What is the difference between a 32-bit and 64-bit processor?

Posted by JJG on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by JJG
Published on 2010-12-29T09:27:27Z Indexed on 2010/12/29 9:54 UTC
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64bit

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Hardware

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32bit-64bit

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32bit

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processors

I have been trying to read up on 32-bit and 64-bit processors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/32-bit_processing). My understanding is that a 32-bit processor (like x86) has registers 32-bits wide. I'm not sure what that means. So it has special "memory spaces" that can store integer values up to 2^32?

I don't want to sound stupid, but I have no idea about processors. I'm assuming 64-bits is, in general, better than 32-bits. Although my computer now (one year old, Win 7, Intel Atom) has a 32-bit processor.

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