[Wine] 64-bit OS, WINE and Memory (size) related question.

[Gert van den Berg]

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 20:23, imatechguy <wineforum-user at winehq.org> wrote:
> Having avoided them for some time now, based on compatibility concerns as I began to learn and use Linux full time, I’ve recently gotten the urge to start playing around with some 64-bit distro’s.  The benefit of course is running more than the 4Gb (system-wide) limit imposed by a 32-bit OS.

Actually, 32-bit operating systems can use up to 64GB of RAM on CPU's
with PAE (Any CPU newer than a Pentium Pro basically). A single
applicataion can only see 4GB at a time though. Linux and certain
32-bit Windows Server versions support PAE.

The main benefit of 64-bit mode on the CPUs are 64-bit registers and a
large amount of new registers. For quite a few algorithms, this might
significantly decrease the amount of meemory access that is needed,
which may speed it up a bit. (Whether this is relevant, depends a lot
on the application, and it is only applicable for 64-bit applications)

The 64-bit compatibility under Linux is a lot better under Linux than
windows, probably because Linux is quite widely used on several older
64-bit architectures (Aplha, PowerPC 64, SPARC V6, IA-64, etc) and
portability of code were  taken into account a lot more. Having the
source code helps as well. The lack of consideration to compatibility
issues (by driver devolopers) also caused windows XP to stop
supporting using the full 4GB of RAM using PAE. See here for details:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888137

>  In my current system I only have 2Gb (2x1Gb) of RAM so I’m thinking of either adding 4Gb (2x2Gb) or even upgrading to 8Gb (4x2Gb).  My dilemma is that the apps I use WINE for (Games) are all 32-bit, which leaves me to wonder how effectively used the extra memory will be utilized, by both the OS and WINE.  Something else that gives me pause is that in searching for an existing answer I saw quite a few posts/threads related to WINE and how it reserves memory/virtual memory regardless.  I would appreciate any insight, links to benchmarking data, etc. available.
>
Each application (possibly rather wineserver for Wine applications)
instance should be able to use its own ~4GB on a 64-bit OS. (Wine uses
one wineserver per WINEPREFIX IIRC.)

Gert