Microsoft to Officially Launch Windows 64 Bit Edition on Monday

AAWWWWW YEAHHHHHH!!!!!

wait, I don't care. haha.

If it doesn't run win32 apps, then it's DOA surely?
Just how incompatiable is it?

SWEET!
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Never mind I use a good OS Tiger.

Can't wait to install it and try it out on my AMD 3000+, should be awesome.

Now I can finally stop using betas.

dotdotdot said:

http://www.techweb.com/wire/software/161500960

Microsoft is set to launch its 64-Bit version of Windows XP this monday.

There are many rumors, such as backwards compaitibility, a step towards longhorn, etc. Also, there is currently $5,829 in the pool of guessing how many viruses there will be for this new OS by Thursday.

Seriously, this is the first only* 64-Bit Major OS...

*Only because some apps in 32 Bit windows will run partially

Click to expand...

About 237 viruses...

Interesting. The NX technology sounds like a good concept. Kind of makes me wish I had ordered the Athlon 64 instead of the Sempron for my laptop, but oh well.

So I take it this isn't an official final release like Tiger is going to be? Or is it?

No 32-bit Support?

I haven't been following this very closely. Is it true that 64-bit Windows can't run 32-bit applications? If that's true, it's a *major* shortcoming.

840quadra said:

I don't believe so, From what I understand (which is little) it is similar to OS X in that category . I installed the Beta at work, but didn't get much beyond that as real work had to get completed .

Click to expand...

Well, OS X isn't really a 64-bit OS, yet. It has some limited 64-bit capabilities, but it is still a 32-bit OS. The G5 PPC is certainly capable of running both 64-bit and 32-bit apps at the same time.

Anyway, if someone has a definitive answer on this, I'd be interested in hearing it.

calyxman said:

Interesting. The NX technology sounds like a good concept. Kind of makes me wish I had ordered the Athlon 64 instead of the Sempron for my laptop, but oh well.

Click to expand...

Yes, it is pretty neat. Since memory access is controlled by the OS, there is an option on Windows 2003 Server that allows you use NX by software. I don't think this is present on current builds of 32-bit Windows XP.

Also, I can tell you that NX has caused some compatibility problems with some badly-written apps, so there is also the option to turn it off on an app-by-app basis.

daveL said:

Well, OS X isn't really a 64-bit OS, yet. It has some limited 64-bit capabilities, but it is still a 32-bit OS. The G5 PPC is certainly capable of running both 64-bit and 32-bit apps at the same time.

Anyway, if someone has a definitive answer on this, I'd be interested in hearing it.

Click to expand...

Yes, it can. It runs 32-bit apps under an subsystem called WOW64 (Windows-On-Windows 64-bit). On Athlon64s, Opterons and Xeon64s, all this layer does is switch the CPU mode from 64-bit to 32-bit for the apps to run in the native CPU, at full CPU speed - so there's no performance hit when running 32-bit apps (There's some other things involved, but that's it in a nutshell). It works with almost all apps, except for:

- 16-bit support has been dropped from the OS, so no 16-bit processes can be executed. These include some installers that still use a 16-bit stub at startup to chech if they are running on a 16- or 32- bit version of windows
- Drivers have to be 64-bit. 32-bit Drivers cannot be loaded on Win64

I can also tell you that the x64 version of WinXP is built from the 2003 Server codebase, NOT the 32-bit XP codebase, so it is incredibly more stable and secure than the WinXP version that's out there. On the other hand, how secure is that? I guess we'll see once it is out

dotdotdot said:

The definate answer: It can run 64 Bit programs and SOME 32 Bit programs. It doesn't have the thing in XP to run in compaitbility mode of Windows 95 to 2000... it only runs some Windows 2000/XP 32 bit applications and all 64 bit ones designed for windows XP. I think that antivirus, firewall, etc. run perfectly in Windows XP 64...

Click to expand...

Actually, most 32-bit apps should work, as long as they are not doing something strange that might bring down the program. The problem is that some programs of the Win95/98 era used to have portions of code that were still 16-bit, and since that is no longer supported, they won't run correctly (see my post above)

Regarding antivirus and firewalls, the problems is that they usually have a kernel mode driver as well as the user mode programs. Since the kernel is 64-bit, it can only load 64-bit drivers - so these programs have to be updated to have a 64-bit driver to work in Windows 64.

jalagl

Thanks for the info; that makes sense.

This would seem to be Microsoft's attempt to take the spotlight away from Apple and the Tiger release.

What about Spyware and Viruses? Will it have 64bit viruses that can address more than 2 GBs of memory? Are the Spyware programs multi-threaded and take full advantage of 64bits so that my Pentium 4 3.1 Ghz doesn't run slow like a 500Mhz G3? Will viruses run faster when running 64bit viruses? Can I install it on a Celeron PC and pretend that I am really running Tiger on a G5?

wdlove said:

This would seem to be Microsoft's attempt to take the spotlight away from Apple and the Tiger release.

Click to expand...

I like the play of words there, hehe. Microsoft taking away the "Spotlight" from Tiger.

Will XP64 allow me to type faster in MS Werd?

daveL said:

I haven't been following this very closely. Is it true that 64-bit Windows can't run 32-bit applications? If that's true, it's a *major* shortcoming.

Click to expand...

My friend used the BETA at a LAN last summer.

Yes, LAST summer. It is functional, and it can run 32-bit applications (key word: games). If it can run CPU and GPU intensive apps with stability (and this is Aug 2004 we are talking about), I have no doubt it will run them just as well in 2005.

Games tested (I mean enjoyed haha):

Doom3, UT2k4, and FarCry.