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Is XP 64 bit good?
- Thread starter Nick_Leo
- Start date
my vista x64 works `just fine'. I run steam games, but portal does not want to work.
SuperSubZero
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I run XP64.. I have the Orange Box.. I have only installed Portal and TF2 but both work fine.
I have also played Rise of Nations, Age of Empires III, UT2004 (64-bit), FarCry (64-bit), Tribes II, and a bunch of console emulators with absolutely no issues whatsoever.
I don't think it would be any faster. The Server2003 codebase the XP64 is built on is generally considered more "optimized" than XP32, but it's not something you're likely to notice in everyday use.
For the record, even though it is *purely* a static, unimportant, irrelevant stat, in 3DMark2K6 I did lose about 5% on my score when I went from XP32 to Vista64 on my laptop. When I put XP64 on my laptop, the score was equal to XP32.
I have also played Rise of Nations, Age of Empires III, UT2004 (64-bit), FarCry (64-bit), Tribes II, and a bunch of console emulators with absolutely no issues whatsoever.
I don't think it would be any faster. The Server2003 codebase the XP64 is built on is generally considered more "optimized" than XP32, but it's not something you're likely to notice in everyday use.
For the record, even though it is *purely* a static, unimportant, irrelevant stat, in 3DMark2K6 I did lose about 5% on my score when I went from XP32 to Vista64 on my laptop. When I put XP64 on my laptop, the score was equal to XP32.
And what, exactly, are these 'tons of issues' that Vista 64 has? Have you tried Vista 64? Or are you just believing what you read on the internet. People really should try Vista for a few weeks before dissing it so quickly. Vista 64 has been running very nicely for the last 4 months here, with very few complaints.
Same here, I've used it flawlessly for over 5 months and my friend for about 3 and both of us have not had any issues or hiccups.
I don't have any issues with Vista x64 either. I would tend to think that compatibility between Vista x64 and XP x64 is pretty similar; if anything, Vista x64 may be better, since Microsoft requires x64 Vista drivers to be provided for WHQL testing. The compatibility issues are primarily to do with going 32-bit to 64-bit (you lose 16-bit programs entirely, and you get a few other issues), but that shouldn't really be a problem unless you use pretty old programs.
My testing with Vista 64 on the desktop system in my sig yielded nothing but trouble. Bluescreens and random lock-ups. Now, I'm not saying that everyone will experience this but I certainly did.
However, the same rig with XP x64 is rock solid.
However, the same rig with XP x64 is rock solid.
I used XP-64 almost since it came out, so I suffered many compatibility problems, lack of drivers and other issues, but most of them were ironed out and it became rock solid and a great gaming platform.
Now I'm using vista64 and I kind of like it. The experience I gained with XP-64 payed off, now I've quickly and effortlessly solved any issues I've had.
Now I'm using vista64 and I kind of like it. The experience I gained with XP-64 payed off, now I've quickly and effortlessly solved any issues I've had.
well for one i had vista 32 bit and man i cant even look at it, ive got so many crashes, lost tons of x-fi features and i just love the look of xp so much more. Id really like to stay XP. Does x-fi work fine like to get the control panal to change the bass and modes and stuff?
They didn't remove support for hardware accelerated audio, just for DS3D hardware acceleration. X-Fi cards still support hardware acceleration with EAX through OpenAL. Creative released the ALchemy tool for older games, and most newer games should be using either OpenAL or software 3D audio (preferably both, letting you chose which one you want).
As for the original thread subject... The only issue you'll likely have with WinXP x64 is the occasional program/game refusing to install because the developers were shortsighted enough to do a windows version check (even the occasional newer game won't recognize XP64, one example would be Guitar Hero 3). It doesn't happen very often, but some installers won't recognize XP64 as a supported OS (even though the game itself would run fine if it would let it install). Games that do this and use Windows Installer can be fixed by using the Windows Installer SDK (although I'm not really sure what the exact process is, I just know it can be done).
