The 64 bit version takes only 14 KB more = 400 KB! There is no doubling here.
The 32 bit version of the DLL takes 386 KB on disk.
Do you know that an int (integer) in the 64 bit environment is still only 32 bits wide? Pointers and sizes of things in memory (e.g., size_t) have been increased to 64 bits to accomodate a hugely expanded address space.
Given that the 圆4 instruction set is in some ways more efficient, executable code often takes almost the SAME amount of space. This is simply NOT true! It's a TREMENDOUSLY oversimplified thing to tell people! 64 bit windows often uses nearly the same amount of memory as the 32 bit version for many things, though pointers to things must be 8 bytes instead of 4, and in general the operating system is optimized to do bigger things without worrying about memory address limitations. Some of you are giving people the impression that the 64 bit version of the operating system chews up twice as much memory to do the same things as the 32 bit version simply because everything takes twice as many bits. As I belive even the formatting type during the installation is different than 32bit version and not to be ignored that there are architectures 圆4 and x86 which obivously increases the RAM requirements if not installed on a platform designed for, randomly if the processor "is not available" RAM sometime can be an alternative for OS requirements of an optimised environment and smoothly run and not at last "to MAKE the DIFFERENCE" even if that means.DOUBLING.
Any other version of 64 bit OS didn't and won't change much "the addressed to.mainly" purposes were or will be designed for.But as there is a free market. Noel Hi, Like most comp users probably know Windows Xp Profesional Edition 64bit was the first version of a 64 bit OS and was meant as a replacement for Windows 2000 Professional-mostly used in businesses purposes only. This is speculation, but I'm betting the 2 GB minimum was a Marketing decision within Microsoft as much as an Engineering one. The short answer to the original poster's question is that the 圆4 operating system is targeted and optimized to support BIG operations - e.g., on computers with BIG memory in excess of 4 GB, and has thus been given a larger minimum RAM requirement.