Stefan Viljoen  wrote in message <44cc7a88@news.povray.org>:
> Would have been nice if it rendered twice as fast, though... but what is the
> real spead increase factor (if any?) on a benchmark scene?

It is not a benchmark, but it is possible to make some estimate:

- 64-bit processors break compatibility with 32-bit processors, that enables
  them to forget some bad conception problems of their ancestors, and thus
  to run somewhat faster globally.

- Povray uses mostly floating-point arithmetic, to which the 64-bit quality
  of the processor does not change anything. For arbitrary precision integer
  arithmetics, like in asymmetric cryptography, on the other hand, it
  changes a lot.

- 64-bit processor means bigger pointers, and therefore slower operations
  when storing and fetching pointers to/from memory. Thus, operations on
  complex data structures will be slower than they would have been on an
  equivalent 32-bit processor.

All this, of course, applies in the common working domain of 32- and 64-bit
processors. 64-bit processors allow to handle much more memory at once, thus
allowing them either to work with subjects that a 32-bit processor just
could not handle, or to do it in a much simpler -- and therefore faster --
way.

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