Translations:AMD64/FAQ/17/en

That is a difficult question to answer. In some cases, there may be a performance improvement, in other cases 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 be of interest. There's also a nice thread, Article: 64-bit performance in Gentoo Linux in the forums.