Quote Originally Posted by Hawk666 View Post
I know this is probably a silly question and I think I already know the answer but I just wanted to check with the community to see if my assumptions are correct or not. I have always been under the impression that it is pointless to run a 64bit OS with a 32bit CPU and vise versa. So, my question is, is this true, I am running an old P4 (32bit obviously) on my "server" it's really just a hobby server, a testing ground for things I wanna mess around with and teach myself, and I want to know if there is any benefit to running Ubuntu server 64bit over 32bit.
I have a laptop with a 3Ghz P4 that is 64-Bit capable. If you're not sure, just burn an Ubuntu x64 ISO and try and boot off of it - if it works, it's a 64-Bit savvy CPU.

One of my favorite things about 64-Bit is that the network counters (that show when you run 'ifconfig') don't overflow - in 32-Bit, they roll over after 4 GB.