Fresh install to 64-bit XP or stay with 32?

[bupkus]

I'm currently doing a cpu upgrade from Venice to Toledo for my nephew. I'm thinking of installing XP64 but I've never installed or used it. As for Vista, I don't think I want to provide support for Vista just yet, since I don't have it in my own pc and I've no experience with it.

He only has 2gb of ram but his most demanding application will be Unreal Tournament 3.
Is it worth going with 64-bit since I have to do an OS install anyway?
Was 64-bit XP ever really finished?
I'm overclocking his system right now.

 

[Don66]

Stay with XP32 if that's what you have.
You'll thank youself later...

 

[Don66]

😕
How'd that happen:laugh:

 

[lxskllr]

I think you should stick with XP32. If you really want to go 64bit, make it Vista. There aren't any performance gains by going 64bit with that system, and XP64 is a bit of an orphan anyway.

 

[bupkus]

I really feel nervous about Vista. Maybe I shouldn't; maybe I should just install it and see what happens.
Hey, is there any real performance gain with 64-bit, considering there's only 2GB of DDR. Maybe there's still no point to it, especially since my nephew is used to XP.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: bupkus
I really feel nervous about Vista. Maybe I shouldn't; maybe I should just install it and see what happens.
Hey, is there any real performance gain with 64-bit, considering there's only 2GB of DDR. Maybe there's still no point to it, especially since my nephew is used to XP.

No, you won't get any performance gain unless you use 64bit apps which are few and far between at this time. I think it would be better to stay with the familiar at this point, that's the cheapest method anyway. I've been using Vista since before release, and I love it, but XP works ok also. If it were me I'd wait until you do a complete rebuild (Maybe in a year or 2?), then go with Vista64.

 

[bupkus]

This is a complete rebuild. I'm gonna reinstall the OS just as soon as I complete the overclock. I do have an installation disk for Vista Business waiting to be used should I decide to use it.

Once more, I'm doing this OS re-install because the install is over 2 years old and there's just too many problems to search them all out.
The end result is, this pc will be used mostly for UT3 and fantasy football.

 

[lxskllr]

I didn't know you already had Vista. Since that's the case, I'd install that. Vista's nice. Some things have moved around, but it's not totally different. I don't think he'd have any problem with the transition.

 

[bupkus]

Discussion over, I'm afraid.
I just checked the website for the epox 9NPA+Ultra and it appears there are no drivers for Vista. That's ok, XP will do just fine.

 

[bupkus]

Originally posted by: bupkus
Discussion over, I'm afraid.
I just checked the website for the epox 9NPA+Ultra and it appears there are no drivers for Vista. That's ok, XP will do just fine.

Discussion resurrected.
I'm gonna try downloading the chipset drivers from nVidia's website.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: bupkus
Discussion over, I'm afraid.
I just checked the website for the epox 9NPA+Ultra and it appears there are no drivers for Vista. That's ok, XP will do just fine.

FUD!!!!! ...FYI I'm using that board (Epox 9NPA+ Ultra since Jan with Vista x64) I have over 40 games installed running great and general use is fine too,it even has native driver support for that board.

Anyway I let Vista X64 install all the drivers it had and then updated them later via Nvidia website,if you want to update the Realtek drivers for onboard sound you can get them via Realtek website(I'm using Audigy 4 so did not install the Realtek drivers).Vista x64 even installed the motherboard LAN driver so I was up and running on the net with 30 mins of install.


Btw I do have a XP PC too but it only gets used for updates(that's how stable and great my Vista x64 is for me with the Epox board).

Sidenote:4GB will come in handy for games down the road,we won't stay on 2GB forever and 32 bit OS has memory restrictions which will come a factor sooner or later,gaming and memory always increase over time.

Nothings stopping you running with 2GB for now then upgrading to 4GB later, so I still say Vista x64 is worth it.

 

[bupkus]

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: bupkus
Discussion over, I'm afraid.
I just checked the website for the epox 9NPA+Ultra and it appears there are no drivers for Vista. That's ok, XP will do just fine.

FUD!!!!! ...FYI I'm using that board (Epox 9NPA+ Ultra since Jan with Vista x64) I have over 40 games installed running great and general use is fine too,it even has native driver support for that board.

Anyway I let Vista X64 install all the drivers it had and then updated them later via Nvidia website,if you want to update the Realtek drivers for onboard sound you can get them via Realtek website(I'm using Audigy 4 so did not install the Realtek drivers).Vista x64 even installed the motherboard LAN driver so I was up and running on the net with 30 mins of install.


Btw I do have a XP PC too but it only gets used for updates(that's how stable and great my Vista x64 is for me with the Epox board).

Sidenote:4GB will come in handy for games down the road,we won't stay on 2GB forever and 32 bit OS has memory restrictions which will come a factor sooner or later,gaming and memory always increase over time.

