Should I use 32-bit or 64-bit JDK?

Question

Years ago, I tried 64-bit JDK but it was really buggy.

How stable would you say it is now? Would you recommend it? Should I install 64-bit JDK + eclipse or stick to 32-bit? Also, are there any advantages of 64-bit over 32-bit other than bypassing the 4 GB memory limit?

Answer 1

Only begin to bother with that if you want to build an application that will use a lot of memory (namely, a heap larger than 2GB).

Allow me to quote Red Hat:

The real advantage of the 64-bit JVM is that heap sizes much larger than 2GB can be used. Large page memory with the 64-bit JVM give further optimizations. The following graph shows the results running from 4GB heap sizes, in two gigabyte increments, up to 20GB heap.

That, in a pretty graph:

See, no big difference.

^{See more (more graphs, yay!) in: Java Virtual Machine Tuning}