Firefox 64 bit

[irneb]

Apparently FF is planning a 64 bit version ... slated for its November release of FF4: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06...ightly_builds/

Anyone using IE / Safari 64 yet? Any good performance from them? Or even the hinted at Google 64?

[AndyD]

Do you think a 64-bit browser will be any faster if the speed limiting factor is the internet connection?

I've only ever use FF and opera as x86 applications. Even on my 64-bit machines I just run the 32 bit versions.

[irneb]

No the 64 bit shouldn't have any influence on downloading the actual data. What may be affected is stuff like the performance of flash / javascripting / java applets / video / scrolling or switching tabs with lots of graphics (once they've downloaded of course). And of course once SVG (or similar) starts prevailing through the internet that's also going to use some extra CPU time: rendering the vector data to pixels on the screen.

And, just maybe ... hopefully ... ... robustness could be affected in a positive way ... well it's a hope anyway! Not that FF3 isn't very robust compared to IE ... I have found it to crash easily in Ubuntu (especially if there's video on the page), the windows version seems extremely robust already.

[twinscythe12332]

wouldn't the 64bit system just be addressing compatibility? if firefox only has 32 bit and that runs on a 64bit operating system, it isn't going to perform like the rest of the 64bit system or may clash.

[AndyD]

No the 64 bit shouldn't have any influence on downloading the actual data. What may be affected is stuff like the performance of flash / javascripting / java applets / video / scrolling or switching tabs with lots of graphics (once they've downloaded of course). And of course once SVG (or similar) starts prevailing through the internet that's also going to use some extra CPU time: rendering the vector data to pixels on the screen.

Most of the rendering is handled by the GPU although depending on the hardware set up, the CPU can play a substantial role. I doubt there would be any meaningful speed difference between 32 and 64 bit processing.

And, just maybe ... hopefully ... ... robustness could be affected in a positive way ... well it's a hope anyway! Not that FF3 isn't very robust compared to IE ... I have found it to crash easily in Ubuntu (especially if there's video on the page), the windows version seems extremely robust already.

FF3 was missing a couple of my widely used features such as right click/image properties. I don't know what the developers were thinking when they left this out of the new version. I've always found Opera to be more robust especially with in-page active script handling and execution. FF usually crashes a couple of times a week for me but I'm not an average user.

wouldn't the 64bit system just be addressing compatibility? if firefox only has 32 bit and that runs on a 64bit operating system, it isn't going to perform like the rest of the 64bit system or may clash.

32 bit FF runs equally well on a 64 bit platform in compatibility mode on one of my machines, it hasn't been any less reliable than when it's on a 32 bit platform.

[Chrisjan B]

There is a 64-bit Firefox version available,it works well but the problem is that there is no 64-bit Adobe Flash plug in available for Windows and won't be for the foreseeable future it seems, check the story on Adobe's website. This means that you cannot use sites like youtube otherwise it works well.

Firefox 64-bit can be downloaded from this URL http://wiki.mozilla-x86-64.com/Firefoxownload
Adobe did make a 64-bit flash available for Linux.

Don't know where the smiley comes from but the link works...

[Dave A]

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