anandtech has indeed very fine articles on architectural matters. like ars technica used to  before it became a mass media puppet.

There are a lot of disadvantages with 64 bit (but of course it depends how much it matters to you)

-64 bit Win7 uses almost twice as much RAM

-64 bit uses more CPU processes and more CPU time

-64 bit version almost takes twice the Hard disc space

-64 bit version is slightly slower in many 32 bit apps (85% of my software)

-64 bit version is incompatible with many 32 bit software (10-20 % of my pprograms)

-64 bit version creates a separate directory for program files, adding to the mess

-64 bit version is less customizable in deep system settings, 32 bit is easier to slim down

etc...

Basically as of now, there is absolutely no benefit that I get from the 64 bit, but lots of costs! This gets a lot worse when your PC is older.

Most of that simply isn't true or blown out of proportion.

The reason why 64bit version may use up more drive space and memory is because the 64bit version can handle much larger operations, the pointer size got bigger, doubled in fact (Although the memory block that the pointer, points towards remains the same), so if you didn't change anything, then your managed heap is bigger, granted the memory overhead is also doubled that over 32bit too, 12 v 24 bytes.
However, that doesn't mean an application is automagically going to be using twice the Ram and taking up twice the drive space.

Plus you manipulate memory in QWORDS and not DWORDS, however memory allocation speed in 64bit is generally higher because of it, when used right 64bit will have a slightly higher memory overhead compared to 32bit, we are talking 15-30% tops, you need to keep in mind that 64bit systems also address multiples higher amounts of memory on average with 8gb being the sweet spot for gamers currently.

On the speed side of things, if you're running compute intensive code that can take advantage of the registers, you can see performance gains, 16 x 64 bit general purpose registers and 16 x SSE registers are available to you on a 64bit PC, instead of 8 x 32 bit general purpose registers and 8 x SSE registers on a 32bit one, that's a big difference that can be taken advantage of.

Here enjoy farcry, it's an interesting one because it's not going to be pushing the 2Gb barrier, so the gains seen aren't a result of the increase in memory allowance, it also didn't double in install size or require twice as much Ram either.

Well, do you notice that you understood my words the way you wanted to understand? Because I never talked about the application memory size or hard disc allocation size. I was merely talking about the WINDOWS itself. So it is a comparison of 64 BIT WINDOWS vs 32 BIT WINDOWS, not 32 bit apps vs 64 bit apps. All the points I have made are true and measured and felt and experienced personally by me, as I have 6 freaking laptops and desktops which run both 64 bit and 32 bit versions of Windows 7 (in addition to XP and Linux).

And yes, there is only 1 thing I didn't count or care on a PC. Gaming. I don't do PC Gaming. If I did, I'd definitely upgrade that specific PC to 64 bit, at least for the sake driver compatibility and the new generation of games that require Direct X 11, and 64 bit OS as well as 4 GB of RAM. 32 bit Windows can run 4 GB but the 32 bit apps cannot utilize it separately.

Other than the big budget PC Games or some rare and far between professional programs, there is almost no program out there that utilizes 64 bit or gains a speed advantage. On the contrary 32 bit is almost always faster. On the vanilla state, the differences are not huge but with the given tweaks that are mostly possible on 32 bit only, 32 bit becomes not only faster (in raw performance) but also MUCH snappier.

Let me give you an extreme example... I did slim down the Windows 7 32 bit to 4 GB, including the entire program files and Windows folder. I created a 4G Ram disk to go with this, and installed the Win7-32 bit on a virtual disk, which is located on the RAM Drive. Then I connected my regular main hard disc through the shared folders, where I put all my life but the system. That Virtual PC is faster than any PC I have ever encountered in my life. YOU CANNOT DO THIS with 64 bit Windows 7 because it will take much more space than 4 GB.

There are dozens of other reasons why 32 bit Windows 7 is better suited to me than a 64 bit one. But this is true for Windows. My argument is specific to Windows, because I can't say the same thing for most Linux distros. Linux Mint 64 bit, for example, is easily better than its 32 bit counterpart in almost every way.

Ars is fine.

The problem is that the PR the industry puts out no longer bears any resemblance to the true workings of the chip. It's all CUDA this, Fusion that and Hyperthreading the other. The amount of effort a journalist has to invest to do a real architecture breakdown and not a PR regurgitation is so much higher now. At the same time, tech features are no longer relevant to the consumer. All >$100 CPUs and GPUs are basically fast enough to serve all but the multi-monitor power user. Ars can invest better elsewhere.

What you say is true, the 32 bit version of windows 7 is a 16 gigs install whereas the 64 bit version of Windows 7 is 20 gigs.  IN terms of RAM, 32 bits need 1 gig and 64 bits needs 2 gigs.  I'm not sure, but I can understand the extra data needed.  You at least need more data to be both 32 and 64 bit application compatible.

Well. That was your own fault for using vague bullet points that is open to interpretation outside of your origional intention, thus the fault isn't mine, perhaps you could spend a little extra time so you could elaborate more on such things in the future?

