MacBook Pro - 32 Bit vs 64 Bit?

[ego]

Hi,

I'm planning on buying a MacBook Pro. I was wondering if I should wait for 64 Bit processors to come out though. Should I wait? What's the main difference? When might they come out?

Thanks.

 

[robbieduncan]

The only major difference a user is likely to see is that a 64bit CPU can handle more than 4Gb of RAM.

 

[ego]

Should I wait for it? Are there any big updates due?

 

[godbout]

The information on the difference between 32 and 64 bit computing can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit

As you will read the big difference will be when you are working with data sets that are over 4GB in size. This is because 32 bit addressing can only use 4GB of RAM but in a 64 bit system that can allocate 16 exabytes of RAM! Anyways there are some other differences as well (which you can read about at your leasure) but for a laptop (at this point) there is no real reason to care about 64 bit processors because you won't have more than 4GB of RAM in your system anyways. Why you might want to wait though (depends on how bad you need a MBP) is because they will probably resolve any unresolved issues (are there still any?) and also the intel 64 bit processor, Core 2 Duo, is clock for clock ~15% faster than Core Duo . Also, as with all upgrades they are likely to add some feature that you may or may not care about... anyways... hope this helped


PS I am not sure of any specific features they might be looking to add

 

[Lucky8]

Are all the whine and buzz issues been resolved on the current MBPs?

 

[ego]

The information on the difference between 32 and 64 bit computing can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit

As you will read the big difference will be when you are working with data sets that are over 4GB in size. This is because 32 bit addressing can only use 4GB of RAM but in a 64 bit system that can allocate 16 exabytes of RAM! Anyways there are some other differences as well (which you can read about at your leasure) but for a laptop (at this point) there is no real reason to care about 64 bit processors because you won't have more than 4GB of RAM in your system anyways. Why you might want to wait though (depends on how bad you need a MBP) is because they will probably resolve any unresolved issues (are there still any?) and also the intel 64 bit processor, Core 2 Duo, is clock for clock ~15% faster than Core Duo . Also, as with all upgrades they are likely to add some feature that you may or may not care about... anyways... hope this helped


PS I am not sure of any specific features they might be looking to add

Thanks. I'll wait for September!

 

[Eidorian]

Posting in a Merom thread...

http://guides.macrumors.com/Merom