Before you ask about WinXP 64bit Edition

Read this:

WinXP 64 Bit Edition and You

Please, my faith in the human race depends on it.

Good article, I actually did download the beta, but for some reason haven't loaded it, but after reading your review...I'll wait for better driver support.

peace

I wrote that article a year ago, there should be driver support at this time for just about everything integrated into a standard motherboard. You also have an nVidia GPU, so that helps in the driver department. The only thing I'm not sure of is RAID support, and any funky stuff you have as far as PCI cards.

But, unless you can find some 64bit programs (which I'm not aware of), there's really zero point in even bothering.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/evaluation/upgrade.mspx

Here is the link to where you can download the latest build (September).

However, in a few weeks there will be another new build released to the public program, which is considered a "release canidate". A second release canidate will come out in February, which will be certified WHQL, so THERE you can finally expect to see some real driver support. A final, for sale release should happen in March. Of course, this being Microsoft, it's all subject to change.

It's true that when my computer has a 64-bit CPU and Win XP 64, I won't be able to run 16-bit apps anymore, right?

So I'm considering upgrading the two or just buying a whole new computer. This decision will reflect upon how many of my programs and games I have no are 16 bit, but how can I know for sure which are 32 and which are 16?

Don't know about WinXP64, but I believe Longhorn is to have 32-bit, 16-bit, and OS/2 subsystems.

Some Google searching tells me that no, DOS and 16-bit subsystems aren't present in WinXP64.


Honestly though, I'd advise you to avoid WinXP64; there's no use for it on the desktop. No performance gain to be derived, but there are a lot of headaches- many installers won't work because they're 16-bit, driver support has been and will be a problem at least for a while.

Stick with the normal WinXP and you'll do fine. Not that it's perfect in DOS and 16-bit support, but that may be more of a fault on the given program. At any rate you could always use DOSBox to run games that are broken in WinXP.



That gives me some interesting ideas... Even using a 32-bit version of DOSBox, you could run that on WinXP64, and use it to emulate a DOS environment, which means it may be possible to run some things... unfortunatly most installers (even thigns like the Microsoft PowerToys) won't work as they require a GUI.

I guess I don't fully understand 64-bit. From what I hear is that applications, (ones written well) which would normally take up 100% of your CPU capability for hours at time would accomplish tasks more quickly without maxing out your CPU. But then again, I don't really care that much about it right now. 64-bit right now is probably just as over-rated as PCI-express. Some people might need it, but most probably won't for a year or two. I don't plan to go 64-bit bit with a new computer or an upgrade to this one untill intel's pentium 5 or whatever they intend to name their next generation processor, is released. Even then, I'm sure many games will have settings that benefit from 64-bit, but won't require it for some time. Am I correct?

Yes. Here's an interesting thing about big-number processors... the higher the number (ie 32 bit, 64 bit) the slower certain functions and programs will run.

How could that be? Well, let us take a counting function-- say I want to count to ten. I take the value from a memory location into the A register, use the ADD command to add a 1 to that number then put it back into the memory location. Then I do that again. Of course this is a highly simplistic tack on it, since there would have to be a comparison somewhere to make sure I only counted to ten and all, but you get my drift.

So, if I count using a 16-bit processor, I only have to move a 16-bit word out of memory and into the register. If I do the same with a 64-bit processor-- you got it, 64-bits. Given you were running the same clock on both chips, you would have four times as much overhead on the 64-bit than on the 16-bit version.

What does this have to do with your question? Not a lot , but my point (though dull and somewhat convoluted) is that running 32-bit apps on a 64 bit processor is likely to slow things down, since a) you have more overhead, as I tried to illustrate above, and b) the chip is liekly running in some sort of emulation mode for legaecy software since the native code would be of the 64-bit variety, and there are damn few OSes for 64-bit CPUs right now and almost no 64-bit apps available to us little folk.

The theoretical advantage of a 64 over the 32s is that it has a larger instruction set, meaning that one can use a single command in 64-speaks that would require multiple commands in 32-speak (but there's the overhead thing again... if you are older than about 20, you probably heard the RISC/CISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing/Complex Instruction Set Computing) debate a few years back... even Intel agreed RISC can be advantageous), but more importantly, there would be more registers and a larger pipeline from memory to the processor, so instead of your data driving down a 32-bit wide highway to the processor for work, it can move down a 64- or even 128-bit highway. Since data movement to and from RAM is a bottleneck, opening it up like that can really improve the actual processing speed (except for the overhead! )

Chances are that the 64-bit CPUs will clock a little faster than our current crop of 32s, and with the additional cache, wide data bus and extra registers, it will outperform our current CPUs once it starts running native apps... but how long will that take? If I recall correctly, it took Microsquish something like five years to produce a 32-bit OS for the first-generation Pentiums, and how long after that before we got a slew of 32-bit apps to run on it?

Just food for thought

one last question, what the heck is that 64-bit version of professional? i don't see any computer companies putting it on their systems, and it's cheaper than the 32-bit home editon. is this that crappy beta version with no sound?
http://www.abovegroundsolutions.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=207

XP64 IS better than 32bit windows - no doubt. However its not the OS thats the problem, its everyones uneasy dubious nature of moving to a new arch. Meaning that programs and driver support is limited, due to it not being "official" release. Its only available via OEM.

Installed it yesterday, and HL2 ran smooth, with the new 64bit extensions - but the rest of it lacked. sound drivers were shoddy, programs were producing errors left right and centre, and then my two m