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Note that this doesn't enable you to run 64-bit applications, or for any single process to address more than 4GB of memory.

As a result, it's of extremely limited utility today - you'd need a 32-bit application that needs to run on bare hardware (ie, not a 32-bit OS running under a 64-bit VM), and needs a ton of memory, or a pre-64-bit system with > 4GB of memory, which would be both rare and inefficient, as that would be single core/socket systems that are at least 6 years old at this point.

I guess if you had some system you were trying to keep alive that needed a lot of RAM, PCI-X card slots, and 32-bit software it might be handy, but that seems very rare/esoteric at this point.




A relevant stackoverflow thread for the same,which addresses some common misconceptions

http://superuser.com/questions/367490/can-a-32-bit-os-machin...


Yes, but it's still a kludge

Yes, some programs can have more memory in 32-bit (example: Photoshop) but, as it says there, you have to keep swapping them

So, people, move to 64-bit already, unless you absolutely cannot


I think the only typical real world example of a "pre-64-bit system with > 4GB of memory" that have the NX bit required for Win8 is the Xeon Sossaman.




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