64bit vs 32bit software
Some software is available in either 64bit or 32bit. An example is Calibre eBook manager. Other than the ability to access more memory using 64bit, is there any advantage using 64bit?
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Calibre was a poor example. Processing eBooks is a trivial task for any PC. Another program that I use is Handbrake to transcode video files. It is also available in 32bit or 64bit. I downloaded the latest version of each and did a test. I transcoded a 4GB avi mpeg-2 file to an mp4 file. I used the default settings for both tests. The resulting mp4 was 400MB. It took 11m 25s for the 32bit version and 10m 57s for the 64bit version. My PC is a 5 year old Toshiba Portege notebook with an i5 processor and 4GB of RAM. OS is Win 7 64bit. The 4GB of RAM is certainly a limiting factor, but I would of thought there would have been a bigger difference.
