Should I use Eclipse 32bits or 64bits on my new machine?

Question

This might be a dumb/naive question, and if it is please excuse me :)

I have a brand new machine with the following specs:

• Inter Core i7 2600@3.4GHz

Answer 1

Well the only thing that will improve is that you are able to use the advantages of 64bit. Other then that I'm not aware of any improvement.

For example what's better in 64bit is that if you have a very large project set you would be able to handle it more comfortably. For more information on 64-bit please look here

If you want to be on the edge of technology your choice would of course be the 64bit setup.

About the ram, this is expected because some of the Datatyps now use 64bit and are therefore larger to store in memory.

For most plugins you will get a 64bit version or alternative and so far for what I've used it it always worked.

Answer 2

In general I use 64-bit Eclipse without problem, but there can be issues around plug-ins such as:

• Adobe Flash Builder only works with 32-bit
• The Subversion plug-in Subclipse needs a native 64-bit version of Subversion installed separately

There may be more but those are the ones I've encountered in the past.

Moving to 64-bit gives you access to more addressable memory but it won't speed anything up, in fact it might reduce performance in some cases (but nothing I see as significant to what I do).