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From: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" 
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Subject: Re: Running XP on a 64bit processor computer
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2017 02:27:02 +0000
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In message , MikeS  writes:
>On 20/11/2017 21:59, james{at}nospam.com wrote:
>> I have a computer which originally came witt Vista. It's a 64bit
>> machine. I got it with XP Pro SP3 installed. I know that XP is 32bit.
>> I'm a little puzzled about this. Can XP (or any 32bit OS) run on a
>> computer that has a 64bit processor?
>>  (I know you cant do it the other way. You cant run a 64 bit OS on a 
>>32
>> bit machine).
>>  Does running a 32 bit OS on a 64bit machine work any better or worse
>> than it does using an actual 32 bit computer?
>>
>Yes provided you mean an x64 bit processor which is an extension of the 
>32 bit architecture.
>The advantage of using a 64 bit OS version (such as the final version 
>of  Win XP - Pro 64 bit) was mainly a larger address space allowing > 4 
>GB RAM.
>
You didn't answer the last part of James's question - "Does running a 32 
bit OS on a 64bit machine work any better or worse than it does using an 
actual 32 bit computer?"

(FWIW, I suspect it'll run about the same, other than that the 64bit 
machine is probably faster and may have more cores - but those are not 
specific to it's 64bitness. There _may_ be a few cases where the 
firmware in the processor makes a few operations work better, but if 
any, I suspect this is an insignificant proportion of the time.)
-- 
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar{at}T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

All's well that ends.
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