64-bit or 32-bit Intel?

Question

I am assuming these new Intel machines are still the old 32-bit style. Is this correct? What are we sacrificing for back stepping? I work in a PC environment office with my G5 and it's amazing how much clearer and brigher my monitor (we all have the same one) looks next to the others.

Answer 1

Jim,
As as software engineer who has worked in various application and systems areas and over the era of transition from 16-bit to 32-bit hardware, I can only agree with you that choice of hardware must be dictated by the needs of the use to which it will be put. So clearly for today's desktops (and even more so for laptops), 32-bit hardware is certainly adequate. Whether or not disk speeds are a factor also depends on the application. Obviously, database-intensive applications typically run the mass storage devices ragged. Other applications barely touch the disk once the program and its data are loaded.
Anyway, what I really wanted to point out, though you're probably aware of this already, is that the new iMac (Intel dual-core model) and the MacBook Pro both use faster memory and memory buses than any of their predecessors (with the possible exception of the heavy-duty G4 or G5 desktops--I'm not really familiar with their hardware details).
To give you an idea of a result I found surprising (pleasantly so), a theorem prover I've written in Java (a very CPU- and memory-intensive application) runs much faster (about 50% faster) on the iMac with its dual-core 2 GHz processor(s) than it does on the Linux box with an Intel P4 HyperThreading CPU running at 3 GHz. The reason? The RAM and FSB bus on that Linux box are a lot slower than the ones on the iMac. So even though this application, which currently is principally single-threaded (Java apps can always use a processor core for garbage collection), benefits more from the faster FSB and RAM on the iMac than it is hurt by having a processor running only two thirds the speed of the on in the Linux box.
Randall Schulz
iMac 20" Core Duo; MacBook Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.5)