XP Pro vs XP Pro P64

budhisetiawan · May 2005

I am guessing i have the first...but how do i know?

kryyst · May 2005

If you bought it you have the first.

Hawk · May 2005

If you have it on your pc. Start-Programs-Accessories-System Tools-System Information....First one on top tells you... OS Name: Windows XP Professional.

budhisetiawan · May 2005

I know its pro....was curious bout the 64 thing....but does it really matter...

kryyst · May 2005

xp 64 will run better on your machine because you have an athlon 64. Regular xp really takes no advantage of your faster chip.

budhisetiawan · May 2005

figures they would do that...lol...well im not forking out the xtra 150 for that....not worth it huh....

Thx Kry....help me out w/ the others...

citrixmeta · May 2005

kryyst wrote:

xp 64 will run better on your machine because you have an athlon 64. Regular xp really takes no advantage of your faster chip.

this statement is true except, be warned that some apps wont even install because they wont detect the OS properly.

budhisetiawan · May 2005

wow....good pt...not switching anyway..thx all for the heads up...

POST CLOSED

kryyst · May 2005

citrixmeta wrote:

this statement is true except, be warned that some apps wont even install because they wont detect the OS properly.

To that I add #$@#$(*& Microsoft. Can never get their stuff straight.

HoCk · December 2005

you will see that if you have windows xp pro x64

Zuntar · December 2005

Hock, do you have any issues with support/programs/drivers/applications/ or games?

HoCk · December 2005

at first getting applications was a pain. now however alomost everything has a version for x64, drivers included. This is no longer the focus for many software developers with vista comming out, however so far this is super stable and really has caused no problems.

kryyst · July 2006

Holy thread revival.

Anyway I put together a new rig a few months ago nothing super cutting edge (asus mobo pentiumD 805 processor, 6600GT and a Sata drive) but still a significant upgrade to my Athalon XP 2000.

I installed the hardware booted up into my old Windows XP system and everything worked. However it had been a good year since a clean install and since I had this new Dual Core processor running in 64bit I figured I'd give XP64 Pro a try.

Installing it wasn't a problem and initially I did see some performance increases especially at boot. Nvidia also has drivers out that take advantage of Dual Core and 64bit so there is a bit of a bonus also (nothing perceptible by me though, the clean install had more of an effect then that).

My games were all working and most typical apps also installed fine. However none had 64 bit so they all install into Program Files(x32), which means they are only running in 32bit mode and XP64 actually takes a slight performance hit when running x32 apps. Again though I couldn't really perceive a notice in games or authoring movies.

But that's about the end of the pleasentries. I tried to get Deamon tools to work. They do have a 64 bit version out but it wouldn't install kept crashing, checked the forums and other people had the same issues. It's apparently tied to one of the Security patches but I didn't bother messing around. Alcohol 120 proof simple won't work.

My wife has a symbol palm well symbol has no hotsync software for XP64, nor do they currently have any intentions of releasing any. So we now add one upset wife to the cauldron.

The Free version of AVG doesn't work on XP64 Pro. So I had to acquire a real version of it, but to be honest I didn't pay so it was an annoyance more then anything.

After running like this for a couple months I did noticed that apps seemed to be crashing a little more frequently then before. Not a 2 to 1 ratio or anything but often enough for me to notice 'hey things are crashing more often'.

So with these annoyances and the 'Wife' factor I've gone back to XP32 pro. The insignificant performance gain of XP64 and the more significant unsupported software really makes it a pointless OS. Most developers are ramping up for Vista and give a rats ass about XP64. I can't say that I'm actually surprised by this. But it really means that XP64 is about as good of an OS as Windows ME was. (If you dont' know Windows ME suckes ass).

Zuntar · July 2006

Let me put on my suprized look.:surprised

Is vista to be 32 bit or 64 bit?

kryyst · July 2006

Zuntar wrote:

Let me put on my suprized look.:surprised

Is vista to be 32 bit or 64 bit?

It's coming out in both flavors. The 32bit version won't support EFI though. However as to which one to go with and how much they'll cost not sure at this point and honestly I don't care I have no plans on upgrading at home or the office.

Zuntar · July 2006

kryyst wrote:

It's coming out in both flavors. The 32bit version won't support EFI though. However as to which one to go with and how much they'll cost not sure at this point and honestly I don't care I have no plans on upgrading at home or the office.

Yeah, me neither. Hell I didn't go to XP for almost two years after it was first released!! Me not trust MS.:nervous:

kryyst · July 2006

For me it's not a trust issue it's a lack of need. Right now I use XP for gaming, the end. Vista isn't going to improve on that role anytime flat. For everything else Linux, XP and OSX has it covered.

Northstar · July 2006

Thanks for the insight into XP64. I hope it was a lesson that wasn't too costly for you to learn, but it's really good info. I would think there'd be a larger performance difference in 64 over 32, but perhaps we're already encroaching on diminishing returns.

This reminds me of something funny. As some of you may or may not know, Apple's OS X is a 64-bit operating system. And you are probably aware their new systems sport the Intel dual cores. But are they 64bit? No. Which makes me say, whaaaa? This 64bit OS has been out for how many years?

I guess Steve Jobs is saving 64bit processors as his big announcement for when can make the ipod no smaller.

kryyst · July 2006

The lesson only cost me a day's worth of reformating and re-installing things. Which I don't mind it's something to do. I wouldn't have paid for XP64 just to do this, fortunately I didn't have to. I was also thinking XP64 would offer some speed advantages - and it does at the OS level. So booting up is faster and ummm few other minor things are faster. The problem is that there is very little software specifically written for XP64 and most of the existing ones are low level programs that have to be. Games, Utils, general apps are all 32bit so soon as you install them into XP64 they are running in a 32bit layer. Now fortunately XP64 isn't exactly emulating 32bit ontop of 64 that would be painfully slow. But they are slower. The reason is that XP64 uses 64bit sized words which are extremely efficient IF every program understands them. But as soon as a program doesn't understand 64bit words then it becomes less efficient because it's sending a 64bit size of memory that is only half full. So XP64 is taking up 4 lanes of high way but only using 2 at anyone time.

OSX is running in both 64 and 32 bit depending on the processors it's running on. That's what the whole Rossetta thing is. Converting between PowerPC code and Intel. Fortunately now more and more programs are coming out in native mode. Which means that the program is tied to the OS and that way only the OS has to worry about what hardware it's running on.

Much the same way that linux has it's seperate kernels but if you only need one version of GIMP or Open Office regardless if it's running on an Intel, AMD, PowerPC or DecAlpha.

Northstar · July 2006

I didn't think the Motorolla chips were 64 bit, so I don't know that the OS ever ran in 64. My surprise is that they when they were choosing to go with Intel, they didn't make the leap to 64 bit. Granted they are dual core which is nice, but only 32 bit. I mean since people have to reprogram in universal binary to make the apps compatible with both chip sets, why not have them rewrite the code for 64 bit too?

I suppose in a way it would be leaving the Motorolla Mac owners high and dry, as I don't think you can run a 64 bit app on a 32 bit processor. At least Apple is pretty good at gradually transitioning it's users from one tech to the next.

Northstar · August 2006

Well Apple announced it's new workhorses at WWDC. 2 Intel Xeon 64-bit dual core processors. The whole thing looks pretty sweet. I recommend checking out their website and watching the keynote presentation. There's some new OS X features that'll blow your mind.

XP Pro vs XP Pro P64

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