Xp x86 or x64?

[swaaye]

Vista x64 has support for a lot more RAM. There are a few tiers, with Home Basic 64 supporting 8 GB while Ultimate can handle 128 GB (heh). That's about the biggest advantage there. Supposedly EMT64/AMD64 allows more performance due to added CPU registers, but you'll never notice that if it's even there. It is the future unless you want to be limited to <4GB RAM from here on out. (4 GB will end up being ~3.5GB available in 32-bit XP and Vista for various reasons).

Vista x64 has a semi-annoying requirement for signed drivers. This is not a problem for commercial products, but if you want to use some freeware utilities, it can be. Driver signing is quite non-cheap.

You also lose the ability to run DOS and 16-bit Windows apps. Those were "virtualized" under XP and Vista 32. NTVDM did DOS and "Windows on Windows" (WOW) did 16-bit Windows apps. Not much of an issue these days, really. And DOS stuff can always be run within DOSBOX, and your Windows 3.1 or 16-bit Windows9x stuff (there was some) glory apps can be run in the free MS Virtual PC you can get. 32-bit apps on x64 OS's are actually run on WOW64. It's not emulation though. It's a very fast, basically transparent layer that is allowed because these CPUs can easily switch modes.

Overall though, Vista 64 and 32 are functionally very similar, just as XP x64 feels almost exactly like XP SP2. The most obvious difference between the editions is the need for 64-bit drivers. You can go look this stuff up on Wikipedia too for more info. Wiki is a pretty decent resource most of the time.

 

[Color me Dan]

Sorry for resurrecting an older thread, I don't think it'd be much appreciated to start a new one on the same subject by the same user.

I've been using x64 XP for more then a year now, I've had a lot of problems I never thought I'd have really. I've been having multiple crashes on start up, most seem to be driver related. I'm especially sceptical to the ATi (now AMD) drivers for the platform as each new driver seem to either break in a new way or add weird visual errors in the few games I try. The most recent driver at the time of this writing is 8.6 and they are horrible, VPU crash messages pop up whenever I start a game. The computer is otherwise stable and very fast. Start photoshop and get going and it's slick as lightning, but navigating windows itself can be awful slow for some reason. Weird.

At this point I'm thinking of installing XP SP3, it has become rather clear to me that perhaps it's not quite worth it since I don't use x64 to it's highest potential. Well, I'll see when i come about to install SP3. Any thoughts on why I have these weird errors I'd love to have a solution.

Games look really weird with what to me is hard to explain, but I shall try. It's as if sometimes black polygons stretch across the screen for a split second, sometimes textured with weird result. Sometimes when in a room in for example Morrowind it's as if the aforementioned "polygons" open up the wall so I see the outside. It's all very weird. Installing certain plugins for Flight Simulator 2004 will result in the same errors popping up there. Right now I can't start it at all since Cat 8.6 was installed hehe. Oh well.

I really want to get it to work satisfactory, but if I can't then I'll have to get XP SP3. Help pwease?

 

[Davros]

when i have or need more than 4gb of memory then i'll go 64bit

 

[Color me Dan]

Ya, I solved all of my problems by installing SP3 now, it works really well now. Hurray.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Congrats, glad to hear.

 

[Albuquerque]

How did you get SP3 for XP64? NO such thing exists; XP64 is nothing but a rebranded Server 2003 operating system with the XP32 gui on top, and the only service packs available for Server 2003 is SP1 and recently SP2. So are you referring to SP2 fixing some of your issues?

I'm still of the mind that, had you gone with Vista64 to begin with, you wouldn't have so many issues. I've had Vista64 on my "big rig" at home since the beginning of the year when I built it, and I've yet to have a single driver, video, performance, application or compatibility problem with it. And that's long before SP1 came out...

Either way, I'm glad you got it fixed -- I just think it's quite possible you had to put up with a lot more headache than was actually necessary.

 

[BRiT]

when i have or need more than 4gb of memory then i'll go 64bit

You mean more than 3GB.

 

[Davros]

well yes

ps: Alby he means sp3 for xp32

 

[Color me Dan]

Indeed I do, no I've decided like so many others to stay a step behind from Vista in all its iterations. I'm basing this on basically nothing, assumptions made from reading about it without practical experience. I'm comfortable with XP, It took me some time before switching to that from 2000 as well hehe.

I really wish x64 XP had worked though, I hate the idea of having a x64 processor that isn't used to it's full potential, it's nagging me and I'm sure others have felt something similar. Knowing there is a few % of power there going untouched

Either way, I'm glad you got it fixed -- I just think it's quite possible you had to put up with a lot more headache than was actually necessary.

