Windows XP-64

[WhirlwindMonk]

My hard drive recently died, so i need to reinstall windows, and I was wondering if XP-64 was worth it. I've heard good things and bad things, but I was hoping to get some more detailed opinions. My computer activities span a very broad spectrum from video games, to CAD, to video editing, to 3D animation, etc. I use high level programs that I have gotten through my high school and college like 3D Studio Max, and Adobe Premier. A big thing is I need to be able to play the latest games (like Oblivion, which I was playing until my HD died). Here are my specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ @ 2.2 GHz
2 GB PC3200 ram
nVidea GeForce 7800GTX 256 MB PCI-E
ASUS A8N-SLI mobo
580 Watt PSU
Seagate 250 GB HD
Seagate 200 GB HD
Lite-On 16X DVD-RW
TDK 52X CD-RW
Samsung SyncMaster 915N 19" LCD monitor

I would greatly appreciate any experiences, recommendations, or information anyone could give, no matter how specific, though I would obviously prefer information that would directly relate to what I do or have. Thanks.

 

[Swart]

The only question I have is, why would you consider running a 32 bit OS on a 64 bit system?

 

[troglodyte]

I've heard that it's not worth the hassle. There is minimal bebefit from going XP64... you could wait for Vista

 

[WhirlwindMonk]

The only question I have is, why would you consider running a 32 bit OS on a 64 bit system?

Because I've heard that some programs don't work, some things don't have drivers, and that it can be a pain in general.

 

[csheppard91]

The only question I have is, why would you consider running a 32 bit OS on a 64 bit system?

Why not? It's not like there's a performance loss. A 64 bit machine can handle 32 bit processes. I run 32 bit win xp on a 64 bit system and there's no problems at all.

 

[Swart]

Why not? It's not like there's a performance loss. A 64 bit machine can handle 32 bit processes. I run 32 bit win xp on a 64 bit system and there's no problems at all.

It depends upon what you mean by performance loss. Sure it won't be any slower than XP running on a 32bit system, but you have hardware that you have paid for that is underutilised. I'm sure could run a 16bit OS on it as well, but why?

The only reason that 64 bit is now here is because the 32bit hardware isn't capable of the performance that is required of it. The only way to take advantage of that is to run a 64 bit OS. If a 32 bit OS is fine for you, then you probably have overspec'd.

Driver issues only exist with 32 bit hardware. All 64 bit hardware should be fine. Personally, I don't see the point in running 64 bit unless it is across the board. I runup servers for a living and to date I haven't had the need to implement anything more than a hybrid 32/64 bit server. There simply hasn't been the performance requirement yet - however it is getting close.

The bottom line is: if a 32 bit OS is fine for your needs, then you don't need 64 bit hardware.

 

[troglodyte]

it's not like XP64 doubles your performance...

 

[Swart]

it's not like XP64 doubles your performance...

No, but it will take advanage of RAM above 4GB without any smoke and mirrors trick. It will execute extended instructions. It will be able to perform QuadWord moves. It will be be able to completely buffer PCI-X data etc etc etc.

In addition, the Itanium processors uses EPIC to examine each instruction as it flows through the pipeline. Applications compiled for a 64 bit architecture will have code that can be run in parallel bundled into a single VLIW (very long instruction word) for simultaneous execution by multiple cores.

IA64 also has a HUGE complement of registers plus a register rotation mechanism. This is very effective when with unrolling loops and increases execution efficiency enourmously.

In order to run 32 bit apps or OSs, the IA64 architure essentially has to "dumb down". This causes a severe performance degradation to what the architecture is capable of. The Itanium functional units do not automatically generate integer flags as a side effect of ordinary ALU computation, and do not intrinsically support multiple outstanding unaligned memory loads.

There are also IA32 software emulators which are freely available for Windows and Linux, and these emulators typically outperform the hardware-based emulation by around 50%. The Windows emulator is available from Microsoft, the Linux emulator is available from some Linux vendors such as Novell and from Intel itself. Given the superior performance of the software emulator, and despite the fact that IA32 hardware accounts for less than 1% of the transistors of an Itanium 2, Intel will remove the circuitry from the next-generation Itanium 2 chip codenamed "Montecito".

 

[troglodyte]

... in simpler terms, if you're a regular computer user, you need not worry about all of that...

 

[Swart]

... in simpler terms, if you're a regular computer user, you need not worry about all of that...

What it does mean is that for a 64 bit platform, it is faster to run a 64 bit OS and then run a 32 bit emulator on top of that than it is to just run a 32 bit OS by a factor of almost 2:1.

