| I decided to mention some possible scenarios where a 64-bit application can be faster. If a developer takes advantage of the extra registers, there is room for improvement in performance. The use of more registers allow you to do more at once without having to waste cycles on reusing the same registers over and over. You can store data to be called later without having to store it in memory and call back upon it later. This all applies to the highly optimized compiler mentioned above. If the compiler you're using can take advantage of all of this, then it could perform better. One thing to keep in mind is that if you don't write in assembly yourself, or writing your own libraries, you are calling upon all the libraries that are part of Windows. Chances are these libraries are not optimized at all; They are more than likely just recompiles of the 32-bit versions.
Examples of 64-bit performance are out there. In all game benchmarks that are 64-bit, they are slower than their 32-bit counterpart. You will, however, notice that high-end business software will often perform faster, albeit minimally.
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