64-Bit Windows Releases Now Available

SimplyJeff writes "Athlon 64 users rejoice! Today at WinHEC 2005 in Seattle, Microsoft announced availability of the 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Strangely (and possibly a sign the drivers aren't yet up to snuff), Microsoft will not sell the 64-bit releases in retail outlets. For now, only new PC buys can get Windows x64 Edition as an option. However, those who purchased Windows XP after March 31, 2003, can trade in their copy for the 64-bit version at a cost of $12 and a voided warranty. Although, x64 users will get one free support call to Microsoft." Reader bonch adds a link to CNET's review of the OS.

Applications?

[_Sharp'r_]

Great, now all people need are some applications really designed to take advantage of it....

Re:Applications?

[Reaperducer]

64-bit Solitarire is going to rock! I can't wait! Minesweeper will seem so much better with all those extra bits. It's definately worth the upgrade price.

This isn't news!

[Linker3000]

I had a Commodore 64 in - oh - 1982.

Re:Applications?

[croddy]

yes! it handles such long long words!

Re:Applications?

[ceeam]

64-bitness Microsoft way:
void* = 64bit
int = 32bit(?)
long = 32bit(!)
long long = 64bit

Good thing it's not "long long long long" :-(
Assholes.

Re:Applications?

[turgid]

This is one of the many shortcomings of C. In the old days, in FORTRAN, you could say INTEGER*4 and be sure you were getting 4 bytes.

So you go and make a bunch of typedefs for things to garantee storage is of the required size and then some smarty-pants comes along and says "you mustn't do that. It's not how the language is supposed to be used Blah blah blah blah confusing for other people blah blah blah might introduce bugs blah blah blah why do you think you know better that the people that wrote the com

Yay!

[turgid]

In all my years, no one has actually ever told me that, until I made a complete and utter fool of myself on slashdot.

Thank you.

I will be using those definitions from now on.

Re:Applications?

[ink]

Well, you should be able to run Win32 apps as quickly as you did on your 32-bit version of XP. As 64-bit apps make an appearance, they should run just fine alongside their elder bretheren. I wonder if we'll see the marketing blitz for "Win64" or "Certified for 64-bit Windows" applications this time around. When Microsoft moved from win16 to win32, everyone had to upgrade all their apps to take advantage of Windows 95, Win32S and NT 3.5. It was quite a money grab for the application developers; many simply had to re-compile against the 32-bit libraries and do some minor tweaks to release their preemptive-enabled applications. People bought it up.

New Paintshop Pro 64! Now able to address 16TB of RAM! J00 need it!!

Re:Applications?

[deranged unix nut]

Well, many applications.

Anything that is doing tricky work tied closely to the OS might have problems:
Anti-virus, firewalls, virtual private networks, low-level utilities, etc.

Re:Applications?

[StillAnonymous]

What about games that utilize commercial protection schemes (safedisc, securom, starforce)? These all use 32-bit drivers to do their low-down and dirty work.

Will they work on XP64?

I have a feeling it'll be another case where the cracked version is more compatible than the original..

Re:Applications?

[jaxdahl]

If you like, you could use cracks to remove the protection so you can play your legally bought game.

However, there are some cases where this will not work:
One obvious example is Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. Nobody has been able to crack it and ubisoft has not patched it to the latest version of Starforce3 which supports xp64.

Re:Applications?

[WolfDeusEx]

Hum strange. I've played a cracked version in the past.

Re:Applications?

[pommiekiwifruit]

Shit, they don't work on XP let alone XP sp 2 (on my machine anyway). Since SecuROM is made by Sony I suspect it is just sabotage to persuade me to buy PS2 versions of games instead...

Re:Applications?

[TekPolitik]

When Microsoft moved from win16 to win32, everyone had to upgrade all their apps to take advantage of Windows 95, Win32S and NT 3.5. It was quite a money grab for the application developers; many simply had to re-compile against the 32-bit libraries and do some minor tweaks to release their preemptive-enabled applications.

There was far more to it than that. When you're writing C or C++ code you often make implicit assumptions about the size of many objects. Also MS changed the layout of values passed to Windows messages in many cases, and that required extensive code changes.

I don't see many apps being ported to 64 bit though - only apps that have very heavy memory requirements. MS made a mindbogglingly stupid choice when they made sizeof(long) = 32bits in their 64 bit data model. Every other 64 bit operating system made sizeof(long) == 64 bits. That means that even if you've ported to 64 bits before (because you're a server app that works on thing other than Windows), you're up for porting work.

Re:Applications?

[bersl2]

It's not just about memory.

AMD made it so that a program running in pure 64-bit mode has access to double the number of general purpose registers and SIMD registers. More registers == fewer memory accesses && fewer memory accesses == faster programs.

Re:Applications?

[aug24]

More registers == fewer memory accesses && fewer memory accesses

I'm not letting you code C for my company!

Justin.

Re:Applications?

[hartz]

I will quote in its entirety a post I put on a http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=23425 [hexus.net] Hexus forum a few months ago:

Our world is such that we commonly work with numbers between positive and negative 2 billion. Everything from monetary amounts to the number of records in a database, from distance between places to weights and quantities - we generally work with numbers well within the 32-bit range.

When 32-bit processing came around we had a general and common need to process numbers bigger than what could be handled by 16-bit CPU registers, e.g. numbers bigger than 65,000. But this need for large number processing have stayed the same over time, and so it will not assist to drive the development of 64-bit CPUs!

