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Windows XP X64 Goes Gold
Kasracer writes "According to The Inquirer, 'Microsoft has released the final version of Windows XP 64 to manufacturing, meaning that those with machines that have 64-32 bit processors in from AMD and latterly Intel can now see what the extra addressing brings to the party.'"
...why are they so afraid of pyrites?
Anyone aware of a list of Windows software (perhaps on MS's site) that'll benefit from it?
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It seems to be the season for OS updates, doesn't it? :-)
What I don't understand is why they didn't just pump the money and development time for 64 into Longhorn. Surely that would have brought down development times, and we could have it sooner?
Quoth the server, "404."
Ganymede's report on the CRAPPIEST 64-bit operating systems in the World
1: Windows XP X64
that is all.
Ok, is it still april fool's day somewhere?
Your skill in reading has increased by one point!
Bring on the 64 bit Viruses!
we can now say "finally Windows has caught up with Linux".
Cue the candid laughter everyone.
Yesterday's stories where more convincing.
"... those with machines that have 64-32 bit processors in from AMD and latterly Intel can now see what the extra addressing brings to the party."..when running Windows. Solaris x86, linux, etc have seen what the extra addressing brings for a while now.
Now only a few more years and we might have 64 bit applications
What? This is just a new version of Windows XP, afaik it has nothing to do with Longhorn which is a totally new OS.
that those with machines that have 64-32 bit processors in from AMD and latterly Intel
(1) The opteron is a true 64-bit architecture. The em64t (intel thing) is a bit of a bodge (still basically a xeon core, with shades of 32-bit-ness in odd places like memory mapping for devices), but still appears 64 bit.
(2) Linux people have been running x86-64 Linux for _ages_ now. It's a cheap and cheerful server platform without some of the worst cruddiness of x86, and a cheap, extremely cost effective, and generally excellent scientific workstation and compute cluster platform, and is selling like wild here (euro) anyway.
meaning that those with machines that have 64-32 bit processors in from AMD and latterly Intel can now see what the extra addressing brings to the party.
...Unless you want to run hardware not built
into a mainstream motherboard with support
included in XP.
...Unless you want to run software using a
legacy 16-bit installer (far more common than
you might expect, even for programs that don't
have a drop of 16-bit code themselves).
XP for x64 has NO 32-bit hardware driver support. Very very few manufacturers have x64 drivers available yet. Thus, don't feel surprised when you literally can't use any of your fancy toys. On the bright side, NVidia does have beta 64-bit drivers available, so you might luck out. Of course, considering the stability of final-release NVidia drivers, do you really want to use a beta?
XP x64 has also completely dropped 16bit support. No more old DOS programs. No more Win3.1 programs. More importantly (as I mentioned above), no more installers that used 16 bit code, even for purely 32-bit programs.
I too look forward to running XP x64 on my Athlon64. But for the moment, the average Joe just doesn't have that as a realistic option. In another six months, perhaps. But not yet.
"Anyone aware of a list of Windows software (perhaps on MS's site) that'll benefit from it?"
Solitaire.
ok, thanks for clarifying. Can anyone go into more detail?
I thought longhorn was XP + 64-bit.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
I run XP on an AMD64 laptop. Would I gain anything by upgrading to this or not?
No, Longhorn is the (code) name for the next version of Windows. XP-64 is just an upgrade, adding the 64 bit addressing possibilities to the Windows XP OS.
Longhorn will not be out until next year at the earliest.
No. This is just Windows XP. Games and other apps will have to be recompiled to take advantage of it - UT2004 has a beta out, don't know of any others available.
Wow, another Microsoft public Beta!
Great, the people who sold me the Gigabyte AMD64 motherboard will possibly admit there is a 64 bit operating system now...I had a Gigabyte motherboard that as soon as it got out of the bootloader and went 64 Bit, it would reboot! I should have stuck to ASUS originally.
I swapped out the Gigbyte MB, put in an ASUS...same CPU, Memory, everything and I pass the 64 bit transition, and away I went to load 64Bit Linux! Cool.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
LightWave 3D, by NewTek.
...now I get to have twice as many problems than I have now with XP 32? :)
Think they improved the wait to display "My Computer" while it has a connection to a remote share, that is either slow or unreachable?
With XP, 512MB ram, and Pentium 4, I get to wait a good minute or two, just to SEE, let alone access, the drives that are still ON or CONNECTED to the machine.
Of course this is the DEFAULT settings, I've not taken the time to research how to "reconfigure" or "tweak" it.