At the moment, this is what is being suggested in high end server circles: Only use your 64 bit architectures to run 32 bit virtual machines under XEN or VMWare. That way you can run five or six servers for the price of one big beefy one. Less hardware to manage, greater flexibility, fewer driver problems etc.

 

[WhirlwindMonk]

The other question is, what is the quality of XP-64? I've almost never been impressed with the quality of MS's products, and I'm a bit wary about an OS that is made for only a small fraction of computer users.

 

[Swart]

The other question is, what is the quality of XP-64? I've almost never been impressed with the quality of MS's products, and I'm a bit wary about an OS that is made for only a small fraction of computer users.

I've never used it, but the feedback I've had is that it isn't aggressively compiled enough to take advantage of EM64T or IA64 architecture.

It's one advanatge is that it doesn't require registration with Microsoft.

If you really require stable 64 bit operation, Install Windows 2003 or a good 64 bit implementation of Linux. If you really want good 64 bit performance on Linux, install it from source, preferably with the Intel C Compiler. It might take a few days, but the performance improvement will be significant.

 

[Vico]

64 bit is sooooo goood!!!! its soo stable it rocks....sooo fast....so good lol... i love it!

 

[Grunt]

XP64 is a waste of time for the home user. Don't even worry about 64 bit until Vista is out.

 

[WhirlwindMonk]

XP64 is a waste of time for the home user. Don't even worry about 64 bit until Vista is out.

ewww. Honestly, couldn't they just make a 64-bit edition of 98? I don't want all that extra garbage. And yes, I know I can turn it off, but I'm still paying for it when I buy it, and it's still taking up space on my hard drive. Unless I find out the performance increase is massive, I'll stick with XP. Eventually, when I get another hard drive, I want to dual boot a 64 bit linux. Swart, are there any tutorials on how to do that, and does that mean I won't have access to my computer for a couple days?

 

[Swart]

ewww. Honestly, couldn't they just make a 64-bit edition of 98? I don't want all that extra garbage. And yes, I know I can turn it off, but I'm still paying for it when I buy it, and it's still taking up space on my hard drive. Unless I find out the performance increase is massive, I'll stick with XP. Eventually, when I get another hard drive, I want to dual boot a 64 bit linux. Swart, are there any tutorials on how to do that, and does that mean I won't have access to my computer for a couple days?

It takes the better part of an hour to do a complete install of most versions of Linux. Just make sure you get the 64bit version. Most distros these days do all of the painful work for you.

If you have a laptop, seriously look at the versions that cater specifically for them: some do so even for specific brands. SuSe has many features for the Sony Vaio. Kannotix is particularly good with HP notebooks. Linspire is a commercial distro that have licenced the Centrino code from Intel and as such it has complete Centrino support OOTB. Most notebooks have extra keys and special features that are supported with special drivers or code found only in their OEM version of Windows. If the manufacturer hasn't bothered porting these features to Linux, then support for those features under Linux may be sketchy. For example, there may be special keys for brightness, contrast and multimedia. This is where HOTKEYS comes into play, however. This is a program that detects when particular keys are pressed and allows you to launch another program when that happens.

There are plenty of Linux tutorials on the web. Stare here. There are also forums of every description such as linuxquestions.org. IME, the feedback from these forums is better than I get from commercial vendors. Sometimes when I am stuck, I'll post a question on a forum plus contact the vendor. Typically I'll get a better, faster respose from the forum than the vendor. In fact, one of the vendors I deal with channels most of it's support through forums!

 

[LaLaRu]

I use XP-64, and I haven't had any problems with it.

 

[Dust and Ashes]

I'm dual booting XP and XP x64 and there is a significant performance increase in the OS itself and in the 64bit version of IE that comes with it. However, there is minimal improvement to 32bit applications since they are basically run in a compatibility mode/32bit emulator called WoW64.

The 64bit IE is very fast and responsive, and within 64bit apps, clicking and action are virtually simultaneous. I installed Far Cry and patched it to 64bit and it gives about a 30%-40% improvement across the board, with graphics, textures, framerate, etc. I wish they would release a similar patch for Oblivion.

I'd say unless you are going to be running lots of 64bit apps, there isn't a reason to go straight x64 because there are some problems like no 64bit Flash support so no Flash in the 64bit IE. Other than that I haven't had any problems with any programs but then I mostly just run 32bit XP since my x64 is a 120 day evaluation copy. Might want to just download one of those to try it out on a dual boot.

I am having some goofy problems right now but I'm not sure if they are related to x64. I'm going to start a thread about those now.