How's it going guys I'm Thio Joe and today's topic is gonna be
32-bit vs. 64-bit whether it's Windows or programs you're running on Windows or even any other operating system
What are the differences between these should you use one of the other are there advantages and disadvantages to both?
So let's get over that now the first thing to understand is that when it comes to talking about a CPU the 32-bit vs.
64 bit distinction has to do with the
Register of the CPU which is basically how much data it can queue up to process at once
64-bit can process a lot more information and take a lot more information from the RAM to do stuff with than a 32-bit
CPU or operating system can do but one important thing to also know is that every single bit is not directly
proportional so it's not like
64-bit can handle twice as much information or twice as much RAM. In fact, It's exponential so a
32 gigabyte operating system can only handle four gigabytes of RAM maximum and that also means that each
individual program in Windows typically was limited to only two gigabytes of RAM for each program whereas if it's
64-bit the theoretical maximum for how much RAM you could use is literally over sixteen point seven million
terabytes and also that two gigabyte limit is gone with 64-bit and Windows allows you to assign
literally terabytes to any individual program
So there's really no limit to the amount of RAM you're gonna ever use
Even in the foreseeable future so that is one main advantage that most people can recognize and appreciate
Because even if you don't know much about computers
You probably know what Ram is and that more is better, and if there's a four gigabyte limit
I mean, that's how much we have in our smart phones these days
That's nothing so you want a lot more than that but in addition to that because the register is wider
It means it can not only use more RAM total
But it's also gonna be able to use that RAM more
Efficiently so even if you did still only have four gigabytes of RAM
Then it would still be able to use that Ram a lot better
so it's going to be faster in two aspects so that has to do with the physical arc texture of the CPU you can have
64-bit processors which are pretty much all in these days versus the old 32-bit
but just because a CPU is 64-bit you can also install a
32-bit operating system on that it's not
Exclusive, I don't you wouldn't really want to do that
But you can if you have to and you can also obviously install a 64-bit operating system
Which is probably what you're using if you've installed Windows in the past few years and one advantage in
64-bit versions of Windows at least over 32-bit is it does have a lot more security features
So I don't know if this was impossible to do on 32-bit
or if they just decided to enforce it with 64-bit because
Driver manufacturers would have to be rewriting drivers for 64-bit anyway
So they may as well force them to do this stuff along the way
But regardless there are improvements with 64-bit so this includes for example
drivers signature enforcement so if a
Manufacturer wants to write a driver for their device to work with any computer then they have to sign that driver
Which wasn't necessarily required before so Windows basically says all right since you're gonna have to be writing 64-bit processors
They all have to be signed. We're not gonna let any
Drivers there were 64-bit onto this computer unless it is signed so that means that it's a lot harder for malware to
Get on to the computer because if it's not correctly signed by a legit manufacturer then somehow that malware
Would have to bypass that and windows recognize
wait a minute this isn't from a real manufacturer and probably block it also a
64-bit version of Windows has what is called patch guard which basically prevents programs and drivers from
Patching or modifying the kernel which is basically the core of the operating system
You don't really want programs to be able to do that so that's one major advantage of windows 64-bit and then finally another advantage is
hardware data execution prevention
Which is a fancy way of saying that the operating system can block malicious programs from?
