What's the difference between using CGFloat and float?

As @weichsel stated, CGFloat is just a typedef for either float or double. You can see for yourself by Command-double-clicking on "CGFloat" in Xcode — it will jump to the CGBase.h header where the typedef is defined. The same approach is used for NSInteger and NSUInteger as well.

These types were introduced to make it easier to write code that works on both 32-bit and 64-bit without modification. However, if all you need is float precision within your own code, you can still use float if you like — it will reduce your memory footprint somewhat. Same goes for integer values.

I suggest you invest the modest time required to make your app 64-bit clean and try running it as such, since most Macs now have 64-bit CPUs and Snow Leopard is fully 64-bit, including the kernel and user applications. Apple's 64-bit Transition Guide for Cocoa is a useful resource.

CGFloat is a regular float on 32-bit systems and a double on 64-bit systems

typedef float CGFloat;// 32-bit
typedef double CGFloat;// 64-bit

So you won't get any performance penalty.

As others have said, CGFloat is a float on 32-bit systems and a double on 64-bit systems. However, the decision to do that was inherited from OS X, where it was made based on the performance characteristics of early PowerPC CPUs. In other words, you should not think that float is for 32-bit CPUs and double is for 64-bit CPUs. (I believe, Apple's ARM processors were able to process doubles long before they went 64-bit.) The main performance hit of using doubles is that they use twice the memory and therefore might be slower if you are doing a lot of floating point operations.