To start, I admit I haven’t done the research on the AMD chips yet, but have checked out the Intel chips as they make up a huge part of the NEW computer market share.
All Intel Pentium 4 chips in a LGA 775 socket and the majority of the Socket 478 chips made and sold since 2004 are 64 bit chips on 64 bit motherboards. These systems are fully compatible with 32 bit hardware.
In fact the only 32 bit chips Intel make today are the Celeron-M (for mobile) chips for very cheap laptops. The medium to high end laptops are usually have full dual core or better 64 bit chips.
In summary, the great majority of the new computers sold over the last four years or more have been full 64 bit systems. Yet the mainstay operating system Microsoft is pushing users to get is the 32 bit version of Windows Vista and now 32 bit Windows Win 7, thus restricting the full capabilities of what can be done with the hardware. The 32 bit versions are the ones mostly installed, as default, on vendor systems for retail sale.
MS make going to 64 bit harder by not allowing people to use any drivers that are NOT digitally signed by MS, but they allow many in the 32 bit versions. Thus, it appears, MS prefer you to use software that is not only not as capable as the new hardware, but are working hard to have you throttle the hardware back.
Now isn’t that an interesting perspective on the MS approach to users and getting the best out of their computers.
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NB: this came up as a person I recently met was going on about how bad his ten month old laptop with Vista is. He assured me it was a 32 bit system as that’s what the system details said – he showed me and it said “32 bit Operating System.” I checked the makers web site and it said the chip is a LGA775 with EMT64 which is 64 bit. He had trouble installing the 32 bit version of SimplyMepis 8, but installing the 64 bit SimplyMepis went perfectly. All the built in devices just worked perfectly from the basic install. The only issue is a special USB Wireless device provided by his ISP (they only support Windows systems) which we’re looking into.
As a result of this I did some research on what chips Intel now make and how long they’ve been making the 64 bit chips and found out the information above from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Pentium_4_microprocessors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86
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edit = o
