Shoutbox

quote:

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Originally posted by andrewdodd13
Actually, I'm not 100% sure that 64 bit processors actually use larger numbers, I believe this to be a common misconception

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No it isn't: the registers are bigger, therefore they can contain larger numbers. In fact, it's possible to force a 32-bit chip to handle 64-bit numbers, but it requires a feww assembler tricks to achieve.

quote:

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Originally posted by andrewdodd13
a Data Bus size of 8 bits

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In 1985, maybe. Nowadays, the data bus is much much wider, 64 bits for DDR and DDR2. The wider data bus offers higher memory bandwidth not possible with an 8-bit bus. Modern processors are so much faster than memory that a high-bandwidth data bus is needed to give the memory a fighting chance to keep up with the processor.

In a modern PC, a processor's clock speed is typically 10-20 times that of the memory clock. This means the processor swallows data faster than the memory can feed it. Using a wide data bus minimises this effect: 64-bits is a good compromise between speed and cost.