I have a win7 64bit installation. Must I use Python 64bit? What are the differences between the 32bit and 64bit Python versions anyway? Do different Python packages (such as south, django, mysqldb etc) support only 32bit\64bit?
+3
A:
You do not need to use 64bit since windows will emulate 32bit programs using wow64. But using the native version (64bit) will give you more performance.
codymanix
2010-06-25 11:44:44
+4
A:
64 bit version will allow a single process to use more RAM than 32 bit, however you may find that the memory footprint doubles depending on what you are storing in RAM (Integers in particular).
For example if your app requires > 2GB of RAM, so you switch from 32bit to 64bit you may find that your app is now requiring > 4GB of RAM.
Check whether all of your 3rd party modules are available in 64 bit, otherwise it may be easier to stick to 32bit in the meantime
gnibbler
2010-06-25 12:03:31
Afaik, there are no 64bit binaries for MysqlDB - that's the reason I stick with 32bit Python.
THC4k
2010-06-25 12:39:20
Do the 3rd party modules really need to explicitly support 64bit?
Jonathan
2010-06-26 14:38:12