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Sixty-four bits
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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by wil5on on Wed Dec 28th at 11:09am 2005

If someone were to, say, get a computer with an AMD 64 bit processor, would such a computer be compatible with the 32-bit version of windows XP? Is there a discount system for current owners of the 32-bit version of this operating system to purchase the later version which has double the bits?


"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"
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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by Myrk- on Wed Dec 28th at 11:16am 2005

You can still run 32 bit, and 16 bit, and 1 bit if you really wanted to if such a thing existed (I'm sure Crono will enlighten us!). Afaik Windows XP64 bit is either released or still in beta- so I'm really unhelpful.

As for usefulness, I think 64 bit is just started to actually be worth while, but most things still don't use it. It was all a marketing scam by AMD- Intel created 64 bit long ago, but saw no potential for it in the immediate future.




-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by gimpinthesink on Wed Dec 28th at 11:40am 2005

You can run any 32bit program on a 64bit processor and Windows XP 64bit has been released it went gold the same day as Intel released the P4E which is there 64bit processor. I thourght that was a little bit of a coinkiedink.

[*EDIT*]
Sorry just found out that Intells 64bit cpu is called EM64T mush have changed the name since the last time I heard it



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by Crono on Wed Dec 28th at 12:33pm 2005

Actually, I'd suggest running 32-bit stuff opposed to 64-bit stuff on the AMD64, just because the technology was made to optimize 32-bit applications. If you used XP-64 it'd most likely run slower.

Not much to "enlighten" ... I've said this before, actually. As far as I know, the AMD (and the P4-64bit stuff) is the only 64-bit chip that can even run 32-bit applications. Intel has a couple Itanium and the one gimp mentioned (it's just a P4 with 64-bit ... not to downplay the difficulty of doing that or anything)

Others have had 64-bit stuff for a long time. It just never sped anything up and became harder to write for. (EPIC architecture, which is used by the Itanium is a biotch)


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by Loco on Wed Dec 28th at 1:18pm 2005

My brother has just got a 64-bit AMD processor with his laptop, and the whole thing came with Windows XP x64 Edition. It seems to run fairly smoothly, although programs are divided into 32 and 64 bit folders.


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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by Dred_furst on Wed Dec 28th at 5:57pm 2005

Personally i want to check win x64 out, to see if its any good.


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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by satchmo on Wed Dec 28th at 6:10pm 2005

I think I'll wait until the rest of the world switches to 64-bit (at least for all the major games) before making the transition.

32-bit suits me just fine right now.


"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by rs6 on Wed Dec 28th at 6:27pm 2005

I love my AMD64. I got the 3200+ about a year and a half ago and its great. It runs 32-bit stuff amazingly. I have not tryed windows XP-64 on my computer, but I have tryed 64-bit linux kernels, and they run much faster than 32-bit ones.



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by Orpheus on Wed Dec 28th at 11:00pm 2005

My 3500+ runs smooth and fast. I am not sure if its fas because it is running @ 2.2ghz or in spite of it TBH. All I know is it runs much faster than my old 1.8 P4. Not just 400 mhz faster but MUCH faster, period.

My 3500+ is also a 939 pin processor so there is still room for faster and bigger processors too if need be.

and yes, its supposed to be a 64bit type as well and is running the old XP pro corp edition of windows.





The best things in life, aren't things.



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by Crono on Wed Dec 28th at 11:07pm 2005

It's because the 64-bit chips from AMD pipeline current 32-bit applications. The clock speed (thank God) is no longer ANYTHING NEAR what the performance is. I'd say if you really wanted to measure it against clock speeds, that 2.2Ghz 64 would be about the same as a 3Ghz P4 (thus the number 3500, I believe)

As rs6 said, there are many 64-bit OS's out there that run great on this platform, I doubt Windows will be one that runs well though. Think about it. It's Windows, so you're going to want all the optimization you can get. I doubt they've optimized anything for you in XP64. In any case, the AMD (specifically) was made to speed up 32-bit stuff.

What chip were you planning on getting, anyway?


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by rs6 on Wed Dec 28th at 11:22pm 2005

My friend had the beta version for windows XP-64 for his 3200+. It worked nicely, but it seemed that even the simplest applications used more RAM than they should have in 64-bit mode. It probalby just window's horrible system for using RAM and pagefiles.

Vista is supposed to have a 64-bit version as well. I used a beat of vista, and it wasn't very good at all.



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by Orpheus on Wed Dec 28th at 11:27pm 2005

With todays ability to have literally gigs of ram, how does one determine "horrible?"

I only have 512 currently and zero problems with running out.





The best things in life, aren't things.



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by rs6 on Wed Dec 28th at 11:31pm 2005

he had 768 megs, and running a few apps was using up a good percentage of the RAM.



