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Windows Operating Systems Software Hardware

64-bit Windows XP Tested And Reviewed 426

Posted by timothy from the more-bitness dept.
sebFlyte writes "64-bit Windows is nearly here, despite Microsoft quietly dropping support (and plans for it) for the Itanium on XP ... Windows XP for x64 RC1 has been tested, seemingly fairly thoroughly, and actually looks like a stable OS."
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64-bit Windows XP Tested And Reviewed More

64-bit Windows XP Tested And Reviewed

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  • Alpha (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Zule_Boy ( 45951 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:19PM (#11298806) Homepage
    Seems kind of funny after the whole NT on Alpha death microsoft induced. Now this should be the final blow (thankfully) for the UnObtanium.

    • Re:Alpha (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheNetAvenger ( 624455 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @05:24PM (#11299734)
      Seems kind of funny after the whole NT on Alpha death microsoft induced. Now this should be the final blow (thankfully) for the UnObtanium.

      Compaq purchased DEC, and halted the Windows2000 production agreement with Microsoft. Microsoft regretably pulled support from the Alpha in RC1 of Windows2000.

      So peeps can thank Compaq for killing the Alpha, not Microsoft.

  • WinXP x64 on Xeon machine (Score:5, Interesting)

    by st3v ( 805783 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:20PM (#11298814)
    I recently built a Dual Xeon (with EM64T extensions) machine, and I tried Windows XP x64, and it is running pretty well so far. It is backwards compatible with 32-bit applications, but you need to find 64-bit drivers for your hardware. 32-bit drivers will not work.
    • Isn't DMA broken on the Intel x86-64 chips, slowing things down?

      • Re:WinXP x64 on Xeon machine (Score:5, Informative)

        by Wiz ( 6870 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @06:03PM (#11300060) Homepage
        You are simplifying things a bit, but in a round-about way it is true!

        From Redhat's release notes for the update 2 to RHEL3.

        Software IOTLB -- Intel® EM64T does not support an IOMMU in hardware while AMD64 processors do. This means that physical addresses above 4GB (32 bits) cannot reliably be the source or destination of DMA operations. Therefore, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 kernel "bounces" all DMA operations to or from physical addresses above 4GB to buffers that the kernel pre-allocated below 4GB at boot time. This is likely to result in lower performance for IO-intensive workloads for Intel® EM64T as compared to AMD64 processors.

        See for yourself:

        Redhat. [redhat.com]

    • And this seems to be the big problem at the moment.

      I don't know about you, but I certainly haven't been seeing optional 64-bit versions of drivers anywhere.
    • Yup i found the same issues with my athlon 64 too. Another big big problem. SATA support is still not in natively. So you have to use the CD provided by the manufacturer. So if you build a brand new system with SATA, best of luck if you dont have the drivers on a floppy. Installation says press so and so key if you have SCSI/RAID drivers and then if you do so looks for them on floppy. Then there were some other bugs like wallpapers acting funny and all. I didnt really see a huge performance dip in Windows
      • So to use modern harddisks with Windows you need an antique floppy drive most of us haven't used for years?
        • Yeah, that's pretty much it. I would have thought that winXP64 would have included SATA drivers, but nope, they aren't included. It would have been nice if they had of at least made it possible to grab them of a usb keyfob/thumbdrive/whatever you wanna call 'em. I mean, c'mon, I can boot a full Linux distro off one of those things. I expect windows could have at least been able to grab some drivers off 'em.

          The 64 bit drivers can be a real bitch, too. For instance, if you have an all-in-wonder card, it

  • Windose... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ThisNukes4u ( 752508 ) <tcoppi AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:22PM (#11298840) Homepage
    This is supposed to be a professional news site, can we just spell it as it is for once, and bash in the comments instead of the supposedly "objective" blurb?

  • What, you say? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:23PM (#11298848)
    First the Windows anti-spyware outperforms ad-aware and spybot s&d now you're saying this thing looks like a stable OS?

    Who are you and what have you done with Slashdot?

    I, for one, will NOT welcome our new MS-loving overlords.
    • First the Windows anti-spyware outperforms ad-aware and spybot s&d now you're saying this thing looks like a stable OS?

      Maybe this is also made by Giant ? :D

  • Don't know.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by orevo ( 697682 ) * on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:24PM (#11298853) Homepage
    what you all mean. My Windows Server 2003 desktop (YES I USE IT AS A DESKTOP!) is perfectly stable and has yet to give me one single hiccup. Granted, I'm not much of a gamer, but this setup seems to be working like a dream for me.