That's not entirely true. Any game that runs on XP32 should run fine on XP64 because of WoW64, however (as I mentioned above) some games may refuse to install because it detects it as an unsupported OS. Really old games (DOS games) may not run by themselves but should run fine with DOSBox. It's probably best to run DOS games on DOSBox with any Windows OS that isn't based on DOS (WinXP, Vista, etc.) anyways. There's also SCUMMVM for Lucasarts games and others. As far as I know, no 64-Bit operating system (or at least no 64-Bit Windows OS) can 16-Bit executables, but they should still be able to run on a virtual machine with an OS that supports them.
DeaconFrost
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If you are going to be buying a new OS, make it Vista x64. Those "ton of issues" you refer to are either resolved or never existed in the first place. The one way to be sure is too look around at how many people are using Vista x64, and have stuck with it, completely satisfied.
lithium726
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I've got a copy of XP x64 at home, and it's a pile IMO. drivers are non-existent, but maybe that's just for my laptop.
That said, it runs nicely on the computers in our ME lab with Ansys x64. I guess it just depends on whether you can find drivers.
That said, it runs nicely on the computers in our ME lab with Ansys x64. I guess it just depends on whether you can find drivers.
Whether or not OEM's choose to provide drivers has no bearing on the efficacy of the OS. Please separate your complaints.
I, on the other hand, have had quite the opposite experience. Every device I have has a driver available for XP x64 (even my low-caste Brother laser printer).
lithium726
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I disagree, without appropriate drivers any OS becomes unusable. If it doesn't have mainstream support there is only so much it can do.
My buddy bought it when we built him an athlon x2 system a while back, he kept it for maybe a month. some of the drivers were buggy, he couldn't get drivers for his tuner card, and he was unhappy. I tried it on my laptop, there were a few things I couldn't find for it. I went into the task manager on the school computers and even they're missing a driver for something, and that was installed from the factory.
I'm not aware of any 64bit vista issues. It has the same driver support as 32bit and all apps and games that work on 32bit also work on 64bit. And IMO it's more stable than 32bit and a wee bit faster. Handles video better too.
And yes, I do have both a 32bit and 64bit Vista computer.
SuperSubZero
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What laptop do you have? My Dell Inspiron E1705 has XP64 drivers for everything, and that's despite Dell not even supporting XP64.
I just installed XP x64 and so far I had zero issues. 64-bit drivers are available for all my hardware (I checked before the install; I assumed so anyway since this is a recently built computer). I installed a whole bunch of newer games and didn't have any issues with them.
I didn't want to go to Vista anytime soon but I wanted to take advantage of my 6GB of RAM, so XP x64 was a good choice for me.
I didn't want to go to Vista anytime soon but I wanted to take advantage of my 6GB of RAM, so XP x64 was a good choice for me.
while I admit that the Windows audio API needed an overhaul, it doesn't change or explain why they decided to remove support for real hardware accelerated audio. they could simply move those drivers to user-mode just like they have with video.
DirectSound is a joke because there is nothing in DirectSound that cannot be done in software mixing. For real hardware acceleration (which implies rapid DSP, channel mixing, signal conditioning, etc.) the only route possible is hardware because a software implementation is simply too slow.
Thus, I don't understand why DirectSound3D was removed. It makes no sense whatsoever. Microsoft can claim they took a step forward, but they really took two steps back and reduced us back to the realm of no single, unifying standard. That was the entire point of DirectX in the first place.
I have no idea, but it seems to be an industry accepted solution to the problem of the old audio stack. Direct sound is still there, it's that all the processing is done on the CPU instead of the audio chip. It really doesn't make much of a difference with todays computers with multiple cores and very high performance. Even just a few years ago, the X-Fi only brought 5% improvement in performance to BF2 over a software sound chip, the $150 for a X-Fi card back then was better spent on going to the next better graphics card instead.
Doesn't OpenAL run just fine on Vista and doesn't it have to run in user mode? Maybe that is the solution to the problem. And Alchemy converts DirectSound calls to OpenAL calls.
And to clarify, I wasn't LOLing at your post.
