Just before Christmas, Microsoft finally made Release Candidate 1 of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition available to testers. The server variant is also now available. After repeated delays, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is now due to ship in the first half of 2005.
If previous experience with Microsoft operating system releases is replicated, Build 1289/RC1 will be followed by a further release candidate (RC2) and then the marketable ('gold') version. If no further problems emerge, Windows XP Professional x86 Edition could reach gold status by the time of the CeBIT show in March.
The route into the 64-bit world was accelerated thanks to AMD's AMD64 technology, which is used in the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX desktop processors and in the Opteron server chip. In contrast to Intel's Itanium, AMD's 64-bit architecture can handle 32-bit code very fast, which makes for a smooth transition to 64-bit computing.
Intel has been non-committal about this state of affairs, the official line for a long time being that "nobody needs 64 bits on the desktop right now". This then became the promise that: "as soon as an x86 64-bit Windows operating system is available, we will support it". The open source Linux operating system has been available for some time for AMD's x86-64 platform. However, 64-bit computing will only take off in the business market once 64-bit Windows is available, since most business users currently work with the Microsoft operating system.
Talkback
hardly 'set rolling by AMD and microsoft'. AMD, yes, microsoft, no. Linux and other *NIXs have supported 64 bit processors for a long time, certainly before microsoft even thought about it.
No mention of Apple.... typical.
The main benefit is 64 bit math, not 64 bit addressing! This is not even mentioned in the article. The x86-64 extensions add a bunch of 128 bit registers, and allow compilers to do either 64x64 bit arithmetic, or multiple 32x32 bit operations at once. This is very similar to SSE2, except that compilers will automatically generate optimized code, rather than requiring special SSE2 assembly to be written. There are also an increased number of registers which improves standard applications as well. The performance benefit between P4 in 32 bit mode and AMD64 in 32 and 64 bit modes can be shown here: http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/74/42/
With a 64 bit OS and compiler, scientific, rendering and encoding applications can see up to 8X performance improvement.
Please make the true benefit of 64 bit apparent in your next review. It has nothing to do with memory addressing for the consumer, but rather for raw performance due to more and larger registers.
Mention of Apple? Why??? This is an overview of Windows XP Professional for the 64 bit extension of x86. I'm pretty certain that the latest articles on Jaguar/Panther don't mention AMD's x86-64 ... Seeing as how there's not a version of Windows for the G5, or a version of x86-64 compatible Panther why *should* there be crosstalk?
An analogy: even though both teams play a game called "football", citing the stats of Manchester United would be pointless when doing commentary about the New England Patriots ...
Couldn't agree more about Microsoft being very slow at pushing support for 64-bit AMD64 technology. I bought Athlon 64 about a year ago and at that time the only OS that worked (and it worked quit well) was Linux. I thought that iby summer of 2004 they would get their act together, but no. Half of year is over and we are still waiting and in the meantime Linux support for AMD64 is realy realy good. You can hardly even find an application that couldn't get compiled in 64-bits.
Because of all this slow development by Microsoft even our computational center at our university switched to Linux and 64-bit Mathematica, which gets quite nice speed boost over 32-bit version, it is about twice as fast.
Oh and if you still don't know Java 5.0 (JRE and JDK) is available in 64-bit AMD64 systems, for both Linux and Windows.
The writer must have forgotten about the Intel Itanium processor. It is 64 bit as far as I know. The only difference is that it is generally available as a server platform instead of what the AMD product is aimed at.
1. Microsoft has been working hard on x86-64 for some time. Remember, Microsoft has more drivers and hardware that they need to support before they put their stamp of approval on the software they sell than Linux (which sometimes answers that problem with "write your own drivers!")
2. Apple is not mentioned because Apple is not relevant.
3. The "64 bit math" arguement is wrong. AMD64 does not add any new 128 bit GPRs. It adds 16 new 64bit GPRs and 64 bit addressing. That's about it. But those are significant advances.
4. Actually a *lot* of people have forgotten about the Itanum processor.
Microsoft is also forgetting about the 64bit Itanium, and ditching support for it. This XP64bit is optimized for AMD64, Intel lost the 64bit 1st round.
"The writer must have forgotten about the Intel Itanium processor."
