example, if
you hit the back button on your web-browser and the page is stored in RAM it
will appear much quicker than if the page has to be read off the disk, which
is still much quicker than reading it over the Internet.

Also, 7200 RPM drives don't necessarily transfer data faster, they just are
able to find the data more quickly which is especially useful if you are
reading data from many places on the drive (like when the computer or a
large application first starts up). SSDs transfer data more slowly but can
find data far far more quickly which gives them the appearance that they are
lightening fast.

There are benefits to moving to 64b but most of them come when we're almost
all on 64bit systems. Right now it's more costly for developers to test
their software for 64b and the return on investment is low because few are
using it. Therefore they optimize for 32bit usage. When 64b is common
they'll optimize for it. What apple is doing for PPC users w/ Snow Leopard
needs to be done in another generation or two for 32bit users.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and twitter
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