EMT64. Good/bad? What OS to install?

[grogoreo]

hi

EM64T is not emulation, it is an extension to the processor for 64bit. I don't have a 64bit processor, but I have read that 64bit Windows is OK in some cases. It depends on if you can get the drivers for your hardware and if you can get the 64bit version on your main programs. There are sites that show how stable a 32bit application on 64bit Windows, but I can't remember where. If you can get it for free, there's no harm in giving it a go!

[thx1138]

Without drivers you won't even get XP64 running. And I'm not just talking about videodrivers. Your motherboard BIOS first has to support the EMT64/Xp64 stuff. Next are your disk controller drivers and then your videodrivers.
XP 64 has been released a few months ago, and it's not Beta anymore. It's rock solid. Been using it since last august without a single crash. Same story as the normal XP.

The performance is a bit disappointing however. It feels slower actually. But once you get those native 64bit apps running, things start to speed up. A lot.

As for running 32bit apps on XP64, there's no real issues there. Just about everything seems to work fine (Wacom, Pshop, Painter, Lightwave, Vue Infinite, Itunes/Quicktime7 to name a few I use). I'm sure there's apps out there that won't work. But I tend not to polute my system with too much little apps that I won't use anyway.

That being said. I think the 64bit wave will start for real when Vista arrives (will take a while) and when dual-core CPU's are mainstream (which will happen soon I think). And we need more native 64bit apps.

[lots]

64bit Windows XP is not in beta. It is a fully retail product you can buy from any store shelf. It has been since April.

Personally, I have not come across any driver issues or incompatabilities. It is much more solid feeling than 32bit XP, it runs 32bit apps just as fast as 32bit Windows, and this is with a small level of emulation. WoW64 (the 32bit windows emulator, stands for Windos on Windows 64) is quite fast. There is a small performance hit, but considering that its emulation, it is really quite impressive.

Anything with a 16bit component (installer, some random exe, etc.) will not work in 64bit XP since it has dropped support for all 16 bit code and is only 32/64 bit. That doesn't hurt many programs out there, since 32bit CPUs have been around for a long time. Heck, some of my old games, from before Windows 2000 work just fine in 64bit Windows.

Drivers have not been a problem. WinXP X64 comes with a huge assortment of drivers. And most major companies provide the drivers needed (I'd think Intel would fall under this category :P) All of my hardware works perfectly fine, and as expected from my experiences using it in a 32bit system.

EMT64:
This is Intel's version of AMD64. It is not as robust, and is not quite up to spec (when compared to AMD's spec). It is also been said that some of the instructionset on the Intel chips has been partially emulated (done in software), which can hurt performance in some instances. I haven't read AMD's spec or anything like that, nor do I know for sure how Intel goes about copying it (for compatability's sake) But, AMD's version is definately better since the spec was designed by AMD, and was a major design feature of thier CPUs insted of an after thought, like Intel's. A CPU designed with the spec in mind is going to work with it a whole heck of alot faster than one that wasn't :P

[MickO]

Thank you guys. Very informative posts :)

I just installed the evaluation copy of winxp x64 and it seems pretty fast and stable.
One thing amazed me was when I installed 1400 fonts. If with same hardware but winxp 32 took about 5 minutes, with x64 everything was done in 10 seconds! I don't know if that has anything to do with the different OS. I guess there are other reasons involved, but I'm pretty happy with that heh.

As for the rest, I only had problems installing tuneup utilities 2006, which I then discovered is not compatible with x64, how weird. Also, McAfee does not work. But that's fine. I guess they'll have new compatible versions up soon.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.