    • Re:Don't know.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Mike Rubits ( 818811 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:26PM (#11298863)
      You and me both. I use it as a gaming OS too. Awesome once you trim down the server fat you don't really need on a desktop. It's XP without the bull, and hand-holding.
      • When i ran Server 2k3 as my desktop, i had to ADD desktop fat. Turning on the Sound subsystem, install java, turn on graphics acceleration, loosen up security in IE, install firefox, enable direct X, install XP video card drivers (I had an ATi card back then, and they don't produce drivers for 2k3 like nVidia does), turn on image acquisition, turn on the CD burning subsystem, tweak memory usage to make it run more desktop-friendly. The only thing you actually turn off (and really don't have to) is that an

  • Slower gaming... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Frank of Earth ( 126705 ) <<moc.snikrepf> <ta> <knarf>> on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:25PM (#11298862) Homepage Journal
    http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/os/0,39024180, 39183101-5,00.htm

    Looks like you drop a few fps when running the 32bit games in a 64bit os. I wonder if new nvidia drivers would make it as fast or faster though...
    • It's not given that 64bit is always faster than 32bit. If you run in 32bit, you may have smaller memory-CPU transfers, thus your software may run faster.

  • This article is useless without torrents (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:26PM (#11298873)
    Er, I meant pictures.

  • I've been using it... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TexVex ( 669445 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:28PM (#11298881)
    I recently upgraded to an Athlon64 3200+ and downloaded the Win64 eval/beta. There's practically no difference between it an Windows XP. I hvaen't had a single weird application incompatibility -- it's running all my 32-bit stuff just fine. I'm a gamer, so "32-bit apps" includes some hefty 3D-accellerated, DirectX-using stuff. I don't have any 64-bit apps to test with.

    Hardware support required some initial digging to get drivers, but everything works fine.

    In other words, if it weren't for the "64-Bit Edition" on the bootup screen and the Task Manager identifying 32-bit apps as such, I wouldn't really notice a difference between this and regular old WinXP.
    • I second the parent's assertion, it really is just like XP32. With RC1, Microsoft has finally turned off debugging and cleaned up the memory management code so that memory usage is more or less exactly in line with XP32(the previous Beta builds ate memory like Roseanne Barr at a buffet), and ZDNet has a good point about the driver stuff, since RC1 includes support for such new stuff as ATI's Radeon X-series cards right out of the box.

      I really only have a handful of complaints at this point, and they're most

      • "My other issue is that the Java Standard Widget Toolkit(SWT) has not been ported to XP64(nor to the devs seem to have a plan to do so at the moment) which means no Eclipse or Azureus in spite of the whole write-once, run-anywhere Java mentality"

        Regardless of wheter the word "Standard" is in the name, SWT is not part of the java spec, it is a third party toolkit. Sun has been bitching about SWT because it is not pure java (it relies on a lot of native hooks) and breaks the write once run anywhere theme o

      • My other issue is that the Java Standard Widget Toolkit(SWT) has not been ported to XP64(nor to the devs seem to have a plan to do so at the moment) which means no Eclipse or Azureus in spite of the whole write-once, run-anywhere Java mentality(and it's a shame, poor Sun actually has had a version of Java ready for XP64 for some time now).

        Yeah... I like SWT too, but maybe Sun is right in that the speed comes at a price.

        You could try Netbeans instead of Eclipse. I prefer Eclipse, but several friends swear
    • Anything feeling like running faster than usually?
    • The version I used about 3 months ago didn't work with any copy-protection schemes. For example no Ubisoft games worked with it including Doom 3, Far Cry, and XIII. The really funny thing was that Ubisoft tech support didn't understand that I was using a beta XP 64-bit OS. They just kept telling me that there are no problems with Windows XP. I finally gave in, and reverted back to XP 32-bit.

      Note that it also doesn't run 16-bit applications, which is rarely a problem, but every now and then I see someth

  • Looks like a stable OS (Score:4, Funny)

    by IO ERROR ( 128968 ) * <error.ioerror@us> on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:31PM (#11298907) Homepage Journal
    Every version of Windows looks stable. Just wait until you get that first STOP error.
  • I've used the 64-bit version since March or April something. Build 1069 had it's fair share of problems, but I've been running build 1218 for a while now, and it isn't much different from normal XP.

    All hardware except for an old USB webcam works fine with the built in drivers (but I ofcourse downloaded and installed 64bit drivers from Nvidia for my FX5600). I use it quite a lot for gaming and remote access to manage porn-downloads from work (dualbooting FreeBSD for useful stuff). All in all, works fine.

  • It's soo darn stable
    it can hold up my table
    no booting this week.

    A nice big square box
    means my dinner rarely rocks
    up solid all month!

    Linux geeks trashing,
    yet food is never crashing
    Communists BEWARE!

    -Don.

  • "Windose"? (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by damiangerous ( 218679 )
    Okay I get "M$", "Winblows" and "Windoze", even though I think it makes the writer look stupid, but how the hell is "Windose" supposed to be denigrating?

