Should I use Python 32bit or Python 64bit

python 32bit-64bit
Jonathan picture Jonathan · Jun 25, 2010 · Viewed 173.9k times · Source

I have a win7 64bit installation. Must I use Python 64bit? What are the differences between the 32bit and 64bit Python versions anyway? Do different Python packages (such as south, django, mysqldb etc) support only 32bit/64bit?

Answer

John La Rooy picture John La Rooy · Jun 25, 2010

64 bit version will allow a single process to use more RAM than 32 bit, however you may find that the memory footprint doubles depending on what you are storing in RAM (Integers in particular).

For example if your app requires > 2GB of RAM, so you switch from 32bit to 64bit you may find that your app is now requiring > 4GB of RAM.

Check whether all of your 3rd party modules are available in 64 bit, otherwise it may be easier to stick to 32bit in the meantime

Related questions

How do I force Python to be 32-bit on Snow Leopard and other 32-bit/64-bit questions

When I run the following from a bash shell on my Mac: $ file /usr/bin/python I get the following three lines: /usr/bin/python (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64 /usr/bin/python (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable …

Read More
How to check if the installed Anaconda is 32-bit or 64-bit?

A few weeks ago, to dabble in IPython notebooks, I had downloaded and installed Anaconda from http://continuum.io/downloads. There was a problem in the installation (either because it was 32-bit or 64-bit — a detail I can't remember) which …

Read More
Which command to use for checking whether python is 64bit or 32bit

I am not able to find any command to check if my python is compiled for 32bit system or 64bit system. I tried python and it only tells the version Also when I go to python download site they have …

Read More