Thanks for the support, to all of you too, It's fun to be in a community like this. And yes, yes it was more then necessary :smile:

 

[gl33k]

I heard x86_64 has more convenience than just high memory support.
like 16 more register for operation. is it about performance ? flexibility ?

 

[Color me Dan]

It removes a lot of legacy code, and with it 16-bit programs and viruses and vulnerabilities. As I understand it x64 is about doing more and bigger things in one go.

That's probably light years away from a real answer though so don't take my word for it hehe

 

[swaaye]

By far the biggest benefit is the removal of RAM and addressing constraints. But yea there are more registers avialable. SSEx is preferred over ancient x87 too. 64-bit code is larger and uses more RAM/cache though I believe so performance benefits may be canceled out a bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64

 

[Albuquerque]

well yes

ps: Alby he means sp3 for xp32

I thought this whole conversation was about XP64? Geez I guess I'm lost

 

[hoom]

This thread reminded me that I was going to reinstall windows.
I've been meaning to for a little while (see the mcp thread ).

So last night I did it, put on my XP64 Pro & I'll probably put XP32 on MS Virtual PC.

Haven't actually gotten everything up & running the way I like yet but we'll see how things work out.
Don't recall any specific issues I'd had previously other than that I definitely know that Netgear are assholes regarding X64 driver support (ie 'we won't be doing any anytime soon ') but fortunately I had put my hunted down Atheros drivers in an easily spotted place

Definitely no SP3 for XP64 but I'm pretty sure the SP2 is actually closer to the 32bit SP3.

 

[suryad]

I am running XP x64 as can be seen from my sig and I do not have any problems with drivers or anything else. I have an nLited install on top of it. I like it. Visually I cannot tell any difference of course but the machine always remains zippy no matter what kind of load I put on it. And I have yet to find a game other than Crisis that I cannot play at 2560x1600 with everything maxed out. Some people on XP 32 with similar configs have some performance issues so I do think that there is something to be said about those extra registers giving perhaps a slight bit of a boost.

I went XP x64 so I could make full use of 4 gb of RAM. I can max out 3 quiet easily running a lot of Oracle's software. There are drawbacks to having 64 bit because stuff like VPN apparently does not work on it. I have yet to try it but that is what I keep reading on google but it seems like OpenVPN is trying to rectify that problem.

Also the OS is very very good at multitasking and keeping the machine really well balanced when you are loading it up. That is what I really like.

 

[Blazkowicz]

the NT 5.2 kernel helps, improved scheduler and improved swapping. I remember trying win2k3 on a celeron 600 with 128MB and that was working really well for small websurfing with firefox.

 

[suryad]

the NT 5.2 kernel helps, improved scheduler and improved swapping. I remember trying win2k3 on a celeron 600 with 128MB and that was working really well for small websurfing with firefox.

That along with a rather aggressive use of nLite as well. I believe a regular install cd has around 550 mb worth of data and then you download SP2 which was another 300 MB. I slipstreamed SP2 and then I nLited it and my CD came out to 234 MB. Dont know how that worked and it ended up taking like a less than 2 gb on my hard drive for the Windows install.

 

[BRiT]

Suryad, have you tried the version of nLite for Vista?

 

[suryad]

You mean vlite? No I have not tried it yet but I know of quiet a few people who have and they are very happy with it.

Some people have gotten Vista to fit on a CD even...though without SP1 I am sure.

 

[swaaye]

Personally, I find XP x64 to be as usable as regular XP. Sure there is some hardware out there that doesn't work because the drivers didn't get made, but I don't have any. That it's based on Windows 2003 is interesting and carries a few advantages. The big players keep their drivers as up to date for it as anything else. Games seem to work as well as they do in XP 32 and Vista. You lose virtual address space issues and 4GB RAM quirks. You don't have to deal with Vista's various extra demands on your system and general weightiness. It's just a clean, quick OS, IMO.

I recently set it up on my 780G board and all is working perfectly. As well or better than XP 32 as far as I can tell.

The biggest driver quirk I've found with XP x64 is, unsurprisingly, with Creative. Audigy drivers don't get along with 4GB RAM on it. It's as if they ported their 32-bit code to 64-bit somehow and forgot that this OS can have that full 4+GB available. Hardware acceleration stops working completely. One can fix the issue by forcing the OS to offer less than 4GB. And, of course, they have seemingly no plans to do anything about it. I believe the same issue existed for Vista x64 a while back but they did fix it there. I haven't messed with Creaf's under-duress beta drivers that came out post driver hacker debacle. So, I just use the power of The Crab now (Realtek onboard.) Creative "beta" drivers scare me.