Nothings stopping you running with 2GB for now then upgrading to 4GB later, so I still say Vista x64 is worth it.

I just installed Vista Business and it had all the drivers natively it took to run it. However, for some reason the video got messed up when I log in and I can't read anything.
I think I'm gonna need to download drivers for the vid from nvidia and see if that fixes it.
I'll try the chipset too.
As for this install, since it was an upgrade cd and i had xp installed already I just went 32bit Vista. The mem is ddr and I'm not buying any more ddr while I have a lot of ddr2 on my shelf.

 

[Mem]

I'm using the latest official 163.75s Nvidia video drivers,as to chipset drivers (15.01s)I believe 32 bit version is same,ie 15.01s.

I would install chipset drivers first.

 

[bwatson283]

Stay with 32bit.
I used 64bit for a while and i had to switch back to 32 bit. It seemed more solid but my AS protection that i was paying for was causing problems. Back to 32 bit and everthing is just dandy! 🙂

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: bwatson283
Stay with 32bit.
I used 64bit for a while and i had to switch back to 32 bit. It seemed more solid but my AS protection that i was paying for was causing problems. Back to 32 bit and everthing is just dandy! 🙂

Maybe for you but for most users Vista x64 is more solid then Vista x68 due to a leaner OS(no legacy 16 bit crap intregrated into the OS) and slightly better security,personally I find Vista x64 excellent on stability/performance.Being restricted to under 4GB of usable ram with 32 bit version would bug me too as a gamer(limited upgrade paths).

 

[bupkus]

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: bwatson283
Stay with 32bit.
I used 64bit for a while and i had to switch back to 32 bit. It seemed more solid but my AS protection that i was paying for was causing problems. Back to 32 bit and everthing is just dandy! 🙂

Maybe for you but for most users Vista x64 is more solid then Vista x68 due to a leaner OS(no legacy 16 bit crap intregrated into the OS) and slightly better security,personally I find Vista x64 excellent on stability/performance.Being restricted to under 4GB of usable ram with 32 bit version would bug me too as a gamer(limited upgrade paths).

I thought that 32 bit restricted one to 2 gb or less.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: bupkus

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: bwatson283
Stay with 32bit.
I used 64bit for a while and i had to switch back to 32 bit. It seemed more solid but my AS protection that i was paying for was causing problems. Back to 32 bit and everthing is just dandy! 🙂

Maybe for you but for most users Vista x64 is more solid then Vista x68 due to a leaner OS(no legacy 16 bit crap intregrated into the OS) and slightly better security,personally I find Vista x64 excellent on stability/performance.Being restricted to under 4GB of usable ram with 32 bit version would bug me too as a gamer(limited upgrade paths).

I thought that 32 bit restricted one to 2 gb or less.

I think this below covers the explanation.

This is a limitation of a 32-bit architecture. The system can only address 4 GB of allocated memory. Allocated memory is made up of physical RAM, and any I/O space needed by devices. The way memory is allocated is that starting at 4 GB, the system allocates device I/O addresses working its way down. Normally this is not a problem, but when systems have 4 GB of physical memory, the addresses needed to address RAM overlap the space needed for I/O. In this case, the need for I/O space takes precedence, and the amount of RAM visible to the operating system and applications is limited to 4 GB minus I/O space. Examples of devices that consume I/O space are:

System BIOS
PCI Express configuration space and memory for PCI Express device(s)
Memory mappy I/O
Motherboard Resources (I/OxAPIC)
Chipset
PCI Enumeration

For example: If you have 4GB of system memory, an Intel 915g Express chipset, Windows XP with Service Pack 2, and a PCI Express graphics card the remaining system memory as reported by System Information would be ~3.25GB. The same configuration but with 2GB of system memory would result in all 2GB being available. This is due to the limited capability of memory mapping (or limited amount of addresses) on 32-bit architecture systems.

EDIT:

Windows XP can utilize more than 2GB of memory as well. However, 2GB of memory is the most that XP can allocate to a particular task.

 

[nerp]

I have a variant of that EpoX board and I wouldn't recommend installing the nvidia chipset driver package since WU takes care of all that for you.

The only nvidia driver I recommend installing is the latest SATA driver.

I grabbed it from another nforce related forum out there, stuck it on my secondary HD and during Vista setup, loaded the driver for my drives. Done.

Vista took care of the rest. The realtek driver was found and installed during the first round of windows updates.

I did have problems trying to install the SATA drivers once Vista was already installed -- for some reason the drives refused to take the updated driver. The usual trick of browsing to the appropriate driver under device manager for each drive listed only caused duplicate entries to be created and the lovely red X to appear next to a pair of drive instances that I had tried to update.

In any event, the EpoX boards are stellar and should run Vista with ease and elegance. Enjoy.