You are correct about this. But, it's not MICROSOFT'S solution. It's a solution from Creative that _some people_ use and _some people_ don't. That's why I said that it's like being back in 1993. There's not a central authority telling the industry "this is the one true way to handle 3D accelerated audio." Instead, people are back to being at the mercy of both what hardware vendors choose to support and what software vendors choose to support.
DirectX was intended to be a unifying platform to make the PC multimedia experience more like the console multimedia experience for developers (that is, only _one_ target platform). They've undone part of that with their decision to throw 3D accelerated audio back onto the shoulders of developers.
Not really, you still get 3D sound on Vista, it just isn't using your X-Fi chip. It pretty much puts the X-Fi down to all the other chip's level. One more point is that there were only a handful of games that really made good use of the X-Fi to begin with. BF2 and 2142 were the two that I have played. Otherwise, games didn't bother to code for it.
And about OpenAL, ALOT of games were already starting to go that route even before Vista.
SuperSubZero
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The moment you say it doesn't matter since the host CPU can just do it anyway, you end up with Winmodems. And Winprinters. And maybe Win-sound cards. Maybe Win-video cards!
You also imply that under every single condition, in every single application, under every single conceivable load, the CPU will always be able to handle it without 'much of a difference'. The fact that this is untrue is WHY people like hardware-accelerated sound. Yeah a quiet serene BF2 scene may not be much different between a hardware and software solution, but throw them in a massive multi-direction firefight with different weapons and things happening and oh yeah multiple audio channels and things may change a bit.
LOL. WinVideo cards, can't wait!
And, yes, on a modern PC system, I would say every situation, the host CPU will be able to handle the load. It's just like how back in the days when a good Ethernet card made the performacne difference by offloading the processing vs a cheapo Realtek based one. Now days, you would be hard pressed to justify, performance wise, a $100 Ethernet card over a onboard Realtek card. Soundcards are heading to the same conclusion. It's going to be quality of the sound, the DAC's, the sampling rates, etc, not it's hardware 3D effects, which will all be done in software.
And about BF2 and 2142, I couldn't agree more. I have thoroughly enjoyed both those games with my X-Fi. But, I have to ask, why did EA/Dice make the decision to only support the X-Fi on the "Ultra" quality mode? I am thinking it is more of a factor of money vs technical issues.
nigerian_businessman
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Meh, speak for yourself. Vista x64 isn't all that great. It works, but XP worked better. 3 months after a fresh install on a new system and I'm still unimpressed.
If I had a legit license I would use XP-64 but I don't, and I'm not inclined to run a cracked copy in lieu of my legit Vista 64 license, so I'm dealing for now. But Vista 64 is not without its problems, so don't be misleading and state that everything is ironed out.
And since people will ask, a short list of the issues I am tolerating at the moment:
- intermittent network issue that requires a reboot to fix; open connections stay open but no new connections in or out can be opened. this is the biggest issue for me at the moment.
- mfpmp.exe -- disable it and lose the ability to play most media in WMP. leave it enabled and watch it drain your system resources like mad when you play media, even though said media has no drm.
- slow. slow slow slow slow sloooooowwww. xp on my single core a64 3200+ box with 1/4 of the ram and IDE drives feels snappier. don't even get me started comparing it to linux. lol.
- speaking of linux, vista absolutely hates working with linux over a network. or anything other than another copy of vista, for that matter. and even getting 2 machines running vista to play nice over a simple crossover cable network is frustrating.
- did i mention it's slow?
to sum it up, when i want to get something done, I use linux. when I want to play games, I tolerate vista.
createcoms
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I'm running XP x64 and well it runs fast and it runs virtually BSOD free. All internal bits have drivers, and Crysis even has 64-bit mode which I'm using to have some fun (in my short lived spare time moments!). My Palm PDA doesn't run with x64 but I wasn't heavy on the local sync anyways so not great loss there, and I had an older scanner which Canon didn't bother writing a new driver for (they said buy a newer model, thanks for nothing canon!). But I love and squeeze my XP x64.
-cc
-cc
I suspect you know this already, but here are some steps to get Vista and Samba to play together nicely.
