64 bit and leopard, how does it work?

[idrisguitar]

basically i am going to buy a mac, but its dependant on its 64 bit support. im not sure how OS X works in terms of 64 bit software.

does it natively handle 32 and 64 bit programs without any hassle. (like ivsta have a certain 32 bit and 64 bit version) and are many if not most mac programs now running in 64 bit?

eg. im thinking of getting a powerful mac pro to use with maya. and i would pretty much need at least 4gb of ram to run the type of scenes i plan on. is maya 2008 64 bit in mac OS X? or is maya 2009?

and what other big programs run 64 in leopard? final cut studio? logic? i know about adobe cs4 not being supported which is disappointing, but 3.2 gb of ram is enough for me in those.


really hope you can advise me on this

 

[louishen]

Leopard can run both 64 and 32 bit apps, and the mac pro can allocate any 32 bit app a full 4 gig of memory

The next version of OSX, Snow Leopard will see the entire OS move over to 64 bit, for more info see here Road to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: 64-Bits — RoughlyDrafted Magazine

It looks like Maya on OS X is only 32 bit, but at least using Leopard it gets a full 4 gig of memory

 

[idrisguitar]

cheers

using 4gb of ram is pretty much good enough.

plus the macpro will be for the future anyway so once snow leopard comes out and all the apps update to 64 bit i should be in a perfect position.

thanks a lot.

 

[louishen]

Autodesk will have to create a 64 bit version of Maya, but Maya 32 bit will run fine under both Leopard and Snow Leopard