Why is 64bit switch taking so long?

[Chadder007]

Originally posted by: Aberforth
A lot of people are switching to 64bit windows because there are less chances of any compatibility issues with the new hardware- you can easily get 64bit drivers if your hardware is like 2 years old. Also the next version of Winodws is going to 64bit only so people using 32bit versions of Vista won't be able to updrade to the upcoming 64bit Windows. Therefore I recommend power users to switch to 64bit version of Windows as soon as possible.

I just wish that vendors would give more a choice when purchasing new PCs with Vista....currently most only ship with 32bit Vista. Ive only seen HP give an option on some of their laptops/pcs for x64.

 

[Nothinman]

So when someone asks, "why 64-bit?" They're asking, "Why an AMD64 or EMT64 processor with a 64-bit version of Windows rather than a 32-bit version of Windows?"

It depends on the context. 64-bit processors have been available for over a decade so the question "Why is 64bit switch taking so long?" could also be used to ask why AMD64 is only the first consumer level 64-bit processor.

If the increased physical address space was the ONLY reason "64-bit" mattered, sure, PAE would be reasonable solution.

Virtual address space is what's expanded and it is the main feature by a long shot. The extra GPRs will help but it's not something that the user will see and the speed difference will be small enough that I doubt they'll even know they're there.

As for PAE being reasonable, it depends on the situation. If you just want a lot of memory for filesystem caching and/or running more instances of processes that don't need more than 2G or 3G of VM then it's fine, but because even with PAE each process is still 32-bit and thus limited to 2G or 3G of VM you need further hacks like AWE to quickly adjust mappings and give a single process access to that memory so that's hardly an ideal solution.

The fact that the A64 and Core 2's are 64-bit processors means little compared to the other features those processors that happen to be 64-bit have.

Features like what?

It'll suck not to have that when you need it, but what harm does it do to have it and not need it?

At the very least 64-bit binaries are typically larger and require more memory so there is a little bit of harm, whether it's enough of a difference to be a concern or even noticable to the user again depends on the situation.

 

[Jeff7181]

Features like what?

Read the article on ArsTechnica that I linked to. I'm not going to copy and paste all of it (or pretend I understand all of it).

 

[drag]

At the very least 64-bit binaries are typically larger and require more memory so there is a little bit of harm, whether it's enough of a difference to be a concern or even noticable to the user again depends on the situation.

Yes. Absolutely.

64bit software and 64bit operating systems will use more memory then 32bit counterparts that are identical source-code wise.. just to do the same job.

This is the reason I stopped using 64bit Linux. It did everything I wanted just fine, but it was using a extra 128-256megs or so more of ram during normal use.

Then when you add up the cost of supporting 32bit software... When your mixing and matching 32bit programs with 64bit programs you can end up using _more_then_twice_as_much_ram_ as just running the same applications with the same load on a pure 32bit systems.

So realy the only _compelling_ reason to move to full 64bit operating system at this time is if you have applications that require large amounts of memory to run.

Sure there is some extra features that may provide a performance increase for native 64bit systems in some cases, but realy that sort of thing rarely shows up in anything other then benchmarks and specific loads. In real world desktop they are not that compelling.

 

[Nothinman]

Read the article on ArsTechnica that I linked to. I'm not going to copy and paste all of it (or pretend I understand all of it).

I have (well most of it, I skimmed parts) and the only tangible benefits that I'm seeing are still larger virtual address space, more GPRs and the ability to run 64-bit and 32-bit binaries in long mode. And of those three regular users will only ever see the first and third and they'll likely confuse the first with fact that MS has crippled the PAE support in 32-bit client Windows releases. I don't know about you but I've seen a lot more threas with a subject like "Why doesn't Windows see all of my 4G?!?!?" than threads with one like "How can I be sure that I'm using all of my GPRs on my C2D?".

So unless I happened to miss some major part of that article the fact that it's 64-bit which allows people to use all of their memory in no way whatsoever "means little compared to the other features those processors that happen to be 64-bit".