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS4434907782.html
Nice post BTW, it's one of the rare detracting posts regarding Vista with some actual content in it.
nigerian_businessman
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Yes, I've worked out the Samba issue, but thanks for the help anyway. My main issue at this point is just the network dropping. Everything else I avoid pretty well by just using Linux. I have two monitors set up next to each other, one hooked up to the computer in my signature, the other hooked up to my Linux server, and I am using synergy to seamlessly move between them.
The issues I have with Vista are kind of big. My $1400 computer runs slower than the 3 year old $600 computer sitting next to it for everyday tasks. The networking issues are big -- I never had these problems with XP. They occur whether I have Vista connected to the small workgroup in my house or connected directly to the internet. Whatever this problem is, I've tried just about every combination of settings and nothing will fix it. I'm convinced that the TCP/IP stack in Vista is horribly broken. And the MFPMP.EXE DRM crap just slows down my computer more. Disabling it isn't really an option unless I opt to use Winamp (which takes about 2 minutes to open in Vista) or VLC (which isn't as user friendly).
In contrast, the only issue I have with Linux is some strange problem where the combination of Compiz Fusion and Synergy eventually causes X to lock up completely. That is the -only- issue, and I can avoid it by simply not running Compiz, or using a mouse and keyboard directly connected to the Linux box. And the thing is, due to the open nature of the software, I'm sure there's a solution somewhere. I just haven't found it yet. I'm not so sure when it comes to the Vista network issue.
This is really all one man's view of the current state of Vista so take it for what it's worth. I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of satisfied users out there; I'm sure there are. I'm just not one of them. My personal opinion is that XP-64 is the more mature, better option out of the two. But I would probably still install Vista 64 if only because I don't see the point in buying a new license for old software at the same price point as new software. Just use Vista for games and install Linux for stability.
Vista x64 did have a very rocky start. I have 4GB RAM, SLI and an X-Fi, and right after I got Vista x64 (like a week) everything went to hell, as I lost all sound (replaced with static) or I lost my video output (SLI strobe light, would flash black/white instead of the Windows logon screen). Since then, the problems have gone away and the OS is stable.
dreamer3kx
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??? The problems mysteriously vanished??
I'm guessing here, but I think he meant to imply that MS fixed the problems via updates.
No, they went away with lots of work from driver authors. The main issues with XP64 were just that, drivers.
Since XP64 wasn't a mainstream OS, component manufacturers didn't want to focus resources on it. That changed when Vista 64 hit the market.
Redshirt #24
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Same old question, same old answer: I've had virtually no problems whatsoever with XP/x64. None. Yes, the driver issue is a potential nag (as mentioned previously, though, it's not as bad now in general as it was...say, a year or so ago) but it's been absolutely rock-solid across a handful of system do-overs. Hell, it might even be more stable for me than vanilla XP was when I was using it.
Modred189
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I have been using Vista Ultimate 64 since November 2006 (RC1). I have had very few issues since the beginning. Max Payne 1/2 AND cod2 won't play. Everything else I have thrown at it has been fine.
I would quickly recommend 64-bit to anyone thinking of going that route. Anyone who frequents [H] anyway.
I would have to disagree with the above poster that said it's slow. It seems just as fast as XP to me, or faster.
I will have to agree with the networking issues, it does not like to see other non-vista pc's.
I would quickly recommend 64-bit to anyone thinking of going that route. Anyone who frequents [H] anyway.
I would have to disagree with the above poster that said it's slow. It seems just as fast as XP to me, or faster.
I will have to agree with the networking issues, it does not like to see other non-vista pc's.
Well Vista 64 Ultimate is slower than XP anything. My hard disk array has slower access by a lot. I just installed a driver update and did a restart and Vista wants to install in again. This happens everytime I reboot. Just plain dumb program. I am so fed up with Vista right now it is always something everyweek and I have had it for over a year now on a work station. I could not in all, realy recommend Vista to anyone. Just got over a 20 hour long defrag on my hd's that is non sence.
Have fun with vista
Have fun with vista