There is also the ability of the CPU to do more accurate floating point mathematics. This, as well as the need to work with very big numbers, play a role only in engineering and science applications, and to a smaller degree in games.

Therefore the need for 64-bit processing is driven more by the need for addressing more memory than by the need for faster processing of very big or very small numbers.

We need 64-bit processing where the data width inherent in the problem exceeds the (32-bit) processor's registers' width. (Actually this is true for database memory requirements and for games' number crunching and engineering and scientific applications too ... these applications gain from 64-bit processing either because the problem lends itself to a very large data set, eg a large memory requirement or else because of a requirement to process numbers which are wider than the CPU's register width.)

It is not generally possible to recompile or even rewrite an existing problem to "require" bigger registers or memory space. However if a problem already requires big numbers to be processed and had been "optimised" to fit into 32-bit world, then the program can be (un/re)"optimised" to utilise the full 64-bit processing capability by removing these initial optimisations, such as where 64-bit operations have been broken into multiple 32-bit operations.

In fact, someone (Adrian Cockroft) very aptly said http://www.sun.com/sun-on-net/itworld/UIR951101per f.html [sun.com] 64-bit CPUs increase application performance despite the 64-bit nature of these CPUs . 64-bit instructions and, in particular, 64-bit memory address pointers imposes a big additional load on memory, caching and the CPU, so if you're not using those extra bits, compiling to 64-bit actually makes the application execute slower!

To test this, take your favourite compiler and compile your favourite utility program to both 32 and 64-bit executables and run both and compare the timings on your trusted Althlon64 or Sun ULTRA 5 workstation. :-)

Unless the program either processes lots of large numbers or utilise more than 4GB ram, the 32-bit version will run faster.

A program which does not process huge numbers and which does not process numbers bigger than 32-bits will run faster when compiled to a 32-bit executable, even on a 64-bit CPU. There is also the bigger 64-bit executable to load and instructions to move between memory and CPU.

Let me add something to this - as a pojnt in case, all the general purpose utils on Solaris 7, 8, 9 and 10 come as 32-bit executables by default (Some 64-bit utils are available, but not in your path by default). This is probably because the memory bandwidth overhead (read: Wasted memory bandwidth) due to 64-bit executables needing to transfer double the amount of bits from memory to find out where pointers point, even if it is just to point to next next memory address! (Eg pointers are bigger because they can address more memory, even if you don't need it)

A very simple comparisson will prove this, eg
timex

Re:Applications?

[NutscrapeSucks]

When Microsoft moved from win16 to win32, everyone had to upgrade all their apps to take advantage of Windows 95

Widespread 32-bit support was long overdue, and the applications were generally more stable and functional than 16-bit apps that had to manage segmented memory. (Plus you had fancy new UIs, long filenames, etc).

I just don't see any real compelling advantage to 64-bit that would make users demand an upgrade to their word processors and MP3 players. Maybe only for high-end video/image editing apps, CAD and the like.

Again, the keywords are: IN ONE BLOCK

[Moraelin]

Several applications in the background do _not_ count, because those can and do get different data and code segments. You _can_ support that without going 64 bit, and Intel's Xeon addressing did so for years already.

So does Photoshop allocate a single array of more than 4 GB? I seriously doubt that.

At 4 bytes per pixel (32 bit colour) you'd need more than 1 _billion_ pixels in a photo. I.e., you'd need to work on a picture larger than 32768 pixel tall and and 32768 wide.

Even if you print it in 300 dpi (m

Re:Applications?

[NanoGator]

"Great, now all people need are some applications really designed to take advantage of it...."

Newtek just announced a 64-bit version of Lightwave. Okay, this isn't a must-have product for the masses, but 3d artists tend to be the ones to make the most of their new found bits and hertz.

Re:FTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless a driver says it's certified to work with XP64, it won't load. If your hardware isn't supported by default, you have to find a 64 bit driver. (There may be a few exceptions, such as USB devices where the "driver" is really more like instructions to the OS on how to operate the device and not low level hardware interface.) If your hardware isn't supported, you can't use it until the manufacturer releases a 64bit driver. I can't use XP64 on my Asus K8V because I have SATA hard drivers and there are no 64 bit drivers for non-RAID mode.

Uh ...

[Sonic McTails]

Why the hell don't they just label it public beta, since it seems they want no one but a very select few to use it. This is more like a beta test then a product release ...

Re:Uh ...

[Anonymous Coward]

April '03 is when the original AMD64 Opterons shipped. Therefore nearly every Windows user of x64 hardware is covered by this program.

(Exception would be if you bought the $300 retail version and transfered it to your x64 machine.)

Re:Uh ...

[Mattwolf7]

Because they have gotten alot of bad press about being behind Linux on the 64 bit release schedule for ~2 years. Now it is "released" but it is still sortof a closed release. Remember Microsoft has a really good marketing division, this is one of their achievements.

Unlike Linux, which also had no drivers and apps?

[Moraelin]

You know, for all the bullshit about how Linux is ahead of MS in the 64 bit department, that's _not_ my experience with it.

Sometime during th last half of last year, i.e., after more than a year of "Linux is 64 bit already" bullshit, I actually gave it a try. Gentoo, to be precise. Let me tell you how it worked:

There were almost no drivers for anything. Not for the hard drive, not for AGP, not for anything. And that was on a Via K8T800 chipset, i.e., the chipset the A64 was launched with.

