If you have bought a computer in recent years is more than likely to run a 64-bit Windows . Microsoft continues to produce 32-bit copies of Windows 10, although they are sold and deployed in a much smaller number than 64.

Microsoft has not published statistics on how the distribution is distributed between 32-bit and 64-bit systems, but if you look at the latest Steam on hardware survey you can see that the 64-bit is the predominant architecture right now.

This is something we can expect, especially given that the newer AAA titles require a large amount of RAM. Still, according to the Steam survey, 64-bit is the platform preferred by users with 48.37% of the total for Windows 10 of that architecture.

Things are different in the field of software . A lot of applications are only available in 32-bit versions, or that is either prioritizing the 32 above the 64. This is the case of the Firefox browser, for example. Mozilla continues to release new versions of its browser for x86 architectures, although it is slowly moving to the x86_64.

Microsoft has already taken some steps to eliminate some 32-bit system , as already happened with Windows Server 2008 for x86 architectures.

How to find out if a program is 64-bit

Although there are many differences between programs written for x86 and those developed for x86_64, the most important thing is that 64-bit Windows programs consume more RAM. Apart from this, the programs created for this architecture use more RAM, usually offer more security benefits and tend to weigh more on the hard disk.

Having said that, it can be said that there are many ways to determine if a program is 32 or 64 bits. The easiest way to do this is to use the Task Manager.

To open it we will use the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-Esc. What we will do next is to add a dedicated column to the Task Manager that will allow us to see at a glance whether a process is 32 or 64 bits.

First, we must display the details of the processes that the system has open. Otherwise, what we get will be a window that is not functional, which gives us very fair information that we can not work with.

The process tab does not provide information – for now – as to whether a program is 32 or 64 bits, so we switch to the Details tab. Right click on the title bar of each column and click the Select columns option. There we look for the column Platform and we selected it. Press OK to save the changes.

Once we have done so, the Task Manager will already show us the processes informing us about their architecture.

As you see it is a process that is not difficult . It is very easy to carry out and with a few clicks we can have some more information about what kind of programs we have installed on our PC.