  • Typo in article? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kschawel ( 823163 ) <(xc.hta.il) (ta) (todhsals)> on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:45PM (#11299008)
    With the 32-bit version the maximum is 4GB, while systems running the 64-bit version will have as much as 32GB

    Isn't it supposed to be 16TB not 32GB? Just look at the table. Maybe it is referring to something else...

  • Dual Booting Linux & Windows in 64bit (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IcarusMoth ( 631872 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @03:49PM (#11299036)
    I actually do this in both a classic and modern sense. Modernly Its Gentoo and XPx64-beta on the modern machine. I've only had it up and running since just 2 weeks prior to christmas, and have had no major hiccups so far. I have concerns about the speed and availibility of service packs and drivers (as in with such a small niche of customers having these processors will Microsoft, and more importantly 3rd party software and driver venders be as dilligent in keeping them updated, prior experience says no) Still It feels faster than having it run XPpro x32. AND it was free for the beta testing, SO, I've got like 340 more days of free OS action to keep me going.

    In a Classic sense, right next to the AMD sits an Original, |D|I|G|I|T|A|L| Alpha thats currently running NT4 for Alpha and Gentoo (Though it started out with Red Hat). Running NT4Alpha is one of those things that you never forget. Its fast, stable and relatively virus proof but the biggest problem with it is the LACK OF APPLICATIONS. There were and are no third party apps compiled for NT4Alpha. this was such a major issue that |D|I|G|I|T|A|L| released an emulator thingie, but even that was too little too late to save it.

    Thankfully, AMD decided to include Backwards compatibility on the die. because doing it at the higher level chalks up some major performance penalties. But lest we forget, liscensing Alpha technology is the reason we have a lot of the "innovations" boosting speed as of late *cough* Hyperthreading *cough*

    ---
    For great justice move sig
  • I tried installing it on my R3240 Compaq laptop which has a Athlon64 processor - Installed fine on a external Maxtor USB drive, but when I boot it I get immediate BSOD.

    Now the fact that it allowed me to install on a USB external drive is still impressive given the fact that FC3 does not even offer me to install it on USB drive.

    But I don't think Microsoft is investing as much testing / development efforts in it compared to what it did during the release of Windows 2000 - which was the first stable kernel f
  • ...the intrinsic bloated clunkiness of it is. The user experience remains a complete shitstorm.

  • And in other news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 08, 2005 @04:06PM (#11299162)
    MS Buys /.!
  • Windows XP 64-bit edition has some major limitations. First, it uses a new driver model that means that all of the 32-bit drivers for your existing hardware will not work with the new Windows. Second, it has no support implemented for legacy 16-bit DOS or Windows apps which will therefore not run on it. The x86-64 cpus have support for running 16-bit software but Micrsoft chose not to enable it. These limitations don't exist for the 64-bit Linux versions. Microsoft ruled the 32-bit desktop but the 64-b
    • Let me get this straight. First, you say that WinXP 64 won't run your legacy DOS/Win3.1 applications, and then you say that these limitations don't exist for 64-bit Linux? But since when did 16-bit DOS or Windows 3.1 applications run under Linux without an emulator? Sure Wine will run 16-bit DOS and Windows 3.1 applications on Linux. But guess what? Wine is also available for Windows. As for the new driver model, I believe they changed it to increase security, stability, and the ease with which developers

    • Re:Win XP 64-bits is a waste of your time and mone (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kymermosst ( 33885 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @04:55PM (#11299517) Journal
      Now, I'm not one who normally defends Microsoft products, nor do I usually respond to trolls, but here goes:

      Windows XP 64-bit edition has some major limitations. First, it uses a new driver model that means that all of the 32-bit drivers for your existing hardware will not work with the new Windows.

      Given that almost all hardware manufacturers target Windows, I doubt this will be a problem for long for currently-supported hardware.

      Second, it has no support implemented for legacy 16-bit DOS or Windows apps which will therefore not run on it. The x86-64 cpus have support for running 16-bit software but Micrsoft chose not to enable it.

      Credit to Microsoft for finally taking the plunge and not supporting obsolete code. Nobody *has* to use 64-bit Windows, and frankly, using a 64-bit box to run 16-bit software is... a waste. Legacy support has bitten Microsoft in the ass more than a few times when it came to security problems with Windows. Besides, if you need to, you can always run old code using a product like VMware, as well.

      These limitations don't exist for the 64-bit Linux versions.

      This might be because the Linux kernel never "supported" 16-bit DOS or Windows apps by itself. (In fact, the Linux kernel can't run any 16-bit programs by itself, you needed a program like dosemu.)

      Nice troll.

      Microsoft ruled the 32-bit desktop but the 64-bit desktop should belong to Linux.

