The point in my postings was that CPU intensive applications will benefit from the upgrade to a 64-bit OS not the upgrade in system RAM.
If you don’t have one already, an SSD for your main boot drive would almost certainly be a much more effective upgrade.
With all else equal, the 64-bit OS is likely to be slower than the 32-bit OS.
not if the applications aren’t 64-bit also. a 32-bit program running on a 64-bit OS/CPU will run the same as if it was running on a 32-bit OS/CPU.
I don’t know if there are two different variations but I thought that Photoshop, for example, was written to specifically take advantage of 64-bit OS’s. Not sure if I am confusing 32/64 bit OS’s with the data paths (32/64/128).
it is, if you use the 64-bit version of Photoshop.
not much to confuse, really. if you have a 64-bit CPU, then you need a 64-bit OS to take advantage of that.