Re:Mozilla quietly kills Firefox 64-bit for Windows
by josephlord on Thursday November 22, 2012 @06:24AM
(#4818383)
There will be a memory saving but the loss of access to better instructions and the registers would surely cost you some performance overall (may be benchmark and processor dependent)
Re:Mozilla quietly kills Firefox 64-bit for Windows
by ZoFreX on Thursday November 22, 2012 @07:00AM
(#4818447)
32-bit processes can get 4GB of memory on 64-bit Windows: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa36...
I thought the limit was 2GB, which Firefox is getting dangerously close to. 4GB gives a lot more wiggle room, but I wonder how long it will last...
Re:Mozilla quietly kills Firefox 64-bit for Windows
by alexkus on Thursday November 22, 2012 @08:39AM
(#4818686)
I'd rather not have to pollute a pure 64-bit install with a whole bunch of 32-bit libraries to run just one 32-bit app though. It's adds even more headache keeping those patched and up to date.
Re:Mozilla quietly kills Firefox 64-bit for Windows
by ibotty on Thursday November 22, 2012 @11:21AM
(#4819198)
remember that we are talking windows here. which libraries do you have to patch for firefox (i.e. those they do not ship and which are not in the core win os)?
Re:Mozilla quietly kills Firefox 64-bit for Windows
by keeperofdakeys on Thursday November 22, 2012 @08:01AM
(#4818589)
The problem is you need almost-contrived situations to notice these kinds of improvements, and a web browser deals with way too much I/O to fit into this category.
If you have no need for more than 3gb of memory per process then 32 bit is a great choice. The pointers being half size is a non-trivial memory saving.
I'd be happy if windows would let you use something like the x32 build target that linux got recently for extra registers though.