Difference between 32bit and 64bit skyrim?

[Sir. Fatty McGee]

I am kind of a tech noob, and I see everyone getting all hyped about the game being 64bit, I mean I know the difference between the bits on a COMPUTER, but not skyrim. What difference does it make?

[The Fabulous Slayer]

Damn, beat me to it. I asked the same question right now. From what I was able to find on the Internet, 64 bit games simply able to utilize more than 3.5 gigs of RAM, so just like the 64 bit OS, but I am not sure this is true, there has to be more to it.

[Oz Gaming]

That's it. 64 bit games are able to use all the ram installed in a computer to make them run better. 32 bit games and operating systems can only use 4GB no matter how much ram is installed

[Jamison]

http://arstechnica.com/features/2008/09/x86-64/

[battlecatt_]

ENB does this anyway
"ExpandSystemMemoryX64=true <--- If you have 32 bit Windows, set it to "false"."

[The Fabulous Slayer]

Originally posted by Jamison:

http://arstechnica.com/features/2008/09/x86-64/

Holy crap, thanks for the article!

[Karvik]

Originally posted by battlecatt_:

ENB does this anyway
"ExpandSystemMemoryX64=true <--- If you have 32 bit Windows, set it to "false"."

I don't think that's how it really works.

[The_Driver]

Originally posted by Wichmann:

32 bit games and operating systems can only use 4GB no matter how much ram is installed

That's not entirely correct.

PAE allows the operating system to access and use more than 4 GB of physical memory.
[...]
AWE is a set of APIs that allows a process to allocate nonpaged physical memory and then dynamically map portions of this memory into the virtual address space of the process.
[...]
AWE does not require PAE or 4GT but is often used together with PAE to allocate more than 4 GB of physical memory from a single 32-bit process.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366796(v=vs.85).aspx

See also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_Windowing_Extensions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension (check the Linux-anchor in there, by default PAE for 32bit OS there)

But AWE is a bit clunky (as you'll be mapping stuff in and out of your vas a bit to make maximum use) and it's easier to just go 64bit instead.

[June5TH]

64 bit allows much larger numbers to be generated that is needed to access large memory adresses. 32 bit gives numbers up in the 100's of billions, 64 bit gives numbers up in the quintillion range. those kind of numbers could access memory in the billions of gigabytes.

what they did not say is whether or not they are doing the other amazing thing that can only be done with 64 bit, and that is double precision floating point calculations and 64 bit positioning. this tech would enable game worlds millions of kilometers in size, limited only by how much memory you want to use.

[The Fabulous Slayer]

Originally posted by Pisoár:

So if I have 4GB RAM, then I don't need to care about the game being 32 bit?

64 bit game will still run if you have 4GB, special edition is more stable. Other than that - yeah.