Is Win XP 64 beta good enough to use

[JimKiler]

I am finally getting an Athlon 64 mobo and CPU this week, ASUS SLI Deluxe!, and I downloaded the beta from MS, should i stick to Win XP or use this beta?

Anyone use this beta? I didn't see any mention of a time period, does it have one?

 

[Gravity]

I got it for grins but haven't had the time to play with it.

 

[Nothinman]

It'll be useful if you don't mind running tons of 32-bit apps on a 64-bit OS and if you're lucky enough to find drivers for your hardware.

 

[JimKiler]

It'll be useful if you don't mind running tons of 32-bit apps on a 64-bit OS and if you're lucky enough to find drivers for your hardware.

Isn't there marginal improvement running 32 bit apps on a 64 bit OS, or only on a 64 bit CPU?

I think I have drivers for everything, since the board has 64 bit drivers and most stuff is onboard.

 

[Nothinman]

There will probably be a small speed improvement from the hardware, but it has nothing to do with the OS being 64-bit.

 

[Anubis08]

I have been told that running 64 bit over 32 bit will not give any noticeable performance increase it just allows the use of more memory. Can anyone help on this.

 

[Nothinman]

I have been told that running 64 bit over 32 bit will not give any noticeable performance increase it just allows the use of more memory. Can anyone help on this.

It doesn't even really allow the use of more memory, most 32-bit x86 systems support PAE which allows up to 64G physical memory to be used. It's not usable in a contiguous address space, but it's there.

The increase would come from the physical speed differences of the AMD64 CPUs, the on-die memory controller, larger cache, etc. In 64-bit mode there may be some performance increases because all of the new registers would be available but there also might be some slow down from the use of larger pointers. In general 64-bit binaries are bigger and slower than the same thing in a 32-bit binary, unless it can make use of the extended address space available.

 

[funggorgor]

I expect beta not good enough in stability, etc
I suggest wait for final release

 

[streetknight]

acutally i use have been runing for 2 days now have test most of my gear played games on ut2k3%4. the only problems so far are driver issues and the occasional problem with some software not working, but im sure if i tryed i would get it to work.also win xp 64bit has a 32bit emulator built in so it can try to make most of the software work. i guess i'll be let every one know if it works out. oh the plus side is that its free for 1 year. so u don0t have to go out and buy it if it is released q2 2005 u can wait to q1 of 2006 and the price will drop a little.

 

[imverygifted]

Originally posted by: streetknight
oh the plus side is that its free for 1 year. so u don0t have to go out and buy it if it is released q2 2005 u can wait to q1 of 2006 and the price will drop a little.

i thought the free for a year was only the beta, will the full version be free for a year?

 

[spyordie007]

i thought the free for a year was only the beta, will the full version be free for a year?

No, once they go RTM with it they will sell it like a regular product.

BTW "Free" and "Beta Tester" arent quite the same thing

 

[JimKiler]

BTW "Free" and "Beta Tester" arent quite the same thing

I use free because before they charged a fee for public betas, for shipping and handling, now the download is free.

 

[daveshel]

I just got the download, hope to try installing this evening.

 

[mastertech01]

The RC1 is quite a bit more stable, and much better at memory utilization, and includes DX 9.0c, Media Player 10, much better driver support included. Its getting better.

 

[fuzzynavel]

I'm not really old enough to remember properly....but were these same issues relevant with the 16bit ->32 bit changeover in the early 90's???

 

[Nothinman]

I'm not really old enough to remember properly....but were these same issues relevant with the 16bit ->32 bit changeover in the early 90's???

Not at all, well not mostly anyway. The transition to 64-bit will be simple for the most part because 99% of the apps out there don't need it and can just be run in 32-bit mode. With the OS there's a lot of changes that need to be done, but mostly with drivers and crap, NT has been running on 64-bit platforms for a while so the changes required to get it on AMD64 were probably pretty small.

 

[rch4001]

tried it - but too much hassle finding hardware drivers.

 

[imverygifted]

Originally posted by: rch4001
tried it - but too much hassle finding hardware drivers.

i was the same and i didnt get the same performance in games ie ut2k4 and hl2