No, it is MS that has done so.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/evaluation/upgrade.mspx
Supported processors: AMD Athlon 64, AMD Opteron, Intel Xeon with Intel EM64T support, Intel Pentium 4 with Intel EM64T support.
Important: Windows XP Professional x64 Edition cannot be successfully installed on 64-bit Intel Itanium–based systems.
Anon. said "The main benefit is 64 bit math, not 64 bit addressing!" I disagree.
Some of us need 64 bit addressing because 4GB RAM is simply not enough.
If you need more that 4GB of memory, then you shoudnt be running Win XP. Thats Server Country still.
How about wanting to edit a complete DVD in memory ? Surely thats not server country ?
4GB of memory is not much in the 3D and Film development worlds.
I find editing film for DV is now a burden on my 1GB, 2-3 is now required.
I'm afraid the review was a non-event, half the time stating the obvious in pseudo technical jargo, the rest of the time sitting on the fence, being ever so dry and deadpan. What I would give for people in computer journalism who a)can write and b)who have the balls to come right out and take a position...
Re. Mike Collins' comment: as far as 'sitting on the fence' is concerned, this is a preliminary report on a beta version, so it isn't appropriate to deliver a final verdict; as to the writing style, we should point out that this article was translated from German, so perhaps you'll allow us a little leeway there.
The Itanium is a completely different architecture to that of the Athlon 64 and Opteron, that is probably why it is not mentioned.
Quite right. Itanium has nothing to do with this review: Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition runs on x86 processors that have 64-bit extensions, such as AMD's Athlon and Opteron chips, and some of Intel's Xeon and P4 chips. Last week Microsoft announced that there would be no 64-bit Windows XP for the Itanium, which is increasingly being positioned as a very high-end server chip for technical computing, high-performance clustering and supercomputing applications. Not really what this review was about.
You can read the story here if you're interested: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/chips/0,39020354,39183192,00.htm
So if you can get 2 times average performance and for compute intensive programs like games - 8 or more times performance (after all with 64 EM64-t you can gurantee SSE2) guess who will drive this market so that all desktops will be 64 bit within a year - gamers. Gamers drive the graphics processor market and that will drive the home desk top.
All NEW AMD chips are inherently 64 bit.
And do you really think that intel has it right - when you can buy an A530N HP workstation with an nforce3 chipset and Geforce graphics card today under $800 and I can assure you it screams with the 64 bit O/S. Thats nearly what an AM64-t intel chip will cost you that performsd as well as the AMD64 athlon.
Don't download this Beta! It is not what you think it is!!
I tried to email this comment to the author of this article, but the email delivery failed:
Greetings,
Your recent ZDnet article titled “Windows XP Professional x64 Edition RC1 tested” begins with this:
Release Candidate 1 (RC1) of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is now available: ZDNet has put Build 1289 through its paces.
You also give a link:
Just before Christmas, Microsoft finally made Release Candidate 1 of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition available to testers.
While this link works, you should know that after signing up to download; the received file IS NOT RC1. It is in fact Build 1218 from July 28 of 2004.
Microsoft does not state the version on the linked web page, and the version number is not given at any time on the Microsoft site.
I fear that many people will follow the link you gave, only to find that they have spent much time and effort to download an old beta.
1218 may be available for download to the lay user now
but certain other members are able to obtain more recent builds
XP and 2003 follow the same build numbers and on the 2003 page they clearly state that available version is Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition RC1... and the mail I received to download XP links to the file w2k3sp1_1289_usa_x64fre_pro.iso
They are 64bit software out!
just look here
http://www.planetamd64.com/dload.php?action=category&cat_id=13
XviD has been complied for amd64 (64bit)
VirtualDub has been complied for amd64 (64bit)
JAVA has been complied for amd64 (64bit)
Nero has amd64 (64bit) support
UT2004 has amd64 (64bit) support in the code.
As it was fixed in one of the patches to ;)
Shadow Ops (soon) for amd64 (64bit)
Are there any NIC adapters that have 64-Bit drivers? I have an ASUS K8V muther board and the 3Com Gigabit LOM (3c940) controller does not seem to have 64-bit drivers.
Ivan
Re. Mike Collins' comment: Well I agree with Mike and by they way, Mike is talking in general not just in this particular case... friends...Who has the back bone here or are we so close mined?