Achieving performance increases using 64bit technology relies on suitable 64bit programs being available. At the moment there aren’t many programs around, but there are a few. System analysis utility Sisoftware Sandra Professional 2005 SP2 already supports 64bit Windows and is useful for judging any performance increases. Under 32bit Windows, our AMD test computer achieved 22,474 iterations per second with the Sandra’s CPU multimedia benchmark. This increased by 12.5 per cent to 25,260 iterations/sec using 64bit Windows. A doubling of performance is not on the cards, but the new architecture shows clear potential for some performance gains.

We found the increase in performance was greater with Intel CPUs, where additional features of the new Windows version come into play. For example, the operating system is based on theWindows 2003 kernel which makes better use of the Intel CPU’s Hyperthreading technology. The processor’s performance in Sandra’s floating point test also increased by a satisfying 57 per cent from 36,326 to 57,064 iterations/sec. However, the results from the benchmark test must be treated with caution.

Performance with real 32- and 64bit applications is what really counts – and this could produce an entirely different picture. When copying large files the performance advantage of 64bit becomes apparent.We copied a 1GB compressed video file from one hard disk partition to another. On the 32bit AMD computer this took 141 seconds, but on the 64bit AMD machine it fell by 46 per cent to 76 seconds. On the Intel PCs, there was a similar 45 per cent reduction in time.