Windows Reaches 64-Bits, For OEMs

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 30, 2001 @06:40AM from the grand-innovations dept.

thatrez writes: "Microsoft 's Windows Advanced Server, Limited Edition, is now available for computers based on Intel's 64-bit Itanium chip. The Itanium chip supports greater amounts of system memory and offers stronger floating-point, or mathematical, capabilities than current 32-bit desktop processors. The extra memory support and the floating-point capabilities increase the performance of Web hosting, data warehousing and other applications." Now available in this case means that certain OEMs will soon be selling systems loaded with 64-bit Advanced Server, and later other manufacturers will join in. 64-bit versions of XP are expected sometime next year as well.

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Actual improvements? by SilentChris · 2001-08-30 07:11 · Score: 1, Flamebait

I'm not trying to be too "flamebait" here, but what performance improvements does 64-bit provide, in actuality? Not just in Windows, but in any operating system? From a speed standpoint, 32-bit wasn't much of an improvement over 16 (stability, of course, got better with more protected memory). But since 32-bit can handle such a large protected memory space already...