Regardless, the amount of systems you have doesn't really hold weight in this discussion, but for amusement I do have a Core i7 3930K @ 4.8ghz, Quad Radeon 290's under water, 2x old OCZ 64Gb SSD in Raid 0 and 64Gb of Ram and three Dell 27" 1440P monitors.
I won't go into the other machines I have, but you can't really get that much faster than my main, unless you wish to pay for it which comes with orders of magnitude increases in cost.

Guess what? 32bit Windows would be next to useless for me, considering an application I might use might end up chewing through 10+ Gigabytes of Ram and I might run half a dozen at the same time, it might be fine for you or others who don't have such demanding needs or use a PC that was built when Dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Also some fun facts is if you have an SSD, the more Ram you have, the less Windows will use the pagefile thus decreasing the amount of reads/writes to the SSD, thus in turn prolonging an SSD's life, the biggest limiter to a PC is the hard drive. (Hence why you saw big gains with a Ram Drive.)
Not to mention the more responsive it makes a system as more data is cached in Ram, right now I have roughly 40Gb of data in cache, sitting in the Ram, systems with similar circumstances would benefit greatly from being 64bit and having a ton of Ram, of course that data is freed up when something desires it.

I also cleaned up my Windows 7 64bit install so it fits onto a 4Gb USB 3.0 flash drive and only kept the drivers I need for each specific system I have, the fully decompressed install is roughly 10Gb and installs in about 5 minuits. (You don't know what fast is.)

The best upgrade for any PC is an SSD, heck my grandmother even has one and all she does is use Microsoft word and plays Minecraft with the great grand kids.

Well, I actually enjoy this conversation and I'm glad that this doesn't turn into a heated pointless one. I highlighted all the points I want to mention and respond to.

- I take some of the blame for being a bit vauge but you should agree that this whole discussion is about Windows. I started the discussion for whether or not to upgrade to the 64 bit of Windows and even the bulet points start with 32 bit Windows 7... Anyway, who cares? I certainly don't care about "being right", .... but I do care about "finding out the right information", and you seem like a good source of such information, so let's move on...

- I can see how useless 32 bit may be to you, and I agree. But also keep in mind that this is a highly professional heavy user case that is a small minority except hardcore PC gamers who need to go 64 bit anyway. I'm a power user, since the heydays of Commodre 64 but I am a not professional tech geek (no disrespect intended), so my needs are different. So to me (and I believe the vast majority of users who are not hardcore PC gamers), 64 bit Windows is CURRENTLY unnecessary.

- All you said about pagefile is correct but I also found out that on Windows (not sure about Linux), when you disable the pagefile entirely, even though Windows uses no hard drive access, there is no performance delta. So enabling pagefile doesn't actually make your PC slower, it just enables you to keep more data on RAM than otherwise impossible. And of course, keeping this EXTRA data slows down your system due to hard drive. I am also aware of RAMDisk ever since the Amiga Times, and have always been a fan of it. It's great that we have so much RAM available to us so that even a Virtual Machine on my disposal is so much faster than any other regular PC out there!

- Again 40 GB cache file in RAM means you're a heavy professional PC user, which I am not. So your needs are vastly different than mine, and I do respect that. There is just NOT one ideal solution, depends on people and their idosyncratic needs.

- The problem with your 4GB 64 bit Windows 7 is that it requires 10 GB installation, which is huge. It's doable in 64 bit. In order to fit so much space on a RAM Disk, my system needs to have at least 24 GB of RAM. That's too much for a laptop to ask, and I only have one desktop, which I don't think supports this much RAM. I was talking about a 4 GB installation for the entire 32 bit Windows 7 (of course I disabled all pagefile, hibernation, unnecessary drivers, updates, languages etc). I also allocate 2 GB to it as actual RAM. So an 8 GB RAM system is sufficient for the task (8 GB is close to upperbound on laptops). 2 GB (Main System) + (2GB VM RAM) + 4 GB (Ramdisk).  It's highly useful to keep the system in 32 bit as 32 bit apps have smaller footprint in memory as well as Hard disc installation. This alone cannot be done in 64 bit. However, you can probably do the same thing with your 10 GB Windows 7 installation on an SSD. I'd put the Virtual Machine on an SSD and allocate lots of RAM to it.

- I certainly agree with the SSD upgrade as well.

So, overall I believe I agree with everything you said, just different NEEDS, different USES, different PERSPECTIVE, different APPROACH. :)

sooo....If I understand everything, does the x86-64 take much more RAM on a Windows 7 machine compared to an x64 machine? If this is true, wouldn't that also happen to the 2 consoles? It will need much more RAM anyways. I don't know what I'm saying, I've read everything and am trying to understand it.

Basically, yes and no.
The takeaway from it all is they don't need to use 64bit to use 8Gb of Ram on console, so they have a choice.

But, 64bit when used right does bring performance benefits on the PC, depending on what you're running and how much you're running and how much Ram you have and what optimisations are in place, basically there are allot of variables to consider.

Just wait and see what happens in the next year or two, hopefully developers speak out about it.