64 Bit Python Geoprocess Speed vs 32 Bit Python Geoprocess Speed

[MichaelVolz]

I ran a python script with both the 64 bit python.exe and 32 bit python.exe.  I was expecting the 64 bit python.exe to be faster (not sure how much faster it should be), but it was actually slower.

Does this make any sense?

Are there any settings that need to be looked at to fix this, if this is not expected behavior?

Thank you.

[Anonymous User]

I am curious about this as well...Sometimes when I run a script on x64 it is lightning fast, then other times it seems as slow or slower than 32 bit.  I usually do not have any other processes running at the same time either.  Seems to be hit or miss on my machine (and it is a new computer).

[ChrisFox3 · Accepted solution]

The advantage of 64 bit processing over 32 bit processing is generally not speed. The only times you would really see a speed improvement is if you are seeing a large number of hard faults by the process or in other words the process is exceeding the amount of RAM available and is forced to read/write to disk. More likely the advantage you will find is the ability of a process to complete succesfully where in the past it may have failed with an out of memory error, this really only applies to memory intensive operations. Slight differences in speed of the process may be better attributed to differences in other processes running at the same time requiring time from the CPU and Disk.