Which is just as well, because ATI also had no 64 bit drivers for my 9800 XT. I ended up staring into a 60 Hz VESA Framebuffer display for about a week before I uninstalled it.

And you know how slow that framebuffer was? Let's just say it's the first time I saw DSL downloads being braked by the speed of updating the progress bar.

But maybe it had 64 bit applications? Nope, guess again. No 64 bit OpenOffice, no 64 bit Eclipse, not one goddamn app I needed to use was ported yet. Just for a lark I tried emerging Pingus. (God knows the framebuffer speed didn't promise to be good for a game.) Guess what? That one wasn't 64 bit ready, either.

So you folks are telling me... what? That a freakin' useless system with no apps and no drivers counts as being ahead of MS? Yeah, right. That MS sucks for not loading 32 bit drivers... just like Linux didn't load ATI's 32 bit drivers? That MS's marketting is more guilty than the bleating zealots promoting a Linux system without drivers or apps as a finished and production-ready solution?

Sometimes this kind of zealotry strikes me like doing more harm than good. I can tell you that _I_ am not looking forward to trying 64 bit Linux again. (And I'm writing this in Konqueror in 32 bit mode Gentoo linux right now, so you can spare the "Redmond fanboy" wisecracks.) I think other people who got tricked by that zealotry would be even less inclined to give it another try, ever.

It may not be obvious, but _some_ truth in advertising can go a long way. Yes, we're all nerds, we're all outraged as the "creative puffering" that marketting does. But one-upping them via outright lies and outright promoting an unfinished product where only the kernel and GCC is anywhere near 64 bit ready, well, is just a way to shoot the whole Linux community in the foot.

It may not be obvious, but the _only_ use and reason to live of a computer or an OS is to run an apps, and of those is to solve a problem the user has. Same as a tool. You don't buy a microwave oven as an ideological statement against gas ovens, you buy them to actually heat some stuff in them. Same with computers.

And there a tool which sorta is imperfect beats a tool which is completely useless any day.

That's the problem with the mindless zealotry: you sold someone a solution based on _your_ ideology, rather than his needs, you've lost him as a customer for good. That tool from MS is very very imperfect, yes, but it does run Paintshop, some games, etc. It does what Joe Average wants. If your big ideology win is selling Joe a tool which doesn't do that, you haven't converted him, you've just gained someone who'll tell all his friends to stay off that Linux crap.

Just food for thought.

Re:Unlike Linux, which also had no drivers and app

[terrencefw]

Erm.... b***ocks. I'm running Linux on an Athlon64 for six months now, and everything's there and functional on the hardware you mention.

OK there's no 64 bit openoffice yet, but the 32 bit binary version works perfectly.

You're talking utter rubbish. Everything works, including IDE, SATA, Gigabit Ethernet, 8x AGP and accelerated graphics. It plays Doom 3 like a dream.

WTF did you do wrong?!!

Re:Unlike Linux, which also had no drivers and app

[Lumpy]

I call Bullshit.

i have been running linux on a dual Opteron for 4 months now with NO problems. granted I went Nvidia, and they care about releasing drives for linux people so I had no problems there... UT2004 in 64 bit (yup the 64 bit version of the linux app is on the install CD's) is screaming fast. All drivers are there in 64 bit goodness, SATA is happy as well as my u320 Scsi raid.

Care to actually list the hardware you claim that there was no support for? Myself and several others in the LUG have no problems with 64bit linux. Also anyone having a shit fit over an office app running in 32 bit mode really needs to get a life. We have been using Suse 9.2 and it runs all the 32 bit apps happily on the 64 bit system. If you were a real gentoo user you would have known how to get 32 bit emulation turned on.

here, waht help? this obscure website [gentoo.org]

Suse has it set up for you already, but as a Gentoo user you must be an advanced linux pro to choose it over a newbie distro like Suse that configures everything for you already.

this is NOT a dig on Gentoo users, you guys typically are levels above the "I hate text files" crowd, I just know that the parent is lying and am trying to make a point about it.

if the parent is actually truthful i strongly suggest he choose a distro that has more automatic configurations and is ready for 64 bit like Suse.

Re:Unlike Linux, which also had no drivers and app

[fearofcarpet]

Hmmm, I've had a completely different experience with 64 bit Gentoo... I'm currently running 64 bit Gentoo Linux on an FX-55 chip. I dual booted into WinXP 64 bit for a little while, but found the lack of native 64 bit applications (and especially drivers) to be irritating (I'm not a big fan of Windows to begin with either). I've found the biggest speed increases have nothing to do with 64 bit code though. In fact memory access seems to be way, way, way faster. There is also no more "bigmem" option, which

Re:Uh ...

[km790816]

You can get it on a machine and Microsoft will support you. Doesn't sound like Beta to me.

If you were Microsoft, would you like to deal with the long line of tech support calls explaining why the new version of Windows doesn't work on a Pentium Pro.

For the market they are targetting, their sales strategy makes perfect sense.

ERM

[petermgreen]

don't ms oem licenses force the oem to take the entire support burden?

Re:Uh ...

[enosys]

It's not beta. There was a public beta test and that is now over. The OS is finished. It's just that there are relatively few drivers and even fewer 64 bit applications.

The OS is there for whoever needs it. Microsoft is just making sure that people don't start upgrading without understanding the limitations.