      That may turn out to be true, but not for any reason you listed.

      • Credit to Microsoft for finally taking the plunge and not supporting obsolete code. Nobody *has* to use 64-bit Windows, and frankly, using a 64-bit box to run 16-bit software is... a waste. Legacy support has bitten Microsoft in the ass more than a few times when it came to security problems with Windows. Besides, if you need to, you can always run old code using a product like VMware, as well.

        If I may, there's something that should be pointed out to you and the OP: the AMD64 specification does not inclu

    • Which distribution would you suggest then, if I want to build a 64bit desktop, and do things like run a scanner, a printer and my wifi card? And if I find a novel 32bit program, such as those Kento Cho shooter games written in D, can I run it?

  • Wait a minute..... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 08, 2005 @04:16PM (#11299231)
    Two pro-MS summaries on /. in one day?

    Satan is putting the snow chains on his SUV as we speak.

  • 64bits, fewer crashes... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jeif1k ( 809151 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @04:27PM (#11299324)
    ... and still nothing decent on.

    Seriously, the problem with Windows are ultimately its bloat, its user interface, its administrative tools, and its functionality. While making it more stable and porting it to a 64bit processor are nice, they don't fix what is fundamentally wrong with it.

  • the power of commercial software development (Score:4, Insightful)

    by geg81 ( 816215 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @04:43PM (#11299439)
    Microsoft manages to deliver a beta of a 64bit version of Windows only, what, several years later than Linux. And while the 64bit Linux distributions come with most applications actually recompiled as 64bits, you will hardly get any 64bit applications for Windows.
  • mIRC randomly freezes (guessing probably some 16 bit code laying around somewhere).

    And certain pictures in Firefox causes a crash in the video drivers.

    Various 3rd party shareware progs I like dont run (again probably 16-bit code), like say the win32 openssl dlls.

  • Stable? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "actually looks like a stable OS."

    I remember hearing that about NT, then NT4, then Win2K, then WinXP.

    Sorry, Microsoft, you've cried wolf too many times. I don't believe it. Or maybe they mean "stable" as in "as stable as WinXP", i.e., "not very stable".

    • Re:Stable? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by fyrewulff ( 702920 )
      if by "not very stable" you mean "XP has only crashed on me once in the last 3 years" like my experience, Linux must have negative crashes.

  • MS haven't released rc1 to the public yet ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by popoutman ( 189497 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @05:14PM (#11299666) Journal
    When you go through the signup procedure to order the beta/evaluation version, you get a link to an iso of a previous version. The latest publicly available .iso of winxp-64 is build 1218. Build version 1289 is the latest of windows server 2003-64bit, and that uses the same code as reviewed.

    Build version 1289 of XP professional is MSDN only at the moment, and is supposed to be released to CPP towards the end of the month.

    I am running 64-bit 2003 server at the moment on a 3000+ amd64 and it just flies along. No real issues so far, apart from dvd layback and some motherboard incompatibility with some graphics cards, but that is a seperate issue.

    I'd suggest trying it for a while. Some of the default security makes sense now, compared to that in vanilla XP.

    • I am running 64-bit 2003 server at the moment on a 3000+ amd64 and it just flies along
      I ran that for a while a couple of weeks back, mostly to run windows media player, and it worked well once I downloaded some drivers. It even ran a game that won't run on win2k out of the box - "Dungeon Keeper II". In the end a lack of a camera driver moved me back to 32bit win2k (and linux 2.6.*), but that is not Microsofts problem.
  • I dunno, WinXP looks like a stable OS, until it freezes.

  • Which one? (Score:4, Funny)

    by CrkHead ( 27176 ) on Saturday January 08, 2005 @06:29PM (#11300222)
    "actually looks like a stable OS."

    So, what OS does it look like now?

  • 16-bit programs do not run (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wintermute1974 ( 596184 ) <wintermute@berne-ai.org> on Saturday January 08, 2005 @11:27PM (#11301832) Homepage
    From the article [zdnet.co.uk]:
    Anyone who still uses older 16-bit programs can forget about running them under 64-bit Windows. However, some 32-bit applications use 16-bit code during installation, which means that these programs cannot be installed.
    Well, this is disappointing. For the first time ever Microsoft is dropping support for binaries that ran in earlier versions of Windows.

    Does Microsoft no longer value older software? Do they presuppose that users no longer want backward compatibility?

    Is it too hard to extend the NT Virtual DOS Machine to the 64-bit architecture? Or is the expectation that I only run the new, 64-bit, XP editions of Microsoft Spiffy from now on?

    Really, I thought Microsoft's big ace was the mountains of old, existing binaries that just worked without needing the source to recompile on their new OSes. Apparently this does not matter any more.

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