Are 64-bit applications better than 32-bit applications on a 64-bit system?

The main advantage from using a 64 bit application on a 64 bit OS is that you have full access to all the memory available on the system. With 64 bit memory addresses the application can access more of these snes emulators memory than its 32 bit equivalent.

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Originally Posted by Arjay

You're right the book referrals are in a different user's post. The post is http://forums.codeguru.com/showthrea...n-the-Mainform

The books are from Charles Petzold and Jeffrey Richter. They cover the fundementals of Windows programming.

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Both good recommendations!

On the surface, it might seem like running 32-bit apps in a 64-bit environment is bad—or less than ideal, anyway. After all, 32-bit apps aren’t taking full advantage of the 64-bit architecture. And it’s true. When possible, running a 64-bit version of the app provides additional security features to apps that are likely to come under attack. And 64-bit apps can access much more memory directly than the 4 GB that 32-bit apps can access.

Still, these are differences that you’re just not likely to notice running regular apps in the real world. For example, you’re not going to suffer any kind of performance penalty by running 32-bit apps. In a 64-bit version of Windows, 32-bit apps run under something named the Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit (WoW64) compatibility layer—a full subsystem that handles running 32-bit apps. Your 32-bit Windows programs will run about the same as they would on a 32-bit version of Windows (and in some cases, even better), so there’s no downside to running these programs on a 64- bit OS.

Legacy 32-bit applications will run on 64-bit OS's for the time being, but there will come a time when they are no longer supported.

Given that, I believe it's good practice to start developing new apps using the latest prevaling platform (e.g. 64-bit). It's also good practice, imo, to keep the dev tools up to date. It's much easier to keep up with incremental changes than trying to update a code base that's 20 years old to current.