Hey guyes,
I have always wondered what 64 bit edtion is! Is it better or worse than the common edtion? what are some good things and bad things about it? and do i use it? I kno u all mustthink i'm a total id*** but it would be nice if someone could tell me

Thx everyone!

In fact there ARE no big advantages except for that you're running a 64 bit OS on a 64 bit CPU, which IS faster, but not by much (yet).

Well I personally quite like using it, its like a somewhat more stable version of XP (or so it seems.. im sure some would argue this) the only real official plus points are ones that everyday users dont utilise eg 64bit apps (there arent many, very specialist) and addressing ridiculous amounts of memory (like 16GB.. I dont even know any motherboards that supports that).

The downside has gotta be drivers, you need to get 64bit versions of all your drivers from the vendors, depending on your hardware there may not be 64bit drivers available (and its not just old hardware like my speedtouch dsl modem that suffer this, creatives brand new high-end X-Fi soundcard has no 64bit drivers at the time of writing)

Basically 64 is better than 32. It is a more recent windows based off server 2003, NT v5.2. It is more stable and faster. When running 64bit programs there is performance increase. Also if you are the type that might use 4gb of ram, x64 can actually properly address the full amount of that.

The negative point of 64 is compatibility. You have to have 64bit drivers for everything, check and see if you do. If you don't, don't get it...

- like they said there is a limited ("most" new hardware has x64 drivers or they are in development, so if your only card you put in your machine is video you are fine) driver support.
- Some older software does not work (and a limited number of new software such as splinter cell 3 (last i heard))
- Few CD-mounting apps (but daemon v4 should be out this month), and the ones that are out have some problems (like only mounting ISO's)

+ Large programs (photoshop, dreamweaver, windows) load faster
+ Less lag (in performance not network speed) in games, you usually don't see more FPS, but you usually don't get as laggy (such as in RTS's when you have a ton of units on screen)
+ Control Panel Loads extremly quickly (this always buged me in win32)
+ More stable (as said based of win2k3 SP1 and NT 5.2)
+ "some" better spyware protection (some of the spyware won't install itself, as it doesn't seem to be compatible)
+ The feeling of knowing your running "state of the art" software while all your friends are still stuck in the age of 32-bit

And you can always check here to see if there is drivers: http://developer.amd.com/drivers.aspx

sry for some of the repeat answers that were already given, just wanted to "show my support".

IMO unles you can't find drivers for your hardware, or you can't run some of your software on it there is on legitamate reason not to use it .

I'm using XP 64 bit. Will it work correct with my old 32 bit drivers and software?

No... You need 64-bit drivers, but 32 bit software will work, but not ALL 32-bit software....

I personally run x64 and it runs great... Fast and everything. For a while I nervous about switching due to drivers but eventually my printer/scanner drivers were updated so now I have no compatibility issues. FarCry is the only piece of software I personally use that had x64 issues but there's a workaround or patch for solving this issue, so it's not a huge deal.

I personally use FantomDVD for mounting images (although it doesn't support mdf, it support most major images). Filedisk is another alternative, but I did originally have problems with it for whatever reason....

You do realize that there is a 64bit edition of far cry don't you? I find it odd you would have problems in one of the few games that is actually coded completely in 64bit.

Tyan
SuperMicro

and of course any of the following will happily sell you a 16GB or more machine, IBMs max in the multiples of terabytes; the largest Sun I've seen is 256GB:
IBM
Dell
HP/Compaq
Sun Microsystems (though to run XP on one of these would be a travesty)
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (would also be a travesty)
Apple (can't run XP on these yet... but hey, it does support up to 16GB)

Basically if you don't have a good understanding of 64-bit and you don't have an insanely powerful computer then you probably don't need it.

Really? My copy didn't work properly the last time I tried it... Might have been my DVD drive which I had to replace the month after. I haven't tried to install it anytime lately as I don't have too much time to game. heh....

My bad for the bad info.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/Produc...1_10543,00.html

Note that Windows XP and Windows 2003 64bit editions (except 2003 datacenter) can't address more than 1TB of physical RAM... It's not a hardware limitation, it's an artificial one in the Windows codebase itself. Just an FYI.

lol who the hell would use 1TB of RAM? might be useful when you have 5 million applications loaded at the same time.....

although in reality nobody will have 1TB, at least in the next 20 years or so, thats a stupid way for microsoft to code

Not if your running a 1TB database in memory... that is the advantage of 64-bit!

Things aren't coded 'in a certain number of bits'. In actuality, Far Cry was most likely programmed to be portable across 32-64 bit platforms. This means passing sizeof(datatype) instead of an immediate number (some datatypes have different sizes on 64 bit platforms), and a few other related things. Really, if they've coded it properly, then porting it to native AMD64 would be a matter of just recompiling.

It's not as complicated as it's made out to be; I find that many of the people talking about compatibility and the programming of applications on AMD64 to have little or no C(++) experience.



You can download the 64-bit update.

http://amd64andfarcry.gamedaemons.net/farcry.asp

looking at it from the point of view of an complete noobie in terms of harrware n coding.


32 BIT IS SMALLER THAN 64 BIT.

now whatever it means or even if it does not have any significance here,but it conveys smthng.

one of my friends once told me that 64 bit has more parellel running so you get faster performance. but i did not check it or verify it. am not into all this. so do not rely on what i said.

even i am moving over to win xp 64 bit. i heard it is far more stable.

I dont know about parallel running. But yes it is better than 32 bit XP simply because the 64 bit version was built using Win 2k3 SP1 same as with Vista. So you get better and more robust memory management for starters. And possibly a more powerful task scheduler. and the NT kernel has some tweaks because the version is 5.2 instead of 5.1. If properly written 64 bit softwares exist it will be a lot faster than their 32 bit counterparts simply because of the increase in the number of registers. It is a great work by MS but it is sort of in limbo rihgt now because there are not too many drivers out for it.