64-bit vs 32-bit Performance

T-break’s Abbas Jaffarali compares 32-bit and 64-bit performance on an MSI K8N Neo Platinum (nForce3-250Gb) motherboard using NVIDIA’s Forceware 4.04 (32-bit) and Forceware 4.34a (64-bit) drivers:

On the applications side, since the Athlon64 is completely backward compatible, you should have no problems running any 32-bit applications on a 32-bit Operating System. The problem comes when you try to run 32-bit applications on a 64-bit O/S and although Microsoft supports a “32-bit” compatibility mode in its Windows XP 64-bit Edition, you will run into problems with certain applications…

However, compatibility isn’t the focus of this article- benchmarking is. Sometime back, we internally benchmarked Windows XP-64 bit Edition with 32-bit apps and found that a lot of work needed to be done to bring the performance level at least on par with running the same applications on a 32-bit O/S. With the release of 64-bit drivers for the nForce3 platform from nVidia, we decided to re-benchmark these applications in both 32-bit and 64-bit version of Windows XP and see if the performance gap has closed in or not.

…Later during the year, we’ll probably see the release version of the Windows XP 64-Bit along with better/more drivers. That will certainly help in closing the delta between the 32-bit and 64-bit Operating system performance. Where we’ll hopefully see a noticeable rise in performance is when 64-bit apps are developed such as the upcoming Unreal version. Until then, we would advise sticking to the 32-bit version of Windows XP for everyday use.

64-bit vs 32-bit Performance t-break