Modifying Ram data that it's not supposed to be able to do and stop things from executing
That is not meant to be and kind of as I said before pretty much all installations of Windows these days are gonna still be
64-bit they do give you the option to choose 32-bit
But you wouldn't really want to do that for reasons what we can get to in a bit
but if you do want to check that just to be sure you can check in the system properties of
Windows and look it should say either 32-bit or 64-bit
Now even though I did say that there's pretty much unlimited amount of RAM that you can have with the 64-bit
processor Windows does implement limitations that are software limitations
And it does depend on which version of Windows you have so this might be interesting to some of you so when it comes to
Windows 7 you might not have known this
But if you have the home version of Windows 7 you can only have up to 16 gigabytes of RAM
There's a limit on that and if you have the pro version though
You can have up to 192 gigabytes, and this is just a software limitation. It's not a physical limitation
That's impossible though when it comes to Windows 10
There's not really any realistic limit that anyone should worry about Windows 10 home for example has
128 gigabyte limit, so I don't know anyone who has 128 gigabytes
I don't even know if you could fit that in if you wanted unless it was a server
although if you do have the pro version of Windows 10 or enterprise or education then you can have 2 terabytes plus so
Most people I don't think are gonna have to worry about Ram
limitations on
Windows 10 you can just stick as much as you want in there now if you do happen to be installing Windows any time soon
And you have the choice between
32-bit and 64-bit
You definitely want to go for 64-bit there used to be issues with
Manufacturers not having drivers and sometimes a lot of programs wouldn't work yet to wait for it
But now that pretty much everyone has that all manufacturers are making
64-bit drivers
so you don't have to worry about that you're not gonna have any issues though one thing you should keep in mind is when you
upgrade windows not necessarily a clean install
typically windows will keep the same version
through that upgrade so if you have a 32-bit version of Windows and you do an upgrade it's going to give you a
32-bit version of the next edition of Windows so if you've been
upgrading Windows
Since Windows XP or something where you have 32-bit you might want to check you might still have windows 32-bit
Cuz you never did a clean install and if that is the case
Then you will have to do a clean install
Which it's kind of a pain in the neck you have to do a reformat typically so that's annoying
But you will get some benefit if you have more than four gigabytes of RAM if you don't then it's not really necessary
But you still might want to you might be wondering well are there any disadvantages
To running 64-bit windows or programs and the answer is kind of I guess
But it's only in the sense of compatibility because if you're running 64-bit Windows then you might be
Using a really old device that doesn't have 64-bit drivers and in that case it if you need that device
it's absolutely necessary for your livelihood or something then it wouldn't make sense to upgrade obviously because you wouldn't be able to use it and
another disadvantage is if you have
64-bit then you might not be able to run 16-bit programs on
Windows 64-bit it can run 32-bit programs fine, but not that far back
But I don't even know any examples of 16-bit programs that anyone would need if you're using like ancient
Software again, that could be a reason to stick to 32-bit
But I don't think that's going to be for many people so we talked about a 64-bit processor
64-bit operating system and of course you probably know that there are 32-bit and 64-bit
programs that run on these operating systems and some of you might be thinking now wait a minute if
64-bit is so great then why are there so many
32-bit programs still around and that is the case like if you didn't notice when you go into Windows on a 64-bit version
Then there will be two folders for Program Files. There's going to be Program Files this nothing on the extension
That's 64-bit programs, and then there's another one that will be called Program Files x86
Which is where all the 32-bit programs go and obviously this does mean that you can run a 32-bit program on windows 64-bit
No problem
Microsoft was sure to make sure that there would be no issues because pretty much all programs were written in 32
And it would not be very good if everyone's program
Just didn't work anymore so realistically running a 32-bit program versus a 64-bit program
you're probably not going to notice any difference the difference would be that a
32-bit program can only use up to four gigabytes of RAM whereas the
64-bit could use as much as you need so the reason there are still so many
32-bit programs is a lot of developers
They might say look my program is very small it definitely doesn't need four gigabytes of RAM
So I may as well just write it in 32-bit, and then it'll work on everyone's computers 32-bit or 64-bit
Rather than writing two separate programs that no one's gonna know the difference. They have to compile it separately there might be changes
They have to make in the code, and it's like it's not worth the hassle
There's not going to be any difference so they just write it in 32-bit and are done with it
However in general if you do have the choice it
Probably is better to install the 64 bit version of the program and might run a little bit more efficient
Especially if it does need more than 4 gigabytes of RAM
Then you definitely want to run it obviously if you can take advantage of it and also you do get a little bit more of
those security features that we talked about before so it'll integrate better with that patch protection and
It'll just run better in general if you do have the choice you may as well run the 64 bit program
But a lot of times it might not be obvious where to download this
they might just have you download the page by default to 32-bit and they kind of make you search for the 64 bit version but
I mean if you really look for it usually most programs these days do have about 64 bit programs, so yeah
I guess there's not much more to say about it the conclusion is what I just said if you have the choice go with 64-bit
Unless you have something SuperDuper old that won't work otherwise if you guys have any ideas of your own something
I forgot to talk about you can let me know down in the comments if you want to keep watching
I'll put some other videos right here. You can just click on those, and if you want to subscribe
I make new videos every Tuesday Thursday Saturday
And also be sure to enable
Notifications by clicking the bell next to the subscribe button, so I'm looking forward to hearing from you guys again
Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time. Have a good one.