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What's funny is that this would probably be a non-issue for 99% of the computer using population had the video game market never promoted their consoles by labeling them "16-bit", "32-bit", etc.
People automatically assume that when you increase the memory address space, the system is instantly an order of magnitude more powerful. And that would be true when we were talking about 8-bit and 16-bit, less so with 16-bit vs. 32-bit, and almost irrelevant in 32-bit vs. 64-bit (at least at this stage in the game). When software starts needing to address more than 4GB of RAM at a time, it will be a different story.
People automatically assume that when you increase the memory address space, the system is instantly an order of magnitude more powerful. And that would be true when we were talking about 8-bit and 16-bit, less so with 16-bit vs. 32-bit, and almost irrelevant in 32-bit vs. 64-bit (at least at this stage in the game). When software starts needing to address more than 4GB of RAM at a time, it will be a different story.