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by Crono on Wed Dec 28th at 11:35pm 2005

Using more than it needs to. Having gigs of ram doesn't solve anything, you'll always need more, so conserving what you have is important. I imagine what they did with XP64 is just "wrap it", and make it the 32-bit version with some overhead to adapt to 64. It's easiest thing to do and no sweat off their sacks.

Windows has always misused the pagefile (ever wonder why your computer runs slow after copying a large file and nothing is being used? Windows dumps the pagefile when it shouldn't be used in the first place for a 1:1 copy.)

Orph, you run out of ram all the time. That's what a page file is for (VMM). As far as the computer is concerned you have 4GB of ram. (not physical ram of course, but this is oblivious to everything except software and the chipset, I suppose.)

But there's other funky things Windows does, for some reason it likes using the pagefile more often than physical ram ... which make everything slower, since it's on the HDD. Just a really stupid system, to be honest.

I think the reason why is the same reason some engine parts in cars are so poorly placed (thus hard to remove and replace), they could have done it in five minutes but wanted coffee instead.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by Orpheus on Wed Dec 28th at 11:40pm 2005

You're prolly right. I remember setting my virtual memory myself during my last tweaking.

I guess since I get no messages I just overlook it is all.

I did have better service setting my own. Windows didn't handle it very well on its own.

*shrugs*





The best things in life, aren't things.



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by Crono on Wed Dec 28th at 11:54pm 2005

Yeah. I found out Windows was using it improperly because at one point I had ~350MB of ram (out of 512) free, yet it said I ran out of pagefile and it was being increased from 1700MB to 2500MB. That's about the time I stepped in.

There are some tricks, however, to reset the pagefile, because most of the time (apparently) if the pagefile is acting up like that it's corrupted. In which case, you blank it out (set the pagefile to 0, restart, reset it to what you want and restart again) However, the pagefile gets corrupted just as easily as everything else in the damn system.

Also, the fact that Windows can only handle segmentation faults from software is absurd. If hardware drivers do it ... it's lock up city (instead of just disabling the piece of hardware, depending on what it is of course, and saying, "hey, this seg. faulted, you should check it out".)

DRIVER_IRQL_LESS_NOT_EQUAL garbage. Sadly, changing the IRQ doesn't always work. :

Piece of s**t.

Sorry about that tangent. Enough hijacking.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by rs6 on Thu Dec 29th at 12:02am 2005

Windows sucks crono I agree. I was using half of my RAM once(out of a gig), with 3 GB of page file, f*cking windows.



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by wil5on on Thu Dec 29th at 12:58am 2005

Thanks for the input. The processor we were looking at (this is for a friend, not myself) is the following:

AMD Athlon 64 3500+, Socket 939, "Venice Core", HT2000 MT/s (HyperTransport System Bus), 128K L1 Cache, 512KB L2 Cache, Frequency 2.2GHz, Features Enchanced Memory Controller & SSE3 Instructions

I have another question, this time about video cards. Is the Radeon X700 any good? My friend wants a machine which will run Age of Empires 3. The numbers seem to say the card will do fine, but does anyone have experience with this card?




&quot;If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?&quot;
- My yr11 Economics teacher



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by Crono on Thu Dec 29th at 4:01am 2005

I drool at the sight of close to a meg of processor cache. *drool*

If you plan on getting an ATi card, I'd strongly recommend staying away from nvidia chipsets. Probably either an ATi chipset (they make them now too smiley or a VIA or something as such. Not sure of the advantages there though, I've just heard of many problems when interfacing the nforce stuff with ATi cards. Which, honestly, would be expected.

For the video card, I'd suggest leaning towards the Pro version, simply because it has twice as much memory, you want to make sure it's got at least 256MB of ram, just so the card has some longevity. (This helps with texture compression). More ram, I would personally consider more valuable than slightly faster ram and less space. There's also a version of the XT which has the speed (1050 Mhz ram) and the space (256MB) the review I'm reading, which was written over a year ago, says the suggested price of that is $245 USD, which is about $100 more than the normal X700. The card its self seems comparable to the GF6800 GT, so it's no doubt a powerful card and will run Age of Empires 3 with no problem, perhaps not maxed out though.

I'd say, go for more ram over speed, but pretty much if you had to choose between the four flavors of X700, don't choose the lowest one, it's ram is very slow and half the size. At least chip in for the Pro, which should only be about $50 USD more. (Obviously, all these prices are objective, meaning they should just give you an idea of ratio)

Something that's more important to look at is price though. New Egg has:

X800XT for $269 That's just like the X700 with more pipelines. That should allow for faster rendering. But should is the operative word there.

That's just an example though. Give a look through some sites. The X700 will do the deed just fine though.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Sixty-four bits
Posted by rs6 on Thu Dec 29th at 4:35am 2005

Nice Processor. I can't say anythign about the video card though, i'm an nvida guy. Personally i would recommend a nvidia card. A 6800, or above would be great and run AO3 with all eyecandy.




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