WinXP 32 or 64 with Adobe and other gfx software?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Liam
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Liam

I'm building my wife a new PC, with 4GB RAM, a workstation video card,
quad-core CPU....
She's going to be using it for only graphic design and animation,
using Adobe CS3 and Lightwave and the like.
As I understand, XP 32bit doesn't handle 4GB RAM very well (or at
all). But I also understand if we use XP 64 bit we'd have to get whole
new software for the OS.

Any personal experience on this subject? (Don't even bother suggesting
Vista.)
Thanks!
Liam
 
I'm building my wife a new PC, with 4GB RAM, a workstation video card,
quad-core CPU....
She's going to be using it for only graphic design and animation,
using Adobe CS3 and Lightwave and the like.
As I understand, XP 32bit doesn't handle 4GB RAM very well (or at
all). But I also understand if we use XP 64 bit we'd have to get whole
new software for the OS.

Any personal experience on this subject? (Don't even bother suggesting
Vista.)
Thanks!
Liam
Click to expand...

A lot of hardware drivers do not exist for XP 64bit and XP 32bit
drivers appear to not be supported in XP 64bit. Check for drivers
before selecting XP 64bit.
 
I'm building my wife a new PC, with 4GB RAM, a workstation video card,
quad-core CPU....
She's going to be using it for only graphic design and animation,
using Adobe CS3 and Lightwave and the like.
As I understand, XP 32bit doesn't handle 4GB RAM very well (or at
all). But I also understand if we use XP 64 bit we'd have to get whole
new software for the OS.

Any personal experience on this subject? (Don't even bother suggesting
Vista.)
Thanks!
Liam
Click to expand...

er, for "whole new software for the OS" I mean whole new applications
to run on the new OS.
Or, does x64's 32 bit compatability mode work well enough?
Thanks,
Liam
 
A lot of hardware drivers do not exist for XP 64bit and XP 32bit
drivers appear to not be supported in XP 64bit.  Check for drivers
before selecting XP 64bit.
Click to expand...

Well, I checked the Nvidia Quadro4 drivers and it has native x64
support, and the add-on wireless NIC card also has x64 support. Those
are the only add-ons we'd be using (I assume RAM and mobo naturally
work with x64.) So, hardware-wise, I think we're good.
I'm just concerned whether XP x64 will run most software OK.
Thanks for the driver reminder. :)
 
It works pretty well.

Only problem is with 16 bit installers <- they dont work on x64.

I know adobe photoshop cs will work.

I don't know about Lightwave though...

Also 32 bit applications are mostly limited to 2 GB.

So if you have Adobe Photoshop 32 bit then maybe it's limited to 2 GB of ram
usage.

Ofcourse if she uses multiple programs at the same time then she might get
some benefit from 4 GB of ram ;)

A wife that goes over 2 GB of ram usage... that's something I would like to
see ;)

Though these graphics app can easily eat lots of memory so I definetly
believe it's possible... more than possible ;)

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
It works pretty well.

Only problem is with 16 bit installers <- they dont work on x64.

I know adobe photoshop cs will work.

I don't know about Lightwave though...

Also 32 bit applications are mostly limited to 2 GB.

So if you have Adobe Photoshop 32 bit then maybe it's limited to 2 GB of ram
usage.

Ofcourse if she uses multiple programs at the same time then she might get
some benefit from 4 GB of ram ;)

A wife that goes over 2 GB of ram usage... that's something I would like to
see ;)

Though these graphics app can easily eat lots of memory so I definetly
believe it's possible... more than possible ;)

Bye,
  Skybuck.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.
Yeah, actually, she's an animator so she'll have like 3 or 4 memory
intensive programs open at a time over two monitors. She's pretty cool
that way. :)
She could probably use 8GB of RAM easy, unfortunately the _good_ mobos
that can handle 8GB are out of our price range. :( We'll just have to
settle for the best 4GB mobo we can afford.
 
You can't assume the mobo will have x64 drivers... you could end up finding
something like the USB ports dont work!
Click to expand...

Hmm, OK, good point.
How much RAM does the video card have? Unless it has 1Gb or more (some do),
I would suggest WinXP32 is fine for your use.

The problem with 32bit OSs is that they can only address 4GB of ram.  If you
have memory mapped hardware (like the video card), and you have, this memory
has to come out of that 4GB address space... A WinXP 32bit installation with
a 256MB video card will generally end up with about 3.25Gb of usable RAM....
enough for most users (some users NEVER have enough!)
Click to expand...

Hmm, from what I can tell, regardless of the video card 32bit can only
address 3.12GB of RAM, period.
But, I don't understand how a video card with its own RAM ALSO takes
up system RAM? Guess that's something I'm going to have to look into.
Your other option of course is to go to Vista 64bit, which I am told has
better driver support than XP64 ever did.
Click to expand...

I too have heard it has better driver support. However the OS itself
eats up a lot of the available RAM.
From everything I can find, XP 64bit uses the hardware significantly
better than Vista and XP 32bit while using less resources. From what I
can tell, XP 64bit blows Vista and XP 32bit out of the water when it
comes to CAD and 3D modeling and rendering--which is exactly what this
computer is going to be used for.

I'm to the point where I can see it's a sure thing XP 64bit is the
best OS for this rig...my only issue is whether or not we can still
run our copies of CS3 and Lightwave and Maya, etc. on XP 64bit as we
do the 32bit Windows.
 
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