[mythtv-users] Upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit and maybe a distro switch?

[Brian Wood]

On Wednesday 17 June 2009 11:40:35 mythtv at blandford.net wrote:
> On 06/17/2009 10:27 AM, Johnny wrote:
> >> Just an FYI, 3GB of RAM isn't a limitation of a 32bit OS, I'm running
> >> Mandriva 2008.1 32bit with 8GB.
> >> Doug
> >
> > Just FYI, 4 GB of RAM *is* a limitation of a 32bit OS. With a 32 word
> > size you can only address 2^32 = 4 billion memory addresses. That is
> > further limited by some of the address space being reserved for
> > hardware addressing, etc. So you can put 8 GB in a 32 bit machine but
> > you won't be able to use it.
>
> Here is a document describing how the OS can address more than 4GB on a
> 32 bit box.
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Does a Myth system really need 4GB or more of RAM? How would it benefit? Is 
the code optimized to take advantage of it?

-- 
Brian Wood
beww at beww.org