You think they would have optimized such an ancient and basic behavior, OUT OF THE BOX!
Oh wait, it must be one of those "innovative" things...
MS Gold can actually rust
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
This was posted on The Inquirer on the 31st March. Slashdot is really behind!
/me ducks.
Stick Men
Or they could have used SUSE and have seen what it does, what, 5 months ago?
I am trolling
I tested the betas now and then and submitted a lot of bug reports. The thing is I am happy dual-booting Windows Media Center 2005 and Gentoo AMD64. I don't really find a need to run this for desktop use yet. As everything I use still runs in 32 bit emulated mode. It's just not worth it. Now when Longhorn comes out by that time all processors for high end desktops should already be x86_64. That's great, Microsoft is just using this release as a testing bed for upcoming OSs. I'll stick with Windows MC 2005 and Gentoo for now.
Good luck to them, but I don't feel like paying to beta test future Longhorn kernels. They should be paying me.
--- Liberty in our Lifetime
I thought longhorn was XP + 64-bit.
I don't know where all misinformation about Longhorn being aimed for 64-bit processors come from. I keep seeing it everywhere on forums.
Longhorn will be released just like Windows XP; in 32- and 64-bit editions.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
As processor speed, memory and disk space continue to spiral to ever larger values, Microsoft is really going to be put to task in finding ways to make Windows sluggish.
Their task is made more difficult by advances in compiler design which find an eliminate trivial solutions that simply chew up CPU time by computing huging cosine tables and then overwriting them.
New innovation may come from recent advances in polling network devices unnecessarily and hanging various threads until a reply is received. In the case of pulling a device off the network that Windows Explorer had browsed in the last 15 weeks, a given thread can hang for minutes, chewing up processor time in loops that scan network traffic.
The Windows Development team seems optimistic that they can produce the same crippled user interface on new 64 bit architectures that customers have become familiar with, a valuable marketing strategy in teaching consumers to become suspicious of computers with more responsive interfaces.
64 bit BSOD.
Means we can now have bigger, faster, more complex viruses than ever before!
about the bittorrent version in 5... 4... 3...
I didn't know they ever found a way to convert lead to gold ;-)
The advantages of the AMD-64 archetecture go far beyond the additional address space. The number of general purpose registers is doubled (and, of course made 64 bits wide). This is far more important than the increased address space and, for most code more important than being 64 versus 32 bit.
Translation: If you've never heard of a register, what this means is that there are twice as many internal storage locations in the processor. moving data between internal registers suffers from no delay, while accesses to memory (ram) is slow and processing cycles can be lost to wait states - basically the processor must pause and wait for the memory access to get done.
This is why most code when recompiled for the new architecture will see an immediate performance improvement. Some code will see gains from the 64 bit width of these registers - but not as much. Virtually no one will see a benefit from being able to use more than 4gb of ram.
Bigger, better, faster, harder... crashes.
I already picked up my Nintendo 64 in 1996. Oh, you said X64, not N64....
Just like Microsoft - one day too late.
Yep..
The UT2004 version for Linux has had 64bit binaries pretty much since it came out.
People have found you get some performance enhancement with the game.. Especially if you compile optimized versions of the LibSDL libraries and replace the original libraries that came with the game.
But I guess that's useless information to you since your using DirectX and Windows.
The OS itself must have some kind of default drivers for thing slike USB keys, networking, popular printers etc. correct?
Anyone tested?
Sure they won't be optimal but they should work. Windows software developers who want to make 64 bit applications would find this release useful even today (without optimal hardware driver support).
Maybe it's my tinfoil hat speaking, but isn't it strange that Microsoft release a 64bit OS just a few weeks after Intel releases their 64bit x86 cpu http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/ 22/0235246&tid=118&tid=137 even though AMD have had their processor out for more than eighteen months?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
"Virtually no one will see a benefit from being able to use more than 4gb of ram."
Scientists, engineers, people running POV-Ray*, people who have PCI-e video cards plus games that have large models, or textures, people who work with large audio or video files.
The point being is that people either will already use all the memory they have, or will quickly find ways of using it.
*Ok, Ok, CPU bound more than memory, but...
Wha???
Let's see... 64 minus 32 is 32... so I don't get extra addressing, right?
Oh, I see... you meant if you have sixty-four processors which are all 32-bit. Your hyphen was in the wrong place: that should be written "64 32-bit processors".
No, wait. Did you mean "64-32 bit processors" as in "some number of 'bit' processors between 64 and 32"? Typically you put the smaller value first... Hold on: do AMD or Intel even make 1-bit processors?
