Translations:AMD64/FAQ/17/en

That is a difficult question to answer. In some cases, you will experience a performance improvement, in other cases you will not. For everyday use, there is almost no difference between 64-bit and 32-bit. 64-bit is generally faster when it comes to floating point computing, which is normally the case in multimedia applications and 3D rendering. Linux.com's articles "64-bit performance in Gentoo Linux" and "64-bit Linux and BSD are maturing steadily" may interest you. There's also a nice thread, "Article: 64-bit performance in Gentoo Linux" in our forums.