Xp x86 or x64?

[Color me Dan]

I'm currently choosing an OS for the new computer i'm building, and i figured since it has a Athlon X2 6000+ processor i would be wasting performance by not utelizing it's 64bit capabilities. It will be running mostly Adobe premiere pro and perhaps Sony Vegas, neither of which actually has support for 64bit. Will there be any performance increase from the underlying OS anyway? As you see i'm not very good at this stuff so any tip would be usefull. I didn't post this in the purchase section because i consider it more general software information.

Anyone here that has experiance with Xp pro x64?

 

[Bludd]

If you are going to go 64bit, you should go Vista 64bit.

XP64 is AFAIK mostly unsupported and "not good".

 

[Davros]

It will be running mostly Adobe premiere pro and perhaps Sony Vegas, neither of which actually has support for 64bit.

theres your answer

 

[BRiT]

I agree. The question should be XP 32bit or Vista 64bit.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

I'm currently choosing an OS for the new computer i'm building, and i figured since it has a Athlon X2 6000+ processor i would be wasting performance by not utelizing it's 64bit capabilities. It will be running mostly Adobe premiere pro and perhaps Sony Vegas, neither of which actually has support for 64bit. Will there be any performance increase from the underlying OS anyway? As you see i'm not very good at this stuff so any tip would be usefull. I didn't post this in the purchase section because i consider it more general software information.

Anyone here that has experiance with Xp pro x64?

Waitaminute... So neither Premiere nor Vegas run in an x64 environment, or they've not been patched to take advantage of >2GB memory addressing? I doubt it's the latter, because I ran Premiere Elements for awhile last year w/2GB RAM & 3GB page file and it easily ate up all my RAM & about half the page file on XP Pro 32.

 

[Color me Dan]

It is true, that since premiere pro doesn't use the 64bit extensions it might seem illadviced to choose it. But wouldn't i be "wasting" resources when i have a 64bit processor and not use it at least a little? I will be adding ram as time goes on so it'll be used some day. Is there no pros using it otherwise? It's only memory allocation?

 

[Valzic]

I just recently built a new system for my business and gaming and went the Vista 64 route. I put in 8GB of RAM and have been pleased with the results.

I did have problems in that I support customers on products that don't run under VISTA 64 (maybe even VISTA 32). My solution was to download Microsoft's Vitual PC and I loaded my version of XP Professional under a virtual machine.

With that virtual PC version of XP I am able to run all the environments that I need to support those clients and it actually is nice in that I can start work in that environment while doing other stuff on VISTA 64 and I can can save the environment in the middle of work until I want to start again. I have 3 DB's open and editors for coding and when time to play a game. Save enevironment for later.

It lets me play with the VISTA environment in preparation for the first of my clients being forced to buy new computers with VISTA. I am working on workarounds for the code running in VISTA 64 but in meantime, VISTA 64 offers the best of both worlds with MS Virtual PC.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I'd like to try XP 64 in that situation. it's a rebranded windows 2003 and the kernel improvements can be felt (32bit 2003 ran very well on a celeron 600 with 128MB ram ). best NT 5.x OS. So if you don't lack drivers and don't like Vista much why not give it a try. Some issues will be the same on Vista due to 64bitness (no 16bit support, plugin issues with 64bit apps..)

as to 32bit vs 64bit I like to nail it down to the ram quantity : get a 64bit OS if you have or plan to have more than 2GB.

 

[SugarCoat]

I agree. The question should be XP 32bit or Vista 64bit.

Disagree, first of all XP64 works fine and is supported fine. Second, i've been keeping tabs and the support for Vista 64 is worse then that of XP 64 for many things that i at least own, like my digital camera and printer, gamepads/joysticks etc.. all of which have XP 64 support but still have no Vista 64 (32 yes). If anything, for some odd reason, it looks as if Vista 64 is actually lagging badly as far as driver/software support goes which is a disappointment.

If your going to pick an OS make sure you migrate around the support pages for the stuff you own to see what will be supported and what wont otherwise you may get a rude awakening.

 

[BRiT]

Wow, SugarCoat. That's completely the opposite of mine. I hooked up my digital camera, printer, scanner, fax, gamepads/joysticks, tv tuner, and Vista 64 recognized each and every one. Some of them it had to pull down drivers from the MS Server, but it did it without any user intervention on my part. I plugged it in and it just worked.

All comes down to the manufacturer I suppose.

 

[SugarCoat]

Wow, SugarCoat. That's completely the opposite of mine. I hooked up my digital camera, printer, scanner, fax, gamepads/joysticks, tv tuner, and Vista 64 recognized each and every one. Some of them it had to pull down drivers from the MS Server, but it did it without any user intervention on my part. I plugged it in and it just worked.