Oooohhhh.... you must mean x86-64!
;)
The Online Slang Dictionary
There's been a rumour that owners (oops... licensees) of XP Pro will get a free upgrade to the 64-bit version.
Anyone know if this will happen?
(I'm keenly interested in this, since I own XP Pro and would like to see my video capture card stop working for lack of an XP-64 driver. Thank goodness for Linux support.)
I know the article says it just went gold, but I know damn well that there's some people here who've tried it. I am just curious... how useable is it?
I tried 64 bit Ubuntu briefly, but I went back to 32 bit after failing to acquire such things as my favorite XMMS plugins (which I never could get compiled and working properly, even in 32 bit, so was forced to get binaries), and 32codecs, and of course, browser plugins.
I would imagine that the video codecs work a lot better in Windows XP, but I would imagine that it would be much similar to Linux in that I would have to run in 32 bit mode in order to actually use most stuff.
I am aware that there's a way of running a 32 bit mode in Linux as well... but it seemed far too complex to actually go through with, and I am too much of a newbie to actually get it working properly.
Ever run sysedit? edit.com? Those are 16-bit programs that come with XP by default and there are many others.
Microsoft has a website for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. The site has a pseudo-technical overview of the product, and more detailed information for developers.
I find it somewhat irritating that Intel is promoting only the addressing part of x86-64's benefits.
Extended addressing might sound nice but in the real world, it translates to no performance improvement unless you have >4GB in your PC while gains from recompiling to use the extra registers (and some rewriting to combine high/low parts into int64s, reducing initial register usage) are often in the 20%-40% range - though this can vary wildly depending on GCC options and across GCC versions.
Well, it is all marketing so Intel's EMT64 campaign does not need to make any technical sense as long as it sells.
now see what the extra addressing brings to the party
64-bit eror codes on the BSOD!
Well, this tells me you should get a new username. Or s/ImaLamer/ImaTroll/
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Bust on Sun all you want, but they got 64-bit working 10 years ago.
You should have listened when i told that Neumann guy about how to make a proper computer around 50 years ago!
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Nah. It's useless because I can't afford an AMD64.
I'm sure for some stuff where you assume no drivers are needed, this is the case, so your USB keys and external hard drives would still work.
But once you get to stuff that isn't incredibly standardized, like network cards and non-postscript printers, checking a hardware compatibility list would be key. Microsoft has no need to waste their time and money writing drivers for all sorts of random bits of hardware on this platform for myriad reasons, not the least of which is that general consumers who would most benefit from having Microsoft write all those drivers aren't going to be the big purchasers of 64-bit Windows.
Even if you have an x86-64 CPU, why buy 64-bit Windows for your computer with 1 gig of RAM and no 64-bit apps?
It's still got the whole WPA thing built in, and uses different keys to the XP Retail... sounds like they're set up for selling it. If it was going to be a free upgrade they'd have allowed you to use your 32bit key.
OTOH there is a 'Windows XP 64 Bit (Extended Systems)' key that's non-WPA... I can't match that to a product (it's not XP x64 or XP IA64).
that the high end 64-bit machine has such a small moniter.
If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
Wow, this is going to be great. We can actually take more advantage of our 64-bit processors and see what they can offer!
:-(
I want an AMD 64 FX-55.
Anyways, isn't this Windows 64 bit edition supposed to sport the new user interface changes, namely, the 3D Desktop? (I know there's the 3D-Desktop SF.net project that runs only on Linux.)
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
"...latterly..."? Itanic not withstanding, Intel does not have a 64 bit processor yet.
From it's website:
"Intel Xeon processor with Intel EM64T features:
* 64-bit virtual address space for better support than prior IA-32 processors for applications with large memory requirements
* Increased parallelism due to an increased number of registers
* Wider general-purpose registers for use by 64-bit applications
* SSE3 instructions, which can help with 64-bit arithmetic"
BUT!!!
I can smell it now! Intel talks developers into porting based on EMT63T. These aps will not utilize full capabilities of the AMD product. This is good for Intel because it will get a gigantic breather to get it's 64bit product going and also good for developers who will be able to jump on the 64bit bandwagon with minimal effort.
Then again, maybe not the coffin nails. Novell and Redhat now have more time to take advantage on 64bit linux on the AMD product. Business sense a LOT of support for 64bit linux applications from all(AMD RHAT NOVL) three! Dammit you guys, join forces and market the hell out of your 64bit advantage.
Wow, maybe now Macromedia will get to releasing a 64-bit flash plug-in.
