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.'"

Comments

Is there a list of softare ready for it?

[airjrdn]

Anyone aware of a list of Windows software (perhaps on MS's site) that'll benefit from it?

Re:Is there a list of softare ready for it?

[northcat]

Don't programs need to be coded (compiled at least) specifically for x86-64 to use 64bit features?

Re:Is there a list of softare ready for it?

[DaHat]

IIRC, 2k and XP pro both are limited to 4 gigs of ram. Assuming you have that much, a single app is pretty much limited to 3 gigs of the system, that leaves just 1 gig for everything else. Move to a 64-bit machine with XP64 with say... 8 gigs, the same app still gets it's 3 gigs of ram (or more if it asks), leaving a full 5 gigs for the rest of the system and other apps.

Re:Is there a list of softare ready for it?

[Surye]

A question I've wondered, is there any benifits to using a 32bit OS on a 64bit proc vs. 32bit on 32bit? If the answer is no, why has AMD seemed to discontinue it's 32bit proc? And the Sempron does not count, I'm not talking their discount line, I mean their real CPUs.

Re:Is there a list of softare ready for it?

[netdur]

imaging if Novell could release Mono for Windows 64-bit before Microsoft release .NET

Is it the season?

[Hephaestus]

It seems to be the season for OS updates, doesn't it? :-)

Re:Is it the season?

[Slack3r78]

Seriously, I'm going to be busy the next few weeks. Windows XP 64, OS 10.4 Tiger, and Ubuntu 5.04 all within a few weeks of each other. It's just about geek overload. :-)

Longhorn

[Daxx_61]

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?

Re:Longhorn

[Anonymous Coward]

That and since they eliminated most of the features that were supposadly going to be very cool..
Avalon,
WinFS,
and that other one that nobody cares about.. ... that the Longhorn OS is essentially going to be the same thing WinXP was to Win2k, which is a slightly updated version of the same operating system.

(notice how all the Avalon/Winfs crap has been 'backported' to WinXP?)

So by working on WinXP, they are working on Longhorn since they are basicly the same.

Cosmeticly they are going to be different, of course, and Longhorn will have more features and updated memory management scemes and such. but it is what it is.

'Blackcomb' was always suppose to be the next 'revolutionary' OS (as in not NT-based like Win2k/WinXP/Longhorn)

It is critical for Longhorn to be released soon.

Since Microsoft switched licensing scemes people are holding off on new contractual orders, while Microsoft keeps offering more and more steep discounts on large new contracts.

IBM even stated that a bank in Europe was offered a contract for 11million dollars from MS to upgrade the office/OS/server licenses, and they went and played the IBM webportal appliation/Linux card between 3-4 million dollars suddenlyh evaporated from the cost.

This June most of the contracts under the old licensing sceme are up and MS needs a new server and desktop OS to go along with a new Office version to rejuvinate intrest.

So basicly people are holding off buying large contracts until they either get bigger discounts, move to Linux servers (Windows desktops still of course), or until something more compelling comes along (longhorn).

And it will. MS will have more sales and Longhorn server/desktop will breath new life into the long term contracts.

Is it worth upgrading?

[AGTiny]

I run XP on an AMD64 laptop. Would I gain anything by upgrading to this or not?

Re:Don't get *too* excited yet...

[grennis]

Excuse me but if you are still running a 16-bit application, then you are in a very special situation. And you are keenly aware of that fact. So, you aren't going to be installing XP64, and I don't really see why you would want to in the first place.

Coincidence

[ozmanjusri]

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?

Re:Don't get *too* excited yet...

[imsabbel]

INstallers arent a problem.
There are traps that intercept them and run an installshield/ect emulation.

Re:The biggest challenge for Windows...

[Anonymous Coward]

While parent is funny it should be noted being sluggish on old hardware is a bigger problem for Linux.

Dual boot Redhat/Gnome and Xp and some old hardware. I do this on a 128MB Celeron333Mhz. XP is less sluggish than Linux.

There is more to x86-64 than addressing...

[InvalidError]

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.

nope

[flithm]

You've got it backwards... they're the same thing functionally. Technically they're completely different.

Re:Heh

[pantherace]

Actually no, it's only caught up to Mac OS X (and actually exceeded, due to the way 64-bitness is in OS X so far.).

This is simply the OS that's running in 64-bit mode now. The programs are all still 32-bit. (Admittedly, this means a lot more for Windows vs Mac OS, as the underlying command set changes just a bit ia32->x86_64.)

Now, if they could catch up to Redhat 6.0 on alpha, that'd be impressive. ;)

(Note, that while NT was on Alpha, it was treated as a 32-bit arch, and the first fully 64-bit port of Windows was to ia64...the 2nd 64-bit arch it was on... All the sudden I get this feeling of impending doom for x86_64.)

Re:Heh

[fyngyrz]

Think of it as frontier territory with no newspapers, running water, or phone lines."

I prefer to think of it as frontier territory without resource and memory leaks, buggy system calls, and insanely bloated, sourcecode-free "objects" that are larger than most applications used to be but provide unique and special capabilities like "buttons" and "checkmarks."

But that's just me. :-) When I encounter something from Microsoft that is broken (like a file dialog ot the treeview control) then I write my own, make sure it works, fix it ASAP if and when anyone finds anything I missed... so memory where MS's OS fears to tread smells like freedom and clean air. There may not be any toilets, but then again, I don't have to have Microsoft's sewage running all over my applications.

Real conversation from about 2002:

CUSTOMER: Why, when I select more than 100 image files in the "load file" dialog, do the files come in in reverse order and missing any that were past about the 105th selected file?

US: Yeah. Those are problems in Microsoft's file dialog. According to MS, the 100 file limit problem has been in there since Windows 95. The files in reverse order happens because you selected the first file first, and shift-selected the last file, last. You can select the last file first and the first file last, and they'll come out they way you want them. As long as there are under 100 or so names. But you can just download the latest revision of our application and that problem is gone. Along with Microsoft's file dialog.

We gave them this, instead.

Get 64-bit applications now.

[Inoshiro]

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.

Re:latterly? & EM64T = AMD's coffin nails?

[l3v1]

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

That was exactly what I thought when Intel came out with the reworked xeons to handle 64b. Thing is, Intel cpus have a so large market coverage (and will have) that if most people code for em64t then their code will probably not produce significant speed pushes when recompiled on opterons/fx's. And - so that others also get it clearer - em64t is _not_ a total full amd64 re-implementation. I for one would much more gladly see specifically opteron-coded stuff, because I firmly believe the opterons' architecture is a very good one: _very_ speedy and very low power. Even in this thread a few posts above someone posted some performance data where 3.4ghz xeon64 ran a code slower than an opteron 2.4ghz. Well, nothing new here, same good old amd way of doing cpus. Just what many of us like so much.