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Old Jul 25, 2014 | 12:41 am
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nkedel
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Originally Posted by Loren Pechtel
Lower end machines with 3-4gb probably are 32-bit. You can't add more memory to them.
Old ones? Sure.
New ones? That's news to me.

I'm not aware of any non-ARM/non-Atom 32-bit machines still being sold today -- although there are probably still be a few Z27xx Atom-based systems out there in the channel. Even the current generation Atoms (z3000-series) are 64-bit... although they generally are limited to 4gb of memory for other reasons.) The only reason to even consider one of those is in a cheap, non-upgradeable tablet or hybrid.

(On the AMD side, even their POS Atom competitor the C50/C60 is 64-bit capable, although only a masochist would but a system running one...)

Nor are many (if any) of the machines still worth running from 2006 on 32-bit-only, and anything that were sold since the 965-chipset (aka Santa Rosa) came out in mid-2007 will take at least 8gb of memory.

Even the 2006-vintage systems I'd recommend as the lowest-end systems still worth running have 64-bit-capable processors -- although it doesn't help you get above 4gb of memory as the motherboard chipset (945) limits you to 4gb of which only 3.5gb is usable (so there's not much reason to use the 64-bit capability.)
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