Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

[aaronbond]

Ok Ladies! It's time to make those partitions or format that drive! XP64 RC1 or final? is here! Looks like it's final. You can get it shipped or download now. Time to use that WoW emulation once again.

link

Thanks to garikfox over in the http://www.warp2search.net forums

 

[Guden Oden]

Well, if it's final it's not a moment too soon... They've sure taken long enough to get it done. MS couldn't soft-boil an egg and have it finish on time, which makes me think this is yet another beta or RC or something like that.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

The real killer will be waiting for all the manufacturers to write 64 bit device drivers for everything. Look how long it took them to do drivers for WinXP, and that was the mainstream PC OS regardless of CPU.

With Intel getting in on the act with their 64 but extensions it will help a lot, but I think it will still take a heck of a long time for your OS to go completely 64 bit.

 

[aaronbond]

that's why it'll be a partition for me!

 

[horvendile]

Jumping in, late to the game:
I say, do we have anything approaching a release date for XP64? And with "date" I don't necessarily mean exact date; quarter-level precision would be enough.

The reason I'm asking is that my original plan was not to buy a new computer until XP64 was out. But then I read in a magazine that it was to be out in the first quarter next year. It was unclear, however, whether "next year" referred to -05 or -06. And not having heard anything yet about a release being imminent... well, I've started to fear the worst.

My apologies if this has already been asked hundreds of times. It probably has. I've been, and still largely am, out of the loop.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

What's the catch to this "free" version?

 

[vb]

The real killer will be waiting for all the manufacturers to write 64 bit device drivers for everything. Look how long it took them to do drivers for WinXP, and that was the mainstream PC OS regardless of CPU.

With Intel getting in on the act with their 64 but extensions it will help a lot, but I think it will still take a heck of a long time for your OS to go completely 64 bit.

My beloved sound card is f**ked, I haven't seen a new driver in two years.

Goodbye to CS4630, hello to AC97

 

[horvendile]

What's the catch to this "free" version?

Apart from limited functionality (not intentionally limited, of course) I believe that it will stop working when the real product is released. I may mix this up with some other thing, though... and how they will manage to enforce it I do not know.

 

[DudeMiester]

They said it's good for 1 year, that is 360 days. Also, apparently when you couple winXP64 with a AMD64 program you get MAJOR performance boosts, on the order of 30% to 50%!!! WOW! www.anandtech.com has the details

 

[Anonymous]

Does anybody know a collection of Applications that have their 64bit equivalents yet ?
Doesn't matter weather beta or final. I'd just like to have a resource where I can find stuff that really takes advantage of the new instructions/architecture ( dono, me dau )

 

[aaronbond]

blah

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_danceramd64_home.html 8)

 

[Anonymous]

They said it's good for 1 year, that is 360 days. Also, apparently when you couple winXP64 with a AMD64 program you get MAJOR performance boosts, on the order of 30% to 50%!!! WOW! www.anandtech.com has the details

If by major your mean ~15% increase, and in the games part it got a lot slower.

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=1961&p=1

 

[swaaye]

15% is not even remotely insignificant. That's equivalent to upgrading several CPU grades.

If games get recompiled for 64-bit, you better believe they will run faster. UT2004 proved this years ago with the 64-bit Linux version.

 

[Polarbear53]

(I was the guest, forgot to sign in )

15% is a nice big bump up, but not the 30-50% the other guy said.

 

[DudeMiester]

They said it's good for 1 year, that is 360 days. Also, apparently when you couple winXP64 with a AMD64 program you get MAJOR performance boosts, on the order of 30% to 50%!!! WOW! www.anandtech.com has the details

If by major your mean ~15% increase, and in the games part it got a lot slower.

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=1961&p=1

That's the wrong article, the one I'm talking about is from this month, using the much more matured RC1 candidate.

omg lol I'm an idiot sorry. Here's the article

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/x86-64-rc1.html

Anyways 15% is a HUGE improvement, when you consider the minisule gains we are getting these days in the CPU world.

 

[ANova]

It's not that great, but it's decent. The big thing to consider is how many programs are available to take advantage of this though. You really don't want to run games on this unless they have been compiled for x86-64.

 

[Fox5]

Jumping in, late to the game:
I say, do we have anything approaching a release date for XP64? And with "date" I don't necessarily mean exact date; quarter-level precision would be enough.

The reason I'm asking is that my original plan was not to buy a new computer until XP64 was out. But then I read in a magazine that it was to be out in the first quarter next year. It was unclear, however, whether "next year" referred to -05 or -06. And not having heard anything yet about a release being imminent... well, I've started to fear the worst.

My apologies if this has already been asked hundreds of times. It probably has. I've been, and still largely am, out of the loop.

I've been hearing April/May.

BTW, I remember seeing a 64 bit benchmark over at pcstats that had some huge increases do to 64bit, I think like 30% in the nvidia blobby dancer, and several hundred percent in cryptography, and large increases all around in anything that was 64 bit optimized.(I think unzipping/zipping files had a big increase too)