Re: As has been mentioned many times before on this board,
the issue is address space. Memory helps in performance
but you can't get to square one without the address
space. I think that I've seen one Pentium 4 notebook
that does have more than 2 GB of memory available in my
search for high-end notebooks. So it can be done but it
doesn't seem popular right now.
Given the miniscule percentage of the market that upgrades hardware, I'd have to say the lack of large memory options in configurable PCs today points to a lack of demand, and that pretty much renders the 64-bit option irrelevant for consumer PCs for the time being. Even if someone were to buy a 64-bit PC today, they couldn't get the memory to future proof it in the way you are arguing that a 64-bit CPU can future proof it.
My argument is to go the dual core route, because at least then you have applications and an OS that already supports it, with more to come in the future without needing expensive hardware upgrades.
Re: A cheaper solution would be to buy a USB device that
connects to a RamDisk
I shutter at the thought of memory bandwidth being limited by an I/O pipe the width of USB. USB can only sustain about 40MB/s of bandwidth, and you want to use it as a 64-bit memory expansion? Ugh.
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