The terms 32-bit and 64-bit refer to the way a computer's processor (also called a CPU), handles information. The 64-bit version of Windows handles large amounts of random access memory (RAM) more effectively than a 32-bit system.
To find out if your computer is running 32-bit or 64-bit Windows, do the following:
- Open System by clicking the Start button
, clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Maintenance, and then clicking System. - Under System, you can view the system type.The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295 or ˆ’2,147,483,648 through 2,147,483,647 using two’s complement encoding. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory.In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are at most 64 bits (8 octets) wide. Also, 64-bit CPU and ALU architectures are those that are based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size.The biggest difference between the two is memory addressing: hence that 32-bit only can directly access memory up to 4 GB, while 64-bits can address memory up to 1000GB or 1 terabyte.On the 64-bit processor the channel (Bus) is wider than the 32-bit processor, that’s why the 64-bit processor can process double the amount of data than the 32-bit processor. When comparing the 32-bit and 64-bit processor think about a highway, one with 32 lanes and the other with 64 lanes