Re:PR

[Anonymous Coward]

(A) 64-bit XP has already been shipping for a long time (Itanium)
(B) Tiger isn't fully 64-bit, so there's no dicksize race with Apple here.
(C) The crossover between OS X and Win64 customers is tiny anyway
(D) Windows x64 went "gold" before Apple even announced Tigers release date, so it's entirely a coincidence the dates are so close.
(E) Probably 80% of Windows sales is through OEMs, so this ain't "limted availabiity" in the slightest.
(F) Destroying every aspect of your post is getting boring.

Re:Uh ...

[Bert64]

Actually, most opensource linux drivers are written in C and are architecture independant... A lot of older devices don't have drivers for the 64bit windows atall, while the existing architecture-neutral drivers for linux are supported just fine, infact many of these devices were already supported by 64bit linux on alpha, ppc and sparc for many years, many linux drivers already existed and worked perfectly on 64bit architectures before amd64 even existed.

Sweet.

[Aeron65432]

Yes! Now I can run 64bit on an OS I never wanted to use in the first place!

Slashdot has changed...

[NitsujTPU]

Athlon 64 users rejoice! Today at WinHEC 2005 in Seattle, Microsoft announced availability of the 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003

...nuff said.

Re:Slashdot has changed...

[Xugumad]

Frankly, I doubt this is useful to more than a tiny fraction of /.'ers. My impression is that most of us run Linux or OS X for our desktop/server systems, and only use Windows for games. Okay, a reasonable number of /.'ers will have to use Windows desktops at work, but how many of those actually run memory intensive applications that are too slow currently?

When they games start coming as standard as dual format AMD64/x86, I'll think about switching. In the meantime, don't care (and if more games start gett

Re:Slashdot has changed...

[strider44]

I found it the opposite. I use ubuntu and all I needed to do is write apt-get install apache.

After doing this the web server was up and running and I didn't need to do anything other than apt-get the packages (such as php, it had a quite readable list just by searching for apache) that I wanted the server to run and it just worked ((tm), apparently). It told me it was set up in /var/www I think and I didn't have to modify any config files to configure it.

I was surprised how easy it was because I had tried not long before to run a web server on Windows XP Pro and it took me a very very long time to get it up and running, and even then didn't have things like a database (you need to pay for that).

Perhaps it's just been a long time since you've tried this. Linux has made huge leaps in just the past couple of years in usability, and should this trend continue it will most definitely eclipse Longhorn before its release.

Ya but it means AMD won

[Sycraft-fu]

You can pimp Linux all you like, most people care about Windows and what it runs on. For a long time, the only 64-bit Windows was IA-64. GRanted no one used it, but still. However now MS has discontinued all IA-64 support for workstation, and gone with x86-64, and it's going mainstream. That effectively means the format war is decided. Intel may continue to make IA-64 chips, but they'll never be mainstream since Windows doesn't use them.

Free call?

[shreevatsa]

From the summary:
Although, x64 users will get one free support call to Microsoft.
What on earth does that mean? Does a call to MS support cost so much that one free call is worth mentioning in the summary?
Or do they know that anyone using W64 will need to call MS support, or what?

I hate this kind of posts...

[rbarreira]

What on earth does that mean?

It means just what it says.

Does a call to MS support cost so much that one free call is worth mentioning in the summary?

Read the sentence which is before the one you quoted.

Or do they know that anyone using W64 will need to call MS support, or what?

Not necessarily ;)

Re:Free call?

[imemyself]

Does a call to MS support cost so much that one free call is worth mentioning in the summary? It costs $35 for a "basic" call for a home user. An advanced support call costs $245. http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?ln=e n-us&x=5&y=3&gprid=6794&

Re:Free call?

[Ayaress]

It's like when you go to jail. You only get one call to get yourself back out.

Re:Free call?

[aixou]

I wonder how many people's calls will go like this:

MS_Help: How may I help you?
Caller: Is it true that I only get one free support call?
MS_Help: Yes it is.
Caller: oh...
Caller: ...
Caller: right
Caller: thanks. ::click::

I don't get the point of no retail but...

[AdityaG]

If you have a 64-bit processor, here is your OS. I know people are going to get on here and talk about Linux supporting 64-bit a while ago and such, but this is Windows. They have moved to 64-bit. That means, us designers who like to use Photoshop or just play games (that don't run on linux that is) can finally put our 64-bit processor to some good use.

There is still going to be the lack of 64-bit programs for a while, but it's a start.

And in my opinion, the $12 trade sounds like a nice deal.

Cheers
P.S. No, I am not a Linux hater or w/e. I like linux, I like windows. I just use them for what each does best.

System builders beware

[BobPaul]

And in my opinion, the $12 trade sounds like a nice deal.

The $12 trade in deal is only valid if you purchased a PC with WinXP preinstalled. If you built your own system and installed a retail WinXP the offer doesn't apply.

I hope your right...

[BobPaul]

Wrong. See here [microsoft.com]:

If you built your PC yourself [snip] the link to the right.

The link to the right being the same link given in the /. story.

Funny. When you click that link on the right (or the one in the slashdot summary) you're taken to a page that says otherwise:

Technology Advancement Program Eligibility

In order to be eligible to receive Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition, your computer must have been ordered between March 31, 2003 and July 31, 2005 with Microsoft Windows® XP Pro (32 Bit) preinstalled. (Emphasis mine)

In addition, you must read and agree to the following:

Right now, I click the link but can't agree to the terms on their form, so 64bit for $12 is impossible for me--I installed WinXP on my own from a copy I bought from NewEgg. Maybe it's a catch-22, or maybe the webdev team just screwed up. I sure hope it's the second and your right.

