What's the difference between 64-bit and 32-bit Win7?

First, the original design is different. The 64-bit operating system was designed to meet customer requirements for mechanical design and analysis, three-dimensional animation, video editing and authoring, and the need for large amounts of memory and floating-point performance in areas such as scientific computing and high-performance computing applications.

Second, the configuration requirements are different. The 64-bit operating system can only be installed on 64-bit computers (the CPU must be 64-bit). At the same time, 64-bit common software needs to be installed to perform the best performance of 64-bit (x64). A 32-bit operating system can be installed on a 32-bit (32-bit CPU) or 64-bit (64-bit CPU) computer. Of course, the 32-bit operating system installed on 64-bit computers, its hardware is like "Big Horse Cart": 64-bit performance will be greatly reduced.

Third, the operation speed is different. 64-bit CPU GPRs (general-purpose registers, universal Register) data width of 64 bits, 64-bit instruction set can run 64-bit data instruction, that is, the processor can extract 64 bit data at a time (as long as two instructions, a single extraction of 8 bytes of data), The 32-bit (requiring four instructions, one fetch of 4 bytes of data) increased by one time, and in theory, the performance would increase by 1 time times.

Four, the addressing ability is different. The advantages of a 64-bit processor are also reflected in the system's control over memory. Because addresses use special integers, an alu (arithmetic logic operator) and registers can handle larger integers, or larger addresses. For example, Windows Vista x64 Edition supports up to 128 GB of memory and up to terabytes of virtual memory, while 32-bit CPUs and operating systems can support only 4G of memory.

Five, the software is widely different. At present, 64-bit commonly used software is much less than 32-bit common software. The rationale is simple: there are relatively few users using 64-bit operating systems. Therefore, software developers must consider the "input-output ratio", the limited funds into more users of the software. This is also a major reason why 64-bit software prices are relatively expensive (putting costs into less sales).

In particular, 64-bit computers can be installed with 32-bit operating systems, but 32-bit computers will never be able to install 64-bit operating systems. This is essential to keep in mind to avoid blindly downloading and installing.

If you do not know your computer's CPU is not 64-bit, you can use some software to query, such as using Cpu-z to complete the test, the current version is 1.60.2.