By the way, most Intel Core Duos that I see are 32 bit CPUs
No they aren't. Intels last 32-bit processor was the Prescott 5xx. Everything else is EMT64/AMD64. The complexity of today´s applications benefits from parallelization, not from bigger registers.
The benefit of 64 bit (and larger) CPU architectures is that it makes VLIW processors plausible, improving parallelization and reducing the cost at the same time. Except on Windows probably, which is probably why Microsoft is resisting the cahange as much as they can. BlitzMax does not support either technology, so the discussion in this forum is purely academic, isn´t it?
Yes. Like most. :o> I think we will see memory hikes to over 4Gb in the next five years
Well 4GB (or rather 3.6 GB on Win32) is the Limit for a 32-bit chips addressing space.