Who's using Windows XP 64 bit, and what benefits...

[Shyatic]

I'm debating whether to move to the XP64 OS for my new AMD64 PC, or if I should just stay with Windows XP. Most of what I do is just gaming, so the best performance would be nice. I have the Chaintech mobo (reviewed here) so I don't know if the drivers for the LAN will have 64 bit drivers, but my ATI 9800 Pro will, and my Audigy2 will.

Thanks in advance for any information.

 

[Bateluer]

As far as I know, ATI's 64 bit beta drivers are still very beta.

 

[Nothinman]

The only real benefits from Win64 is the ability for a single process to directly address >4G memory and the extra registers AMD64 presents. The rest of the benefits are all in the hardware and should be there in 32-bit mode as well. The biggest problem is drivers, since you want to run Windows you have to wait for all the hardware companies to release 64-bit drivers.

 

[imported_augie]

there is no current benifit.

allmost all drivers are beta, and there are virtually no programs that are compiled to run in true 64 bit.

once xp64 is released in q4 you will see some more stuff come out.

 

[Sianath]

Even with the ability to run 32-bit apps in the 64-bit environment, unless the app is coded to take advantage of the extra memory, it's going to be held to the standard 2 GB user address space.

In addition to that, the context of a 32-bit process masks the extra registers so you won't gain any benefit there either.

Hold off until there are true 64-bit apps to play with.