Exceptions from this rule are instructions manipulating the stack (push, pop, call, ret, enter and leave) which are implicitly 64-bit and their 32-bit counterparts are not available anymore, yet their 16-bit counterparts are. So: pushl %eax # Illegal instruction pushq %rax # 1 byte instruction encoded as pushl %eax in 32 bits pushq %r10 # 2 byte instruction encoded as pushl preceeded by REX.