Re:I don't get the point of no retail but...

[snuf23]

The time to make the move would be when there is a 64bit application that you want to use. Otherwise you will be dealing with lack of third party driver support and possible compatibility issues without any real reason.
Personally, I'd wait before making the jump.

Re:I don't get the point of no retail but...

[willfe]

You're practically begging for it, so here goes :)

• Gentoo Linux for AMD64 has been out for well over a year. Plenty of other distros have too.
• Solaris, HP/UX, AIX, and other Unices have been 64-bit for years (not in the x86 architecture, but still, it's there).
• No drivers for my video card, wireless card, DVD+/-RW drive(!), etc., in Windows. If I upgrade Windows on this box (a brand new notebook) to the 64-bit edition, no games, networking, or burning for me. Wheee! But hey, "this is Windows" so I should be happy! Office should be enough for anybody. :)
• You ain't putting your CPU to "good use" until your apps are rebuilt as 64-bit binaries, and really only math-intensive apps (and less so for memory and system bandwidth intensive apps) are going to benefit. Photoshop might benefit a little, but not much. Games, again, maybe, but not much.
• Switching from 32-bit to 64-bit just for the fun of it will just cripple what you can currently do on the Windows platform right now. In Linux land, it all "just works" (with very few exceptions).

I'm no fan of Windows, but for once I can honestly say "64-bit Windows is the wrong tool for most every job right now."

Re:I don't get the point of no retail but...

[Fjandr]

No, Windows doesn't have an inate ability to do anything better. Nowhere in gp's statement did I read a claim that this was the case. "Best" does not denote just pure technical capacity. It can mean many things, such as user experience or availability of professional-quality product.

To further belabor the point and repeatedly kick a dead horse, the general gaming experience on Linux blows compared to what is available for Windows. This is not due to a technical fault in Linux. It is also not due some technical superiority in Windows. It is simply a description of the current market experience.

There was no BS in gp's statement. I don't like Microsoft either, but I like knee-jerk, unthinking FUD even less.

As a vendor and a consultant..

[breakbeatninja]

I think this is a good step forward. The actual performance improvements will likely be quite marginal until there are native 64-bit applications. Currently Windows XP and 2003 64-bit editions run 32-bit applications perfectly, but under an emulation layer called WoW (no not World of Warcraft, but Windows on Windows [microsoft.com]).

I'm not sure how many people remember this, but back when Digital Equipment Corporation's famed Alpha processor was "supported" by Windows NT, the 64-bit environment was infact not much more than a cheap hack. Microsoft designed Windows NT to not actually execute 64-bit instructions, but 32-bit instructions in parallel. I'm glad to see Microsoft is doing a better job supporting the AMD and Intel 64-bit processor lines.

Re:As a vendor and a consultant..

[Snover]

Unfortunately, WOWEXEC for 16-bit applications no longer exists -- there is no way to run 16-bit applications in 64-bit Windows. The biggest issue with this (aside from the fact that programs like DOSBox [sf.net] are still too slow and incompatible with many late DOS applications) is that many fully 32-bit Windows programs used 16-bit installers. No good.

Re:Informative +5

[Snover]

You are only partially correct. While you are correct that AMD64's hardware design does not allow for real-mode 16-bit code, it does allow for 16-bit code execution as long as it is protected-mode (so, Win16s applications should be able to work without a problem). (Source [wikipedia.org])

My question...

[MikeD83]

My question is how Microsoft will handle dual core processors?
My dream workstation would include dual processor, dual core Opterons. Will Microsoft charge me more for Windows XP Professional that supports 4 processors even though it's achieved by dual core technology?

NX On by Default?

[MBCook]

I've got a question for anyone running XP 64. Service Pack 2 introduced NX (No eXecute support) for processors that support it. But it is disabled by default because it can cause compatibility problems for some programs.

But since all 64 bit programs must be reengineered anyway (ranging from a simple recompile to a partial rewrite depending on the code), is NX on by default for 64 bit programs (an off for Windows On Windows 32 (the layer that runs Win32 programs on Win64))? Seems like the opportune time to make that switch.

If companies can get drivers out soon for it, should be a relativly nice OS. Of course since this is just a different architecture in many ways this is less than a service pack (since nothing has changed featurewise except under the hood). Comparing it to Tiger wouldn't really be fair for that reason.

But going forward, it should be interesting to see performance differences as drivers mature. I'd love to see a performance comparaison in 6 months or so when things should be relativly good. And now that Windows is out, we should see more 64-bit programs which means better benchmarks for the difference between 32 and 64 bits in everyday tasks. The last big excuse for avoid 64 bits is gone (first it was processors, but AMD and Intel both sell 'em now, then it was Windows, but MS sells THAT now, what's left?).

Re:NX On by Default?

[Malc]

DEP (a.k.a. NX) is not disabled by default. This MSDN article [microsoft.com] describes it. The default is OptIn:

"[OptIn] is the default configuration. On systems with processors that can implement hardware-enforced DEP, DEP is enabled by default for limited system binaries and programs that "opt-in." With this option, only Windows system binaries are covered by DEP by default."

And that's certainly what appears on my laptop (32-bit Windows).

Re:Drivers in XP64

[TummyX]

I'd like you to meet someone [reference.com].

x64?