You've got it backwards... they're the same thing functionally. Technically they're completely different.
That doesn't mean you don't immediately benefit from having a 64 bit OS running 32 bit applications.
For example, each 32 bit process can be allotted the total 32 bit address space (4GB). This is a vast improvement over 32 bit windows where each process can only have 2GB (despite the 32 bit address range).
Also, continuing with that... you can then have x number of 4GB 32-bit processes all running concurrently up to the 64 bit address range (16EB).
While this may not seem significant to most users, there are some who can't wait for this, especially heavy photoshop users who work with multi gigabyte images.
Windows XP X64 went gold on March 31 and we see it on /. two days later?
Tiger went gold on April 1 and no time was wasted in posting that news.
Both are closed source operating systems.
Explain.
Maybe the timing isn't coincidence. But I do want to say it takes a long time to make an OS and all the system components 64-bit.
Apple hasn't done it yet, and they have plenty of reason to 64-bit processors. Tiger isn't even 64-bit, only small portions of the kernel are. Because Apple hasn't moved the entire system and libraries over to 64-bit, it's difficult to even write your own 64-bit app on Tiger, and Apple doesn't provide any either. It's gonna be embarassing for Apple when the first 64-bit version of Photoshop comes out for Windows.
You are all a bunch of punny borons
Grab a 64-bit Linux distribution. Yet another benefit of opensource is that people can freely recompile to 64-bit. I'm running 64-bit KDE 3.4.0 on my 64-bit Linux 2.6.11 on my Opteron 3000+. It runs WoW under 32-bit Cedega nicely as well (in addition to Starcraft/Diablo, etc). No need to chain yourself to a legacy OS for a few applications you can easily run in Linux :)
I run Slamd64, the x86-64 Slackware.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
April Fools! Due to unexpected engineering delays, Microsoft has been forced to release this joke 1 day late.
Does installing Win XP X64 require a clean install or can users upgrade from Win XP Pro?
+5 insightful
I installed the last release candidate, and what I read on the MS support forums is that this is an OEM ONLY release - the only way to get it is with the purchase of some MS-approved hardware from an authorized dealer.
The MS reps on the support forums did let everyone know that you could simply buy a $2 cable from a dealer, and then purchase the x64 release at the same time legally - you don't have to purchase a new computer with an x64 processor.
This is nothing new, we do this for ages. If you want to buy an oem windows version you just need to buy it together with some hardware (hdd, cd/dvd drive, sometimes even a mouse). That usually means getting a legal windows copy for about half the price of the boxed version plus the price of the hardware, which is usually no problem.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
OSX 10.4 Tiger. They have tried in the past to steal the limelight from big Apple releases, but they cannot match the buzz that The Steve can generate.
I remember when the released XP. It was greeted with a big, So What. I wonder if they have cut corners to get this out at this time?
photosMy Photostream
you're a genuine berylium of laughs
There's a 64bit version of FarCry, I think.
Note that 64bit addressing won't itself benefit many games; what x86-64 really brings to the party is that AMD also beefed up the ISA a little with x86-64, most notably by doubling the size of the previously pitifully small x86 register-file. This will give a nice performance boost to any app moving from x86 to x86-64.
> so in fact you will have 2**32 more problems.
Of course, that just the theoretical limit. In reality one never reaches this limit because problems interfere with each other....once you have a blue screen, nothing much worse can happen to you.
Unless your hard drive were erased. Being blue screened and erased would be the worse that could happen to you. Unless your email started spamming "I'd love a threeway with Jar-Jar and Tub Girl" to all your friends and your friends reply back "Me too!".
But it can't get worse than that.
Unless your computer explodes. Being exploded, jar-jared, and blue screened must be the worse thing in the world.
Unless the explosion makes you stupid. I mean, there's just no substitute for "smart", is there? Being stupid would quite possibly be the worst thing in the world.
Well, maybe not. Being sick because of the explosion would be worse. Being sick is the worst thing in the world.
Unless you were being exploded, jar-jared, and blue screened, sick AND stupid. That combination would really suck. Being exploded, jar-jared, and blue screened, sick AND stupid - you can't get worse than that.
Well, maybe one more: broke. That bluescreen virus got to your bank account.
Being exploded, jar-jared, and blue screened, sick, broke, and stupid. I think that's just about the worst possible.
Okay, one more: Being exploded, jar-jared, and blue screened, ugly, sick, broke, and stupid!
It can't get worse than that.
means 64 bit flash and 64 bit windows video dlls? I need both for my gentoo box.