All comes down to the manufacturer I suppose.

well i havent much experience at all with vista 64 so if it already comes equiped with basic drivers for many things that may be why i havent been noticing the manufacturers of my stuff posting drivers (odd they would for vista 32 though). From the sounds of it you seem to be saying you didnt really need to download and install a thing.

 

[BRiT]

The following items worked without manual intervention: Adaptec/HP AVC-3610 Dual TV Tuner, HP OfficeJet 6100 Printer, Scanner, Fax, Logitech Wireless Desktop Keyboard & Mouse MX, Digital Camera, PSX to USB Game controller, Misc USB Gamepads, Abit QuadGT Motherboard with integrated FireWire, USB, and Gigabit NIC. All those items just worked.

The only drivers I manually downloaded and installed was for Nvidia Graphic Drivers and Creative XFi Soundcard. Both worked without having to manually install drivers. I grabbed the latest drivers for additional features and performance. Oh, I also had to grab drivers for the HDHomeRun QAM/ATSC tuner.

I was really surprised by the printer/scanner/fax and dual-tv tuner since I couldn't find drivers listed for either at the MFG's site.

Overall it's significantly less drivers than I'd have to install in XP SP2 slipstreamed. XP SP2 includes no motherboard chipset drivers, no sata drivers, no firewire drivers, no NIC drivers, no dual-tv tuner drivers, no printer/scanner/fax drivers, etc.

 

[mito]

If you are going to go 64bit, you should go Vista 64bit.

XP64 is AFAIK mostly unsupported and "not good".

seconded,

vista64.

it's the future, march forward.

resistance is futile, prepared to be assimilated. D:

 

[Albuquerque]

It's VERY strange (and yet, comforting) how many devices have Vista64 drivers -- I'd be willing to bet that Vista64 probably has 50% more hardware support than XP64 by now. I have no facts to base that assumption on, but we had a hell of a time getting one of our office rigs exactly right under XP64 -- and our first try at Vista64 was cake.

I have to assume it's because the different driver models make it easier? Or MS is being more heavy-handed for some? Dunno. Either way, I'm not complaining

 

[V3]

My next OS is going to be Vista64, don't know when though. I am waiting for Adobe to have 64bit version of Photoshop. I hope by that time, everything will be patched up and supported. For the time being its XP, while you lot public beta test Vista

Out of curiosity, what's the recommended partition size for Vista32 or 64 ?

 

[Blazkowicz]

It's strange how software vendors seem lazy, you'd think they would have had for a while the 64bit versions for the content creation software that eats gobs of memory. Whereas you can get a 64bit everything gnu-linux distro even though 64bit is not very useful for most things.

 

[Colourless]

Blame bad coding practices. Converting a 32 bit source code to 64 bit compatible can take a really long time due to the assumption of pointers being 32 bit

 

[Color me Dan]

I've heard from so manny of my friends who've tried Vista that it's halfassed, also editing programs i will be trying or/and using have yet to be tried on x64 Vista anyway. Both are reasons enough for me to be a bit sceptical and go with XP instead.

 

[Albuquerque]

I've heard from so manny of my friends who've tried Vista that it's halfassed, also editing programs i will be trying or/and using have yet to be tried on x64 Vista anyway. Both are reasons enough for me to be a bit sceptical and go with XP instead.

Not to be a complete ass, but are your friends the Toms Hardware / [H]-Forum going type? There's a lot of severe-duty and blatent misinformation out there about Vista, mostly because people want to bitch about how the BETA was no good and the price is too high --which then precipitates other nonsense that is usually half-made up from stories they've heard from random people on the internet with the same level of Vista experience as my mom...

Vista has a significant number of good things going for it in 32-bit land -- and if we're talking about XP64 vs Vista64? Vista will win hands down. XP64 isn't what it sounds like, and it isn't ANYTHING like it's 32-bit namesake.

To each his own and all, but XP64 is a mistake IMO...

 

[Color me Dan]

I do respect your opinion on the subject; but actally no, i do keep most of my friends in the real world and my acquaintances online. As i understand from him he used it for a few days and was about to kill himself. Now obviously the last part was an overstatement on his part, but i trust this perticular friend of mine especially much.

Since you seem to know what you're talking about, would you be kind enough to tell me the differences with the 32bit version to the 64bit one? I've pretty much set my sights on the 64bit version, and i agree that i am quite stubborn when i set my sights on something. But please, i'm interested to know.