64-bit motherboards

  • Thread starter Thread starter Geoff
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G

Geoff

I was wondering what everything thinks of the 64-bit boards? Win XP 64 will
not come out until 2006 and I guess everything will change in 2006. I was
thinking of upgrading my system but I guess I will wait for a while unless
my hardware breaks.

My curent system is a p2b-ds with win 2000. It is enough for what I need
because I am not a gamer. What will people buy and when and when will
people go to 64-bit hardware?

-g

ps I know you unix guys are on 64-bits already :)
 
Geoff...... Windows XP64 has been released to manufacturing. It is already
on its way. If you have an MSDN subscription, you can download it now.
 
Geoff said:
I was wondering what everything thinks of the 64-bit boards? Win XP 64 will
not come out until 2006 and I guess everything will change in 2006. I was
thinking of upgrading my system but I guess I will wait for a while unless
my hardware breaks.

My curent system is a p2b-ds with win 2000. It is enough for what I need
because I am not a gamer. What will people buy and when and when will
people go to 64-bit hardware?
Click to expand...

Well... not many people actually need 64bit. Having a 64bit bit
processor gets you two things:

64bit data bus: Not many people need more than 32bit.
40bit address bus: Takes you from 3-4GB to a Terabyte of RAM.

The second reason is a big reason in the server market and will be
useful on the desktop at some point. I don't think more than 1GB is
advantagous for most users right now. I do think that more than 512MB
has been an advantage for over a year.

However, the fastest desktop chips are 64bit and that is the way of the
future... there are architectural improvements that allow faster
processing, which is probably the biggest drive for desktop users right now.

I've got a 64bit OS on my machine - Linux. Works a charm.

Windows will be ready when the drivers for your hardware are ready...
which right now is probably 50/50. There are quite a few "beta" 64bit
drivers around, but equally there is loads of kit without drivers.

Ben
 
Geoff said:
I was wondering what everything thinks of the 64-bit boards? Win XP 64
will
not come out until 2006 and I guess everything will change in 2006. I
was
thinking of upgrading my system but I guess I will wait for a while
unless
my hardware breaks.

My curent system is a p2b-ds with win 2000. It is enough for what I
need
because I am not a gamer. What will people buy and when and when will
people go to 64-bit hardware?
Click to expand...
XP64, has been 'beta' for quite a while, and manufacturing release
versions, are already shipping. I think you are a 'year out' on your
release date...
It really does depend what you want to do. 64bit computing, just like the
shift to 32bit systems some years ago, is not a good thing for small
simple applications. It doesn't bring any inherent advantages, until you
have an application that requires a memory space bigger than the 3GB
maximum 'useable' in the standard OS's (2GB without the /3GB switch).
Unfortunately, it brings the downside of needing to handle the larger
addresses, and a cost associated with this (applications will again be
bulkier, and probably slower..). Now for the right applicaion, it is a
godsend. I have been running a Beta XP64, and for a particular graphic
application, rewritten to run in the 64bit system, with 10GB of RAM
fitted, the speed gain over the 32bit version, is a delight. However for
smaller applications, it brings no gain at all.
If you monitor your memory usage, and the commit charge, is allways well
below perhaps 1 or 2GB, then your application mix, is one that will gain
practically nothing from the 64bit systems, except the fact that the
processors will probably represent the 'state of the art' in terms of
clock performance. If however you are a database user, who wants to build
a 10GB 'flat' database in memory, or a heavy graphic user, who wants to
manipulate massive files, with many in memory at once, then the systems
are the way to go.

Best Wishes
 
There are immediate benefits for people that need 3 - 4 GB Ram. With AMD the
memory that is otherwise lost to chipset reservations in between 3 and 4 GB
disappear. EG on Intel 875 chipset boards (and no doubt athlon 32 bit if
ever anyone got gobs of memory to go in one) with 4GB physical ram, you may
have only 3.4GB available to the OS with or without any special boot.ini
switches.

This is useful to people that want to run apps such as Virtual PC, Virtual
Server, VMWare or other OS host systems. Similarly any apps that require
large chunks of contiguous ram will benefit. I think the largest single
chunk an XP system with 4gb is around 750mb - but this is for 1 allocation.
 
something that you guys have missed is the added registars to the AMD64
extentention. this is huge beleive it or , assuming that you have code
writen for AMD64 which is key ofcourse,

in testing done at my company-(selling Opterons servers and they have our
OS if that is enough of a hint not linux, although we will run linux) using
optimized code for 64 bit , resulted in serious performance increased just
cause there are a lot less of pushes on the Stack. even running 32 bit
application code and with a 64 bit OS resulted in better performance.

While I don't know the extent that MS has done the optimization for AMD64 ,
I would think them a fool not too.

cpu clock cycyle for cpu clock cycle there was improvement

and you should be able to prove this, load up win32 and run a bench mark
then load up win64 and try the same apps. there should be improvement, it
will depend on the system calls ofcourse , but 5-45% would not be out of the
question.

more interesting is the next generation of Opterons.the dual core will ROCK.
first they are going to increase the CPU speed and then add a second core--
talk about a speed bump.and their design is way ahead on intels design. I
can see AMD grabbing some chunks of the server market with this one. too bad
the opterons are so expensive, otherwise I would consider that for an
upgrade.
 
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