[general_re]

Yeah, but they're full of it. The only way it's faster is if your software needs to shove large ints/floats around, in which case the compiler no longer have to dumb it down. Most software that you're likely to use isn't like that. You're not going to see a boost in Office performance, for example, unless you're doing some fairly wacky stuff in Excel. The main benefit most people will see will come from the larger addressable memory space.

[ClearCase_guy]

Games. Games drive much of the PC industry.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

True. But what you will see are larger executable images and (possibly) longer program initialization.