XP 64 has dropped

elevate

elevate

New member
And unlike another company's so-called 64-bit OS, this one actually is 64-bit. And it won't cost you $129 to upgrade. ;) Until July 31st, it's free.
 
are you serious??
friggin' cool. thank god i bought my AMD 64 chip awhile back.

have you tried it yet? i'm kinda worried that it may have issues with some software programs and don't know if I want to risk it.....hmmmmmm :confused:
 
I tried one of the release candidates a while back (from MSDN) on my machine at work. All was fine and dandy as far as software goes. The issue I ran into was device drivers. There were no 64-bit drivers for my wide format Epson printer, or my CD duplicator's printer. I kinda need to use those things from time to time, so I went back to 32-bit XP. Apps that aren't compiled for 64-bit run in 32-bit address space, which never seemed to cause any problems - MS Office, SolidWorks, Photoshop, Illustrator, Firefox, Visual Studio 6, Visual Studio .NET, and Vegas all ran fine. I think as long as you can locate 64-bit drivers for your hardware, you should be fine.
 
brzilian said:
You missed this part:



https://microsoft.productorder.com/clientx64/default.aspx
Click to expand...

see, that's what i don't understand. they say you have to have had Pro preinstalled when you ordered it? But on the link elevate gave, they said if you built your computer you can still get the update if you click on the link to the right....which is the link you just gave that said you have to have it preinstalled!!!!!!! i'm confuse-ed
how do you build a computer yourself and have it preinstalled on the hard drive already?!! :eek:
 
bennychico11 said:
see, that's what i don't understand. they say you have to have had Pro preinstalled when you ordered it? But on the link elevate gave, they said if you built your computer you can still get the update if you click on the link to the right....which is the link you just gave that said you have to have it preinstalled!!!!!!! i'm confuse-ed
how do you build a computer yourself and have it preinstalled on the hard drive already?!! :eek:
Click to expand...
I would assume there's wording missing from the second link and not incorrect wording at the first link.
 
The impression I got was that if you bought a 64 bit processor between certain dates and own XP pro, then you are eligible for the free update (+$12USD shipping). I also understand that by doing so you are forfeiting your rights to the standard XP pro.
 
xstatic said:
I also understand that by doing so you are forfeiting your rights to the standard XP pro.
Click to expand...
I was thinking that meant your existing XP license will no longer be used, as in, you could install it on another machine. Perhaps not.
 
elevate said:
I was thinking that meant your existing XP license will no longer be used, as in, you could install it on another machine. Perhaps not.
Click to expand...

or it could mean they want you to burn your 32 bit version!
if 64 doesn't work for you, then you're screwed. :D
 
I imagined that they meant that you would get the new xp64 under the same terms as your current XPpro. You can only use it once on one computer:) I would imagine you could switch back as long as you did not continue to use the new one as well:)
 
AMD Athlo64 3000

So, what is the lowdown? Is the 64 compatable with older soundcards and Gadget Labs equipment, programs such as Soundforge 6? I was thinking about picking up one of these computers this week but decided to look for advice first.
 
elevate said:
I was thinking that meant your existing XP license will no longer be used, as in, you could install it on another machine. Perhaps not.
Click to expand...

Are you kidding? Not with MS. They'll gouge you for every license they can.
 
elevate said:
And unlike another company's so-called 64-bit OS, this one actually is 64-bit.
Click to expand...

And you think that's an advantage? Time for a quick lesson in computer architecture....

First, Mac OS X isn't the only OS that does this. Solaris can run a 32-bit kernel on 64-bit hardware. So can Linux. This is actually fairly common usage among sysadmins, as 64-bit kernels tend to be inherently slower. If a 32-bit kernel has a 64-bit VM, there's no real advantage to running a 64-bit kernel unless you have drivers that somehow benefit from a huge address space. (I can only think of two---Infiniband and one other similar type of device that I can't remember. :D)

The 64-bit AMD architecture is a -very- unusual architecture. On the x86-64 architecture, 64-bit code runs faster than 32-bit code. The -only- reason that this is the case is that the IA32 (x86) architecture is -severly- register-starved to begin with. Running the chip in 64-bit mode causes it to have access to twice as many general-purpose registers, so it isn't (as) register-starved (16 GPRs instead of 8).

On most architectures, however, 64-bit code is slightly slower than 32-bit code unless it is doing significant amounts of 64-bit integer math (which is not common in an OS kernel) or is able to take advantage of the extra address space in some useful way (e.g. working with very a large database in RAM).

Apple made the only logical choice, given their hardware (32 GPRs on PowerPC), and Microsoft made the only logical choice, given their hardware (8 GPRs on x86-32, 16 GPRs on x86-64). They made different choices because the underlying hardware has fundamentally different performance characteristics. Both were, in my professional opinion, the right choices.
 
dgatwood said:
And you think that's an advantage? Time for a quick lesson in computer architecture....
Click to expand...
No thanks, not needed.

Aside from the kernel though, isn't there some other OS subsystems that are still 32-bit? I was under the impression that there was.
 
elevate said:
No thanks, not needed.

Aside from the kernel though, isn't there some other OS subsystems that are still 32-bit? I was under the impression that there was.
Click to expand...

True, but nobody ever suggested that prior Windows 64-bit versions (the first of which was way back in 2001, I think) weren't 'true' 64-bit OSes, despite the fact that they were missing 64-bit versions of frameworks. That's simply not a fair characterization.

To put things in the proper perspective, Intel is generally believed to have been planning to ship Itanium as early as 1998-99. One can assume Intel gave Microsoft ample warning to start working on 64-bit support. Based on that, my guess is they've been working on a 64-bit version of Windows since before Apple bought NeXT....

Ask that question again in 2012. :D
 
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