[RoadkillBunny]

I was under the impression that amd64 chips are called x86_64 and not x64. Anyways, what good will a 64bit OS do to me if most of the apps for it are still 32bit?

You sluts

[Enrique1218]

Athlon 64 users rejoice! Today at WinHEC 2005 in Seattle, Microsoft announced availability of the 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

You spout off about the joys of linux. But,when Microsoft comes crawling with a 64-bit OS, you fall over like a bitch in heat. Sadness

Re:You sluts

[aug24]

You spout off about the joys of linux.
But, when Microsoft comes crawling with a 64-bit OS, you fall over
like a bitch in heat. Sadness.

What is this, the annual Sarcasm Hiaku competition?

J.

The CNet review is a joke.

[km790816]

It's like they ran Solitare on Win95 and XP and since they saw no difference, XP is clearly no better.

Watch Bill's keynote. [microsoft.com] He doesn't claim random desktop bench marks will run faster.

He does state that for very specific scenarios (where you need lots of memory) like Active Directory and SQL, x64 is a huge improvement...with numbers to back it up.

Only for XP Pro

[MHobbit]

From MS's site:

In order to be eligible to receive Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition, your computer must have been ordered between March 31, 2003 and July 31, 2005 with Microsoft Windows® XP Pro (32 Bit) preinstalled.

So, it seems from that, if your computer came preinstalled with Windows XP Home Edition (like me), you're out of luck.

Makes sense it's not in stores

[Kupek]

If it was sold in a box in stores, people who don't know what it is might pick it up and try to install it. Very few people have 64-bit processors - certainly the average consumer who buys software from a retailer does not. This way they can control it: you only get the 64-bit version of Windows if you actually have a 64-bit processor.

The poster implied their reason was lack of support. I think it's lack of interest.

Alpha Windows

[NullProg]

Microsoft already had a 64bit Windows running on DEC/Compaq Alpha. Why in the hell did it take so long for this release? The whole point of having HAL was portability.

What the heck did they do to Windows to make the port take so long? AMD64 support should have taken a year at most. And why in the Hell do I still have to thunk down to 32bits (Go lookup 64bit Windows and thunking)? Not that I need it, but I'm just curious.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?ur l= /library/en-us/win64/win64/wow64_implementation_de tails.asp

Enjoy,

Re:Alpha Windows

[Paul Jakma]

The Alpha NT port was 32 bit. DEC's linker (and also binutils for AXP) supported a 'restrict addresses to 32bit and clear most significant 32bits of addresses' mode for ease of porting applications to Digital Unix, eg Netscape was (effectively) 32bit on AXP. Google for 'taso linker'.

Development Tools

[Detritus]

Now that it has been released, what 64-bit compilers are available for the operating system? The last time I looked, Microsoft was planning to use an ugly data model (LLP64) where only "long long" variables and pointers would be 64-bits. To me, that's a chicken-shit decision, broken code should be fixed or rewritten, not accommodated by crippling the compiler.

Re:Development Tools

[tesmako]

Environments defaulting to 64-bit ints are exceedingly rare, and it is hardly suprising. Since all applications expect 32 bit ints (or possibly smaller in a very small number of cases) there is nothing to be gained from upping the size of the basic int to 64 bits except a mean performance hit.

To put it this way, changing int's would be troublesome, be a performance hit and not give any advantages (since anyone needing a 64 bit word knows where to look already). Changing the size of the regular long int wou

Voided warranty?!

[Stormwatch]

: those who purchased Windows XP after
: March 31, 2003, can trade in their copy
: for the 64-bit version at a cost of $12
: and a voided warranty.

Voided warranty? Blimey! This system is dangerous, and Microsoft knows it!

Rejoice, more like cry

[bluGill]

I started a new job about a couple years ago. Didn't take me long to notice the following line all over:
struct devive_info = (struct device_info *)a_ulDeviceHandle.
I told the chief programer we need to fix this fast as 64 bits are coming, and was told not to worry about it.

For those who can't read hungarian, this function was passed in a parameter as a int, and it was promptly cast (old style C cast too) to a pointer. This works on 32 bit platforms (normally), but will never work on 64 bit platforms.

This is the guy who decided that since GCC is a terrible C++ compiler (it is, but we were still using compilers from 1995 for the windows stuff, and working around bugs in it), he would standardize on Gcc 2.95 even though gcc 3 is much better. I never did figure out that logic. (this was a decision made late last year) Sometimes I'm glad he doesn't work there anymore.

Not that it matters much to me, I'm a UNIX guy. The last version of Windows I ever had on my machines was 3.1, and I installed OS/2 as soon as it arrived.

Re:Rejoice, more like cry

[mabinogi]

the simple rule is never store a pointer value in a non pointer variable.

If you need a variable to store a pointer, but don't know what type it'll be pointing to yet, use void * and cast it to the appropriate pointer type once you do know.

On a 32 bit system, a pointer will be 32 bits, on a 64 bit system, and pointer will be 64 bits.
However, there is no gaurantee that on a 64 bit system an int will be 64 bits - it could quite easily be 32.
int only _has_ to be at least 16 bits. It's usually the word size, which is usually the size of a pointer, but it doesn't have to be.

char = at least 8 bits.
short int = at least 16 bits
int = at least 16 bits
long int = at least 32 bits

> also wouldn't he need to do:
> struct device_info foo=*((struct device_info*)&a_ulDeviceHandle);

No, I suspect what he meant was

struct device_info *foo = (struct device_info *)a_ulDeviceHandle

Your version wouldn't work because you can't assign a struct to another struct, you can only assign a pointer to a struct to another pointer to a struct.

