What is the Difference between a 32-Bit Operating System And a 64-Bit?

32-Bit VS 64-Bit

L. Small
4 min readSep 4, 2020

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Photo by david latorre romero on Unsplash

When choosing a version of the windows operating system, maybe we think about the windows such as the pros, home, and others. But in fact, there are other factors separating the windows version whether the system is 32-Bit or 64-Bit. Many of you may have heard the term, but don’t really understand it. For that, let’s discuss the difference between 32-Bit and 64-Bit?

What Makes a 32-Bit Or 64-Bit Computer

Whether your computer architecture is 32-bit or 64-bit depends on the processor (CPU) on your computer. Most computer processors come in one of these two categories, but 64-bit systems have replaced 32-bit over the past few years. 64-bit processors have more powerful functionality than 32-bit processors because they can hold and process more information.

To understand the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit, you have to understand a little about calculations in binary form. We must know that binary-only has two numbers that are 0 or 1. Thus, the 32-bit number has 2³² possible addresses, or 4,294,967,296. By contrast, the capacity of the 64-bit number is 2⁶⁴, or 18,446,744,073,709,551,616. Comparing approximately 4 billion bytes (about 4 gigabytes) to 18 quintillion bytes or about 18 billion gigabytes or 16 exabytes shows a very large difference between the two.

History of the Emergence of 64-Bit Systems

In 2002, Linux and Microsoft released the first commercial 64-bit operating system. The Linux release of Red Hat 7.1 and Microsoft introduced Windows XP 64-Bit Edition. It was first used by server administrators and for users with high-end software, such as rendering applications. For greater data storage, such as 4.7GB DVDs, it needs to be accessed more efficiently. But in 2006, all Windows operating systems were still written using a 32-bit architecture. Along with advances in computer hardware, the technology requires faster and more efficient data handling capabilities. Finally, in 2016, the 64-Bit version became standard for the entire operating system.

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L. Small

"One arrow alone can be easily broken but many arrows are indestructible" ~Genghis Khan~