Re: 64bit vs i386

["Todd A. Jacobs" <nospam@codegnome.org>]

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 12:31:40AM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:

> Sure, on the 80486 or early Pentia.  But everything since then has
> PAE.

Perhaps, but as I understand it PAE is basically a segmentation hack
(remember overlays in the real 386 days?) which adds a layer of
indirection to memory access, and limits the size of memory available to
a given process. Whether or not these issues are a *significant*
performance issue for a given system is left as a benchmarking exercise
for someone who cares more than I do about it. :)

For some insight into why PAE is less-optimal, consider:

    http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/pae_os.mspx

Heck, if even Microsoft considers it sub-optimal given their love of
sub-optimal OS implementations, you probably should too. :)

-- 
"Oh, look: rocks!"
	-- Doctor Who, "Destiny of the Daleks"