Schadenfroh
Elite Member
Well, I finally got the money and bought a copy of XP32bit and downgraded to it about a week ago. I am glad to have that behind me and I will not be going back to XP64 until there is a point to it for me.
What do i do on my PC?
I play games, music, browse the internet and use various office products.
There was no point in going to xp64 for me. I should have known better, i had 2gb of ram, but i did not run any 64bit applications hardly. Like many, I bought it because i wanted to be on the cutting edge, little know i was the one that was about to be cut. So, at the launch of xp64, i purchased it.
Drivers:
I checked out my system and drivers existed for all my hardware. The nvidia nforce3 drivers were beta from nov of 2004. I thought, no big deal, nvidia makes the best drivers on the planet. Wrong! They did not install properly on my Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939 (nforce3 ultra). The ones from Gigabyte's site worked, but the system was very flaky. What did i do? I installed nforce4 drivers on it and solved the bulk of the problems, but i did get a "windows has suffered a error, check the system log" message in the task bar every hour or so, but it did not lock up and was stabled.
The Geforce Drivers were as good as the 32bit ones for my 6800GT, so i cannot complain there.
The creative labs drivers for my audigy 2 ZS (while they have improved since the launch of xp64 and moved out of btw) caused strange sound bugs in many of my games, especially when going back and forth between games and desktop (high pitched howl sound), the latest creative labs drivers also gave me bugs in Skype that did not exist in their 32bit drivers. None of these problems existed in the 32bit version of XP that i had used before (it was not very legit, but i have since put such things behind me and bought legal copies of all my software).
TV Tuner: Drivers did not exist, plain and simple, people on the planetamd64 forums thought that they were close at hand, so i said, no biggy, they will be out soon. WRONG. They still do not exist and very few tuners if any support xp64. Having gone back to xp32, i can enjoy my $150 Hauppauge again.
Mouse: Logitech did not have drivers for xp64 and neither did windows. I was forced to use it as a 2 button mouse with no special features.
Applications:
Virtual Drive: Daemon tools for xp64 was released the day i downgraded back to xp32. But, more importantly, Alcohol 120% still does not support xp64 and i doubt it will anytime soon.
Microsoft does not think this operating system is a priority. They force you to use the 32bit version of IE when using windows update. They also say that one care will not work on xp64bit (email i got from their beta team when i signed up for the One Care beta).
64bit browsing: Java plugin for IE64 does not exist or any plug-in for that matter. You are basically forced to use a 32bit browser in xp64 if you want compatability to most sites, including many of microsofts.
Gaming: Most older games refused to run thanks to lack of 16bit code support. My civilization 2 did not work, neither did mIRC. I was surprised that MOO2 worked, however. Many newer games that i tried to play thought that i did not have DirectX 9 installed and therefore refused to install themselves. Need for Speed Most Wanted's demo was one such game, but this is probably due to the fact that is an EA Game, most odd was that NFS:U worked fine.
Antivirus: My favorite antivirus product, antivir, did not work. I was forced to use CLAMwin. Many other antivirus products lack XP64bit support as well as firewalls.
64bit applications that i used: beta build of 7-zip compression, slightly faster than the 32bit build when compressing large files.
Stability: About the same as xp32 once i got the nforce4 drivers on my nforce3 system.
Boot time: About 2 sec faster than standard xp32.
Speed: I could not tell a difference in xp32bit and xp64bit gaming performance. They were identical; the benchmarks that i ran were also near identical.
If one is going to use a system to run 64bit applications or use massive amounts of memory, then by all means use xp64. It is a solid operating system, but developer support for it is STILL lacking.
I just wanted to make all of the difficulties that i have had with it clear so people that don?t need it will not waste money on it to be, "on the bleeding edge of technology".
What do i do on my PC?
I play games, music, browse the internet and use various office products.
There was no point in going to xp64 for me. I should have known better, i had 2gb of ram, but i did not run any 64bit applications hardly. Like many, I bought it because i wanted to be on the cutting edge, little know i was the one that was about to be cut. So, at the launch of xp64, i purchased it.
Drivers:
I checked out my system and drivers existed for all my hardware. The nvidia nforce3 drivers were beta from nov of 2004. I thought, no big deal, nvidia makes the best drivers on the planet. Wrong! They did not install properly on my Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939 (nforce3 ultra). The ones from Gigabyte's site worked, but the system was very flaky. What did i do? I installed nforce4 drivers on it and solved the bulk of the problems, but i did get a "windows has suffered a error, check the system log" message in the task bar every hour or so, but it did not lock up and was stabled.
The Geforce Drivers were as good as the 32bit ones for my 6800GT, so i cannot complain there.
The creative labs drivers for my audigy 2 ZS (while they have improved since the launch of xp64 and moved out of btw) caused strange sound bugs in many of my games, especially when going back and forth between games and desktop (high pitched howl sound), the latest creative labs drivers also gave me bugs in Skype that did not exist in their 32bit drivers. None of these problems existed in the 32bit version of XP that i had used before (it was not very legit, but i have since put such things behind me and bought legal copies of all my software).
TV Tuner: Drivers did not exist, plain and simple, people on the planetamd64 forums thought that they were close at hand, so i said, no biggy, they will be out soon. WRONG. They still do not exist and very few tuners if any support xp64. Having gone back to xp32, i can enjoy my $150 Hauppauge again.
Mouse: Logitech did not have drivers for xp64 and neither did windows. I was forced to use it as a 2 button mouse with no special features.
Applications:
Virtual Drive: Daemon tools for xp64 was released the day i downgraded back to xp32. But, more importantly, Alcohol 120% still does not support xp64 and i doubt it will anytime soon.
Microsoft does not think this operating system is a priority. They force you to use the 32bit version of IE when using windows update. They also say that one care will not work on xp64bit (email i got from their beta team when i signed up for the One Care beta).
64bit browsing: Java plugin for IE64 does not exist or any plug-in for that matter. You are basically forced to use a 32bit browser in xp64 if you want compatability to most sites, including many of microsofts.
Gaming: Most older games refused to run thanks to lack of 16bit code support. My civilization 2 did not work, neither did mIRC. I was surprised that MOO2 worked, however. Many newer games that i tried to play thought that i did not have DirectX 9 installed and therefore refused to install themselves. Need for Speed Most Wanted's demo was one such game, but this is probably due to the fact that is an EA Game, most odd was that NFS:U worked fine.
Antivirus: My favorite antivirus product, antivir, did not work. I was forced to use CLAMwin. Many other antivirus products lack XP64bit support as well as firewalls.
64bit applications that i used: beta build of 7-zip compression, slightly faster than the 32bit build when compressing large files.
Stability: About the same as xp32 once i got the nforce4 drivers on my nforce3 system.
Boot time: About 2 sec faster than standard xp32.
Speed: I could not tell a difference in xp32bit and xp64bit gaming performance. They were identical; the benchmarks that i ran were also near identical.
If one is going to use a system to run 64bit applications or use massive amounts of memory, then by all means use xp64. It is a solid operating system, but developer support for it is STILL lacking.
I just wanted to make all of the difficulties that i have had with it clear so people that don?t need it will not waste money on it to be, "on the bleeding edge of technology".
