Hi,
I bought a new 64 bit intel i7 processor machine and want to install ubuntu on it. I didn't find a intel specific 64 edition but I googled to find out the amd64 version works just fine. But I also saw discussions about how it is not recommended to install a 64 bit edition as the available binary codes for standard softwares are limited. I have also seen that a 32 bit installation would work just fine on 64 bit machine. is that true? Then why would they even release a 64 bit edition? does it really double my machine's performance?

Thanks

a) Yes, amd64 is the correct version for an Intel i7
b) 64-bit software support is much much better these days. There are still a few 32-bit only programs, but that's rare these days.
c) Yes, a 32-bit distro will work on your CPU
d) A 64-bit distro is needed to support large mounts of RAM - More than 4GB without tricks like PAE.
e) No, your performance will not double. It WILL be a little faster, due to the extra registers available and the extra math hardware that is default. But it will use a little more RAM.

IMO if you have more than 3.5GB RAM you should go 64-bit.

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You're lucky. Some distributions have ia64 editions, and some people waste a lot of time discovering ia64 software doesn't work at all on the common 64 bit Intel CPUs (IA64 is for a line of Intel 64 bit CPUs that is less common in business use and almost non existent in home use).

Right.

Almost all software available for 32 bit x86 is also available for amd64.

True. IA32 architecture (more commonly known by various x86 names, such i686) will work fine on any amd64 compatible CPU.

Some commercial systems need more than 16GB of physical ram. 32-bit x86 can support up to 64GB, but very badly and should not be used for over 16GB.

Some programs (again more common in business than home) need over 3GB virtual memory per process, which is not possible with 32 bit.

Some programs run significantly faster in 64bit mode.

Not even close. You could easily write a program that would run twice as fast in 64bit mode as in 32bit, if that (rather than some real function) were your goal. But you would have a very hard time finding any program written with some other goal that runs twice as fast in 64 bit mode.

I think (but not based on solid testing) that most programs run a tiny bit slower in 64bit mode than in 32bit mode. But that may depend on the size of the L1 and L2 caches. As caches get bigger on newer CPUs the reasons for 64bit programs running slower tends to vanish.

I think (but not based on solid testing) that some programs run moderately faster in 64bit mode than in 32bit and that is enough to make the average faster for 64 bit even if more programs are a tiny bit slower in 64bit.

IMO, if you are doing a fresh install of Linux anyway, select 64bit unless you are severely short of either disk space or ram (severely short of ram is probably about 256MB). But if you already have 32bit Linux in use with lots of options and settings established, leave it 32 bit until you have a better reason to do a fresh install.

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Thanks AlucardZero and johnsfine. That solves my question. I will go ahead and install amd64 bit. Its a new system so I dont have any already installed linux.besides the RAM is 8GB so 64bit version seems wiser.