In C, variables only contain numbers, not objects, as there is no concept of object - only a vague illusion every now and then via pointers - so assigning a struct makes no sense.

In that sense, C is very weakly typed, and type checking is only done at compile time. That makes casting values of different precision very dangerous, because the cast eliminates the only way through which you would detect these errors.

The official 64 bit extension thread

[DaveAtFraud]

Windows is:

a 32 bit extension and a graphical shell for
a 16 bit patch to
an 8 bit operating system originally coded for
a 4 bit microprocessor, written by
a 2 bit company, that can't stand
1 bit of competition.

My only (very lame) suggestion is:

"a 64 bit recompilation of"

Other suggestions are welcome.

How about...

[aug24]

a 64 bit port of
a 32 bit wrapper for
a 16 bit api to
an 8 bit kernel for
a 4 bit microprocessor by
a 2 bit company that can't stand
1 bit of competition.

Justin.

Are there any 64-bit games?

[antdude]

I remember Far Cry was supposed to have 64-bit version. Are those currently out and working for Windows XP 64-bit?

Re:Are there any 64-bit games?

[MightyPez]

Nothing in 64-bit yet. But there are games with 64-bit extensions that do give a nice performance increase. Fff the top of my head, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Chronicles of Riddick both have 64-bit extensions.

No Warrenty???

[muckdog]

You means windows comes with a warrenty???

actual numbers

[august sun]

pretty thorough performance review with scientific, gaming, and media benchmarks:

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/64-bits/index .x?pg=1 [techreport.com]

Hmmm

[doc_pez]

As opposed to the two-bit versions they have been selling for years?

Already in japan?

[interiot]

I saw these being sold all over Akihabara [wikipedia.org] this past weekend... This guy [akihabaranews.com] confirms, and they seem legit. Anybody know what's up with this?

Torrents?

[brsmith4]

Anyone? ;)

Feeding the Warez

[Zo0ok]

Isnt this "no retail"-strategy exactly what will make people warez Windows XP64 even more?

Lets face it, many people already have bought Athlon 64-systems, or want to build them themselves. Those people CANT get Windows XP64 on their machines legally, if I understand this correctly.

Of course people could get an MSDN-subscription...

Why force people into warez?
Why justifying warez?
Why not sell it when people want it?

Most people wont buy a Dell just to get XP64 for their home-built system.

Power of Open Source

[pp]

Interestingly the issues seen in new Windows are the same as the ones in x86_64 Linux. Except drivers aren't nearly as problematic since there are only a few "3rd party" proprietary drivers (like graphics card manufacturers), and those have had 64-bit drivers for quite some time. The drivers in the kernel tree have been cleaned up during the last 10 years (starting with the alpha port), so in many cases just a recompile is enough.

(Browser) plugins are the other issue, if you need flash or proprietary format video playing using windows dll's you'll still want to use a 32-bit browser or video player. Konqueror, I believe, runs plugins as a separate process, so it's unaffected by this (it's not a bad design choice either, Firefox/mozilla/IE should do this too ;), that way buggy browser plugins don't crash your browser completely).

So, do you need a 64-bit OS? Like mentioned in other comments, you probably don't need 64-bitness that much (unless running code processing lots of big numbers), but those extra registers you get in 64-bit mode give you a nice speed boost. And people already have enough memory in their boxes to see a benefit today (> 1GB is enough since you avoid all those TLB flushes and all that, this applies to Windows and Linux, >= 4GB for a big boost since you don't need that PAE crap)

Say what?

[tod_miller]

Strangely (and possibly a sign the drivers aren't yet up to snuff), Microsoft will not sell the 64-bit releases in retail outlets. For now, only new PC buys can get Windows x64 Edition as an option.

a: not strange
b: nothing to do with drivers:

1: makes people upgrade to faster machine anyway - wow this runs faster (more ram etc)
2: bouys IT industry with another round of upgrades

delta: microsoft often make people upgrade thier os to have a new media plyer, browser or web server, if they made it.

So not suprising.

Re:Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

Six months ago. Yes.

Re:Intel

[x-caiver]

I must be missing something... I don't get why that was modded 'funny'.

Anyway, Intel's "Extended Memory 64 Technology" (EM64T [intel.com]) is compatible tech. They have Pentium 4 w/ EM64T and Xeon w/ EM64T processors that will run Win XP x64 Edition (and the Server 2003 x64 Editions) just fine.

Re:Twice the Carnage

[unknown_goth]

One free phone call . . . sounds just like going to county jail if you ask me. . . . i'll take my 64bit use on a G5 thank you very much

XP 64 ships! And in other news...

[DurendalMac]

...Beelzebub just bought himself a snowblower.

Re:DO NOT USE THAT LINK

[Anonymous Coward]

999 999 9999

Hey that's my luggage combination!

Re:DO NOT USE THAT LINK

[Twid]

http://www.hoovers.com/zomax-incorporated/--ID__5 1 171--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml [hoovers.com]

Zomax mostly serves customers in the computer hardware manufacturing and software publishing industries. It provides replication, telemarketing, and fulfillment services to software giant Microsoft, which accounts for about 22% of the company's sales. Another 19% come from Dell. Zomax operates through facilities in North America and Europe.