So MS wants me to pay for more useless shit to slow my computer, attract viruses, spyware, malware, and software. No thank you.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
No, it's stupid and slow so it must be "Aggie".
Yes, If MS makes a technological advance it can in no way be a good thing ever. Even when its been an obvious benefit to other companies.
We must keep MS in the dark ages. they should not be allowed to advance!
We must keep MS mired in their old problems, with no chance of ever improving so that we may continue to suffer!
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
... my Athlon 64 notebook to Windows XP 64-bit, when it comes out.
I wonder what that will cost me.
You must be still living in a fortran world Mr. 2**32.
kthxbye
Mr. 2^32
Well I don't care what MS do in the future. I installed Ubuntu last month and, having now got to know it a bit, there's no question about it. This is going to be my main future desktop O/S.
:)
I will however be keeping my Win 2k box going as there are a couple of apps I can't do without (and no, there are no equivalents on Linux e.g. "Logic Audio")
But Ubuntu simply worked first time. Not only that but:
1 My USB keydrive works better than it does in Windows. Ubuntu doesn't complain when I remove it.
2 My Canon camera works better than in Windows. Note to Canon: your drivers and ZoomBrowser utterly suck, either show the bloody camera as another drive or integrate it properly with Explorer will ya ? Your stupid ZoomBrowser looks and behaves like it was designed for a retard.
3 All my peripherals like my scanner, printer, VGA card, CD burner worked first time.
4 The desktop and file manager look better. Well they did after I turned spatial browsing off which sucks as bad as XP
5 Synaptic is just such an excellent tool.
Honestly who cares about Windows ? It's got no future on my desktop. None at all. I don't care if they release a free as in beer, open source, 256 bit verson with free pizza for life. It's an old & tired O/S whose time has passed.
Like a lot of old stuff I'm sure it'll be littering up workplaces for years to come though.
Not. As an application developer, you simply don't notice the DMA issue as far as app development goes. Yet the customer may notice a performance tradeoff sooner of later.
The question is, are all these Intel CPUs actually used with 64 bit applications. See, people buying Opteron boxes buy them because they want to explicitly run 64 bit apps on Linux, e.g. for compute clusters where Opteron rack servers sell like sliced bread. Intel EM64T boxes are bought although most people still run 32 bit OSes and apps on them, mainly because very few windows applications are available in x86_64 versions right now.
So Intel may claim to be the market leader as far as shipping volumes but not as far as uses. The main reason Intel can claim to be the market leader here is that most customers always tend to buy the fastest GHz CPUs that are available, and these happen to be EM64T in machines like the IBM x346 or the HP DL380G4, which are pretty much the mainstream in data center applications.
Wide spread deployment of x86-64 production envrionments is still a few quarters out. Fact is it is not quite ready for prime time.
Uh - what the heck am I missing here? Check this page and this page and tell me for which OS x86_64 support is available, and give me a rough guess for which OS not. Sure as hell, Oracle 10g does not run on EM64T CPUs on Microsoft Windoze in 64 bit mode. For now, you need to buy an Itanium box to do that (and Itanium sales in 2004 is an entirely different story). What a pity. What did you say about prime time?
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
I thought that 64bit meant a potential DATA bus was 64bits wide, but I am obviously wrong....
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I guess you should never try to write a joke when you've been up all night.
Get your Unix fortune now!
was the text of the linked article supposed to make any sense at all?
there IS a 64bit edition of FarCry (I got it free when I bought some parts) and on another note, I've have 64 bit windows for quite a while now, they gave the beta away free for a long time now.
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
if the gold is anything like the beta (and it is, since im talking about the beta from last month) this OS should be well worth using! (in about a year.)
Mike
I heart the RIAA & MPAA, im sure its mutual...
You got modded Troll for bashing Windows. You don't see THAT everyday...
Well, first:
0 /index.x?pg=1
http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/
Then:
http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q1/athlon64-300
HTH. HAND.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Python 2.3.4 (#53, May 25 2004, 21:17:02) [MSC v.1200 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 2**32
4294967296L
>>> 2^32
34
>>>
From the benchmarks of the Beta's, the performance for Windows XP-64 was worse than that of XP-32 for the most important MS benchmark, gaming. (I say that simply because gaming is the only thing I can do better on Windows than Linux).
Hopefully Microsoft fixed that before they went gold, otherwise this OS will prove a bit of a dog and it won't get very wide acceptance from the marketplace. Also, it's lacking more legacy support than you usually get from Microsoft, so again that will decrease the adoption rate.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.