32-Bit VS 64-Bit

Now a days most of Desktop computers have capability to do 64-Bit processing. As 64-Bit computers and operating systems are around for a while but most of home users still use 32-bit OS on their 64-bit machines. The reason for this can be less availability of 64-bit drivers for old hardware, and most of current 64-bit softwares does not give enough performance boost over their 32-bit versions.

Back in january 2006, I got got my first 64-bit system. In order to check how much current 64-bit application gives performance boost over 32 bit-applications I have done a lot of benchmarking on my system. As I’ve both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Matlab for both Windows and linux so I choosed it to benchmark my system for both 32-bit & 64-bit Windows & Linux.

Test System Configuration

AMD Athlon64 3200+ (Winchester)
MSI K8N NEO4 Platinum
Nvidia Geforce 7600GS 256MB
1 GB Corsair Value Ram (2.5-3-3-8)
WD 250GB SATA II 16MB Buffer
Sony DRU-830A Dvd Burner

About Matlab Benchmark

LU LAPACK. Floating point, regular memory access.
FFT Fast Fourier Transform. Floating point, irregular memory access.
ODE Ordinary diff. eqn. Data structures and M-files.
Sparse Solve sparse system. Mixed integer and floating point.
2-D plot(fft(eye)). 2-D line drawing graphics.
3-D MathWorks logo. 3-D animated OpenGL graphics.

Comparison Table
Operating System	Mode	LU	FFT	ODE	Sparse	2-D	3-D
Win Xp 32-Bit	32-Bit	0.4323	0.3576	0.2029	0.5625	0.3697	0.5733
Win Xp 64-Bit	32-Bit	0.4385	0.3987	0.2079	0.5890	0.3673	0.5688
Win Xp 64-Bit	64-Bit	0.3314	0.2546	0.2637	0.6226	0.4429	0.5717
Fedora 6 64-Bit	64-Bit	0.2847	0.2087	0.1913	0.5279	0.4132	0.6941
Ubuntu 7.04 64-Bit	64-Bit	0.2802	0.2032	0.1944	0.5205	0.3974	0.7440