64 bit processors for PCs

[santosh2natal]

What are the 16 bit, 32 bit, 64 bit processors.
How do they affect the speed, processing, etc. of the PC, Operating System and Applications on it.

 

[pmonett]

You are new to computing I wager.

16-bit CPUs were the x286 and 386SX from Intel.
32-bit CPUs are all versions since the 386. The original 386 was much faster than the 286, and it was only clocked at 16Mhz to begin with. Performance of these chips have exploded since 1985, todays powerhouses have nothing to do with their ancestors. Touching the 4Ghz realm, modern CPUs have in excess of 40 million transistors, whereas the lowly 386 had "only" 275 thousand.
It is obvious that the more powerful a CPU is, the better a complexe series of calculations can be made. But CPU speed and power is not the only measure of overall performance. Memory bandwidth and hard disk speeds are also critical to supporting the power of the CPU, and a specialized graphics card is required for games and complexe graphical environments.
The only 64-bit CPU on the horizon is the Opteron from AMD, although Intel is desperately trying to market the Itanium (dubbed Itanic), which is also a 64-bit CPU.

Check out these sites for extensive info :

http://www.tomshardware.com

http://www.anandtech.com

http://www.arstechnica.com

Pascal.