Windows 64

[Blinkme323]

Hi guys, i just bought an A64 setup and am wondering what os to install. I have Windows 2000 which I think works pretty well. Mainly, I will be gaming on it. Would I be better off getting Windows 64. I have a copy of Windows Xp home that id registered on a different pc too. Is Windows 64 free and can you give me some more details?

 

[Nothinman]

The beta was free, I doubt it still is since it went RTM recently.

 

[Zolty]

I am pretty sure it is free if you have a valid copy of XP. I would wait at least 2/3 months after release for driver manufactures / patches to get released

 

[Blinkme323]

So would you just install Windows 2000 for now.

 

[Zolty]

I would yes, here is a page with some more info on it, although its biased

 

[Crucial]

Can you still only use 64bit drivers? I have hardware that will never have 64bit drivers, so until I need to upgrade them there's no use for me to switch if I can't use 32bit drivers.

 

[Nothinman]

You will only ever be able to use 64-bit drivers.

 

[toant103]

wait for it. Right now, there are not a lot of 64 bit drivers for it

 

[drag]

You'd want AMD64 Windows right now if...
you need more then 4gigs of RAM.
you want a extra 6-8% boost of performance in certain games.
you work with digital content creation were you applicatiosn that deal with very large memory datasets.. Like if your doing non-linear video editing with high resolution HD formats. Having it 64bits could possibly improve performance and reliability if the applications are specificly designed to be '64bit'.

Other then that not much at all. 98% of the applications you could ever possibly find for Windows XP would be 32bit and are going to be for a while now. Some games, like Ut2004, have native 64bit versions (been able to run those in Linux for a while now), but that's the exception.

So essentially your going to have a 64bit OS that will run 32bit applications vs 32bit OS running 32bit applications.

Personally if Microsoft released a 64bit version I'd get a install disk for it if possible if it cost nothing, and then upgrade the next time the OS begins to crust over and needs to be reinstalled. In another year or 2 your going to see many applications that would be able to run native in 64bit and thus make switching worth my while.

In reality I'd bet that you could setup 2 identical machines, with 32bit on one and 64bit on another and not be able to tell much of a difference at all, except that the 64bit version's drivers suck slightly more for the next few months.

 

[Nothinman]

you need more then 4gigs of RAM.

And that's per-process, not total. Windows will go up to 64G physical memory with PAE right now, but good luck finding a motherboard to support it.

 

[WebDude]

Will it be possible to 'upgrade' an existing XP install to XP 64, or will you have to do a fresh install, and then reinstall your applications, email, etc.? I suspect the latter is the case, but I'm not 100% sure.

 

[mdchesne]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

you need more then 4gigs of RAM.

And that's per-process, not total. Windows will go up to 64G physical memory with PAE right now, but good luck finding a motherboard to support it.

why the hell does it consume 4 gigs of ram? is windows becoming that inefficient? meanwhile suse (being as gui-dependant as linux can get) only uses a minimal for it's 64-bit capabilities

 

[Nothinman]

why the hell does it consume 4 gigs of ram? is windows becoming that inefficient? meanwhile suse (being as gui-dependant as linux can get) only uses a minimal for it's 64-bit capabilities

What I meant was that 32-bit systems are limited to 4G of VM per-process and this has nothing to do with how much memory you have in your machine. You could have a box with 64G physical and still a single process would only be able to see 2G of addresses because 2G are used by the kernel. You can use PAE to work around the 2G limit, but it's slow and a PITA since the app must specifically support memory windowing.

 

[wiin]

... Is Windows 64 free and can you give me some more details?

Per Maximum PC, you can only upgrade from Windows XP Pro. Yopu can download it for free by surrendering your XP Pro license via their technology exchange program. Yo are screwed if you're still using 98 or ME. No retail production but of course you can get it preinstalled on a new pc

 

[bsobel]

What I meant was that 32-bit systems are limited to 4G of VM per-process and this has nothing to do with how much memory you have in your machine. You could have a box with 64G physical and still a single process would only be able to see 2G of addresses because 2G are used by the kernel. You can use PAE to work around the 2G limit, but it's slow and a PITA since the app must specifically support memory windowing.

Or 3g user / 1g kernel depending on the setup.
Bill

 

[Nothinman]

Or 3g user / 1g kernel depending on the setup.

Even with that you still have to use imagecfg to make Windows give the process 3G.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Or 3g user / 1g kernel depending on the setup.

Even with that you still have to use imagecfg to make Windows give the process 3G.

You can use imagecfg to force tag an application as being aware of the user mode address change. However, typically this is done when an applicaion is built. As such, using imagecfg is not the normal practice, it's a tool to deal with specific configurations (just like using it to force affinity for a specific proc)

 

[Nothinman]

I know, but chances are that you won't have the source available for the applications if you're using Windows.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
I know, but chances are that you won't have the source available for the applications if you're using Windows.

:roll: Applications designed to take advanatage of the additional address space come marked as such from the developer.

 

[Nothinman]

But you might get lucky, I'm probbaly being naive but as long as the app doesn't do stupid things like verify pointer addresses are below 2G and such, it should "just work". Everything is still 32-bits so there's nothing to cause unexpected overflows and such.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
But you might get lucky, I'm probbaly being naive but as long as the app doesn't do stupid things like verify pointer addresses are below 2G and such, it should "just work". Everything is still 32-bits so there's nothing to cause unexpected overflows and such.

The original reason for the flag is that applications did do stupid things like making assumptions about pointer addresses (originally this was the only way drivers could make some determinations about a block of memory, since corrected). Bear in mind few apps really need the additional address space (database servers, exchange, etc) so those that did quickly solved any such assumptions so they could take advanatage of the change.

 

[Nothinman]

I know, I never advocated using the tool on Word. But a friend of mine has a 3D package that has a memory leak and once it uses all 2G of it's VM it dies so trying to use /3GB and imagecfg to see if it helps won't cause any extra problems in that case.