[iamroot]

I'm getting a new system soon and I'm considering between getting an AMD Athlon 64 or an Intel Pentium 4. What pratical benefits does using a 64-bit processor have? Anyone here who is using a 64-bit processor? I'll be using GNU/Linux on that system btw.

[tyga]

At the moment there really isn't any benefit. The only benefit is that an 64 bit system will be generally faster than an 32 bit system simply because a 64 bit system is newer than a 32 bit system and the only other benefit is that a 64 bit sytem is ready to take advantage of any new 64 bit software.

There is no real observable difference between a 64 bit and a 32 bit system.

[BSchindler]

I don't know that I agree that there is no benefit. I have two new AMD 64 bit machines, each with 2G of RAM and high performance disk drives.

I am a bit of a purist, I prefer to compile from source so ...
When I build Apache, Gcc as cross compiler, compile very large projects, etc., I see a very noticible performance gain. 30-40% reduction of compilation times vs faster 32 bit processors.

If you have enough to keep a fast 64-bit machine busy, enough ram to work in and descent drives, it pays. At least for me.

BTW, sorry for the absence. Been abroad for a while working on stuff and had little time for sleep let alone coming here. But, just got back from a week in Jamaica (I know, wrong season) and am a bit rested.