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##### The CPU's Natural Integer Types

For most purposes, you will always use `Integer`, a signed integer type which has the “natural” size of such types for the machine. On most machines GPC runs on, this is a size of 32 bits, so `Integer` usually has a range of `-2147483648..2147483647` (see Integer).

If you need an unsigned integer type, the “natural” choice is `Cardinal`, also called `Word`. Like `Integer`, it has 32 bits on most machines and thus a range of `0..4294967295` (see Cardinal, Word).

These natural integer types should be your first choice for best performance. For instance on an IA32 CPU operations with `Integer` usually work faster than operations with shorter integer types like `ShortInt` or `ByteInt` (see below).