Seems legit, although aren't they breaking the law by not supplying a legitimate pho

The link is Fine

[Noksagt]

See MS link to it here [microsoft.com].

Re:DO NOT USE THAT LINK

[Kingsly]

Registrant: ZOMAX INC. (PRODUCTORDER-DOM) 2727 Systron Drive Concord, CA 94518 US Domain Name: PRODUCTORDER.COM Administrative Contact, Technical Contact: Watson, Carl (CW2954) [e-mail] Zomax, Inc. 2727 SYSTRON DR CONCORD, CA 94518-1355 US [phone] fax: [phone] Record expires on 22-Apr-2012. Record created on 21-Apr-1997. Database last updated on 25-Apr-2005 23:08:14 EDT.

Re:OS X?

[riprjak]

Could be...
but it is also conveniently about 18 months since x86_64 linux distributions began appearing; so it could also just be laziness and/or incompetence :)

Re:Is it tru 64-bit?

[BobPaul]

It's a completely pure 64-bit kernel (unlike OSX which only does 64bit memory addressing). One of the downsides for us nostalgic gamers is that support for 16 and 8 bit applications has been completely dropped, even from the WOW* architecture.

I'm curious if this will mean that 32bit apps will need to run through a WOW* type interface

*Windows on Windows: the 16 & 8 bit transparent emulator that allows backwards compatibility on WinNT systems. Wow.exe or Wow32.exe, depending on your version.

Re:Is it tru 64-bit?

[MBCook]

OS X Tiger is supposed to be full 64-bits through and through. As for WOW, yes it does run 32-bit programs in a WOW layer. As for 16 & 8 bit programs being dropped, for most users that isn't a problem. If you have a 64 bit processor, chances are you don't use any 16 bit (8 bit especially) programs. Those who do (like you) are few and far between as computer users go (I would guess). I don't mind they dropped this, I think it's about time. That said, you can always run them in VMWare or Bochs or some other such program.

I should note, that AMD made that decision. When running a 64 bit OS, the x86-64 architecture can run 64-bit programs, or 32-bit programs. There is no mode (AFAIK) that will let you execute 16 or 8-bit programs. In 32-bit mode on i386 you can still drop down and run 16-bit and 8-bit tasks, but not x86-64. So MS would have to build Virtual PC into Windows to allow that.

Re:Is it tru 64-bit?

[Branka96]

Tiger is NOT fully 64-bit. The memory system supports 64-bit pointers. But you can't write a 64-bit GUI application. Carbon and Cocoa are not 64-bit.
A 64-bit application has to be broken into two executables, a 32-bit GUI front-end and a 64-bit engine.

Re:Is it tru 64-bit?

[Thu25245]

A 64-bit application has to be broken into two executables, a 32-bit GUI front-end and a 64-bit engine.

Technically, yes, but the way OS X handles executable packages, both executables can be bound together, so that the user sees only one "application." If done well, both executables will look like one, unless you run top.

Re:Is it tru 64-bit?

[MouseR]

Mac OS 10.3 and Tiger (10.4) both have 64-bit components. Tiger obviously has more.

The idea here is that the bulk of the OS is still 32-bits. Applications run in 32-bit space, but unix tools (Apple lingo for CLI apps) can reside in 64-bit space, as does the bulk of the underlying OS that requires it (memory, kernel, some drivers, one-button mouse etc) and that only if the hardware is 64-bits (so the OS is a FAT build for some components).

If you user-space (UI) application requires 64-bits (PhotoShop to name the proverbial example), then it's image processing threads can be 64-bits and loaded from the 32-bit UI application.

As time move on and Tiger gets more update and eventually reach MegaPussy (not the actual name but whatever 10.5 will be), more components will be 64-bits.

There is some criticism for this adoption strategy but it has a goal. This way, Tiger apps can run on either 32 or 64-bits machines. if you app requires (or uses) 64-bits components, then it will be a more concious design decision and there are less chance some dweeb ends up trying to launch a 64-bit application on it's Rev B iMac.

Such transitions to new hardware is not new to Apple (wich I consider the kings in that field, considering what the hardware platform went through). It only means less broken apps for now.

(And I was kidding about the 64-bit one-button mouse drivers.)

Re:Is it tru 64-bit?

[mtrisk]

This is not the OS you are looking for. [wikipedia.org]

Re:The real question is now?

[snuf23]

At this stage of the game it doesn't make any sense for most users to switch to 64 bit XP. It isn't mature enough and doesn't have enough driver support. This is being put out there so that businesses that have a special need for 64bit computing (for example large memory address space) can get started.
Expect to see plenty of patching and continued development moving forward.

Re:Thanks, Slashdot editors!

[Okonomiyaki]

That a major vendor will release an important piece of software on some future date is newsworthy.

That Microsoft actually shipped something when they said they would is also newsworthy.

Re:Here's a question ...

[x-caiver]

Unfortunetly you can't just upgrade from 32 to 64 bit. The x64 OS is a 'full' install, and you should do it on a partition that does not already have a 32-bit OS installed on it (otherwise weird things can go on with your Program Files & some other system folders).

What you can do to make the transition much more seamless is to use the File & Settings Transfer Wizard that is included on the x64 CD (it is a newer version than what shipped with 32-bit XP, so make sure you use this updated one). It wi

Re:Windows 64BIT Versions.

[mvdw]

So, what you're saying is that MS should fix the stupidity of their users before they release more operating systems?