Questions and Answers about 64-bit
Q: What does "64-bit" mean?
A: A 64-bit computer, operating system, or software application is able to use 64-bit wide memory addresses, while a "traditional" 32-bit computer, OS or software can only use 32-bit wide memory addresses. The maximum memory address space for a 32-bit system is 232, which equals 4gigabytes. A 64-bit system can address 264 bytes, that is 17,179,869,184 gigabytes.
Q: What do I need to make use of 64-bit computing?
A: You need:
- a 64-bit computer, like Mac equipped with G5 or Intel processor; a PC equipped with AMD64-architecture processor (Opteron/Atthlon64) or Intel EMT-64 processor (some Pentium4 and Xeon; the Core series), or Intel Itanium processor
a 64-bit operating system, like Windows XP 64-bit edition, or Windows Vista 64-bit version, (Mac OS X is partly 64-bit since version 10.3. Some expect that version 10.5 will be fully 64-bit)
- A 64-bit software application
Q: Is ArchiCAD 64-bit?
A: No, ArchiCAD is 32-bit, so are most of the current CAD systems. Transferring a 32-bit application to 64-bit requires reprogramming even the most basic functions in the software, therefore the change to 64-bit in business softwares will happen at a much slower pace than the rapid change from 32-bit processors to 64-bit processors in the Personal Computer (PC) industry.
Q: How much memory can ArchiCAD use then?
A: As a 32-bit application, ArchiCAD can use a maximum of 4GB of RAM. However, some operating systems put a limit on this: Windows XP 32-bit and Vista 32-bit imposes a limit of 2GB. On Windows XP 64-bit edition;Windows Vista 64-bit edition and on Mac OS X, ArchiCAD can use 4GB.
Q: Does it still make sense to buy more than 4 GB of RAM?
A: If you only use ArchiCAD, and do not have 64-bit applications on your system, it does not make much sense to buy more than 4GB of Ram
Also read:
More info on 64-bit on Wikipedia
About Multiprocessing