Taking my e6410 dell from 32 to 64 bit

Question

Am I going to see a major performance boost on Microsoft Office and Dev/DB apps if I switch up from 32-bit to 64-bit Windows on my Dell E6410 i5?

Unless you are loading up a a 20GB database, then no. You might actually see slower performance. — surfasb, Jul 07 '11 at 22:27

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 07 '11 at 22:12

3

No. Productivity and development tools are the least likely to benefit from the 64-bit advantages since they are heavily dependent on user input.

answered Jul 07 '11 at 22:12

I was told Word did better with more RAM, and I'm limited to 4gb with 32-bit Windows. Though I'm not super convinced an SSD wouldn't pep things up. – Caveatrob Jul 08 '11 at 05:00
Word does better when you go from 256MB to 512MB. At 4GB you're throwing a pebble into the ocean. Besides, it's not limited to 4GB per se; there are artificial limits built into the various Windows SKUs. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jul 08 '11 at 05:02
There are no artificial limits in the 32 bits versions. The most commonly encountered limit is around 3.5 GB, as you cannot have 4GB of RAM and a videocard in only 4GB of address space. – MSalters Jul 08 '11 at 12:35
@MSalters: Perhaps you're not familiar with Microsoft's list of memory limits. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jul 08 '11 at 16:27

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 07 '11 at 22:11

1

I doubt it, especially if your total memory available is near 4GB. It's actually possible that you could experience a slow down from that upgrade.

If you've got near or more than 4GB, I think it'll start to become worth it.

answered Jul 07 '11 at 22:11

James T Snell

2 Answers2