XP 64 Bit on Mac Pro How-To

[Kunimodi]

Hello. Yesterday I received my Mac Pro (with xt1900 video card) from Apple and set to work using a slipstreamed XP Pro SP2 installed carefully following instructions posted by Terrabit at http://macprojournal.com/xp.html and toonerh at http://st118.startlogic.com/~macproxp/. After many frustrating attempts, I was unable to get the hard drives to work at more than 3 MBps and, while everything else worked fine, that meant a practically unusable system. I decided to try using the 64-bit edition of Windows tonight and now have everything running smoothly (and very fast!) There are two things you should know before attempting this:

Firstly, it appears that the GPT partitioning used on the stock hard drive is incompatible with XP64. To get XP64 to install, I had to use Disk Utility to erase the hard drive and format as MS-DOS with MBR partitioning. I had purchased two SATA drives from Newegg for running OS X in a RAID configuration and had planned to dedicate the stock drive to Windows so this was fine from my perspective, but this might rule out XP64 for some as I believe using MBR partitioning prevents dual booting into OS X from that drive (true?).

Secondly (and here's the good news), you can get a 120 day free trial of XP64 from Microsoft right now via download. Really. Here's the link:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/6...cts/trial.mspx

Steps to Installation

1. Follow the instructions on slipstreaming the XP64 installation disc given on the links in the beginning of this post, substituting the 64-bit folder for the 32-bit one. I'd recommend using Parallels to do this as then you can easily modify the build if necessary (you'll need the update at http://www.parallels.com/en/download/desktop/update/)

2. The Boot Camp 1.1 driver disc does not support XP64, so you'll likely want to assemble drivers ahead of time and put them on a CD or thumbdrive prior to installation. The drivers are:

Network Card - http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scri...ition&lang=eng

Graphics (I've only tried the XT1900 drivers)
All four downloads for the ATI Radeon - https://support.ati.com/ics/support/...e&folderID=367
or, if you're using the 7300 GT, you could try this link: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64_91.47.html
and for the Quadro: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64_84.26.html

Sound - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en
then
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...Audio%20CODECs

3. Boot from and install the slipstreamed XP64 disc. When you formatted for MBR it created a FAT32 partition, but this boinked the installation when I tried it. I would highly recommend NTFS instead (or perhaps split partition so there will be a FAT32 data exchange area).

4. When Windows installation is complete, install the drivers. Run hdtune and you should see 60+ MBps performance.

PERFORMANCE (ESPECIALLY WITH GAMES) IS EXTREMELY GOOD WITH THIS SETUP. Have fun!

-K-

[Krevnik]

Originally Posted by Kunimodi

Firstly, it appears that the GPT partitioning used on the stock hard drive is incompatible with XP64. To get XP64 to install, I had to use Disk Utility to erase the hard drive and format as MS-DOS with MBR partitioning. I had purchased two SATA drives from Newegg for running OS X in a RAID configuration and had planned to dedicate the stock drive to Windows so this was fine from my perspective, but this might rule out XP64 for some as I believe using MBR partitioning prevents dual booting into OS X from that drive (true?).

Well, to be specific, it doesn't rule out /booting/ OS X from an MBR drive, but you can't /install/ OS X to an MBR drive. Since you can't really do any sort of repair/reinstall if you want OS X + Windows on the same drive, I really don't recommend it, and why people recommend you get a second drive for Windows in a Mac Pro.

[aiongiant]

sweet thanx for the info!
i wanted to try XP64 but was worried that there isn't much drivers for my Mac Pro at 64bit

[Habusho]

Kunimodi, that is fantastic news. I've been using xp64 on my pc for the last 9 months and it's been the best windows system for me yet.

Do you have an isight camera? Do the regular xp drivers work in xp64? Actually I don't even know if people have been able to use their camera under xp.

[janstett]

Originally Posted by aiongiant

sweet thanx for the info!
i wanted to try XP64 but was worried that there isn't much drivers for my Mac Pro at 64bit

Yeah this is what has stopped me from doing much with 64-bit XP on normal PCs, for those who don't know you need specially-written 64-bit drivers, the everyday drivers for all your hardware are 32-bit and won't work. Did you find 64-bit drivers for all the major parts, such as the video card? I'm curious to know what additional isn't supported over the existing 32-bit XP list.

[janstett]

Originally Posted by Habusho

Do you have an isight camera? Do the regular xp drivers work in xp64? Actually I don't even know if people have been able to use their camera under xp.

The iSight in my MacBook Pro started working with BootCamp 1.1's new drivers. I'm just using 32-bit Media Center 2005.

[jrk07]

Great informative thread that makes me want a Mac Pro even more! argh, I don't know how much longer I can last without ordering one.

Also, what games are you running and do you have any avg. FPS numbers or anything of the sort for me to drool over?

[Kunimodi]

Originally Posted by Krevnik

Well, to be specific, it doesn't rule out /booting/ OS X from an MBR drive, but you can't /install/ OS X to an MBR drive. Since you can't really do any sort of repair/reinstall if you want OS X + Windows on the same drive, I really don't recommend it, and why people recommend you get a second drive for Windows in a Mac Pro.

Thanks for clarifying this, Krevnik.

Originally Posted by Habusho

Do you have an isight camera? Do the regular xp drivers work in xp64?

Yes, I just tried this and, though the Boot Camp drivers 1.1 offer beta support for the iSight, I couldn't find any drivers for XP64 and it could not recognize the camera. Sorry.

Originally Posted by janstett

Did you find 64-bit drivers for all the major parts, such as the video card? I'm curious to know what additional isn't supported over the existing 32-bit XP list.

Drivers for all of the major parts, including the XT1900 graphics card (the 7300 drivers would be http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64_91.47.html , but I don't know if they'll work -- I'd bet they would). What's missing is the iSight support, the eject button (you have to manually eject the drive from Explorer, etc) and the ability to set the startup disk from Windows. In my opinion, these are all pretty minor.

I've been running XP64 quite a bit in the last day and it has been completely stable and blazingly flast. It's still windows so it's ugly and reminds me the many things I love about OS X, but...

Originally Posted by jrk07

Also, what games are you running and do you have any avg. FPS numbers or anything of the sort for me to drool over?

So far I've played BF2 and Guild Wars on it and am installing several others. It played BF2 at totally maxed quality settings at 1600x1200 beautifully, maintaining a smooth FPS during smoke filled artillery strikes, etc. I'm looking forward to seeing Cyrsis on it. I'm downloading 3Dmark and Fraps and will post the results.

[jrk07]

Originally Posted by Kunimodi

So far I've played BF2 and Guild Wars on it and am installing several others. It played BF2 at totally maxed quality settings at 1600x1200 beautifully, maintaining a smooth FPS during smoke filled artillery strikes, etc. I'm looking forward to seeing Crysis on it.

That is great news, I have heard a few reports about bf2 running well, but its always good to hear it from more people. If you get around to downloading a quake 4 or something newerish I'd love to hear your reports on their performance.

Pardon my ignorance, but does Windows XP 64-bit run all the games without the need for special patches or anything like that?

[Kunimodi]

Wow... In single player and multiplayer (~60 people) this system shines. At max settings (1600x1200) and 6x AA it maintained a 70-100 FPS nearly the whole time on four different maps (including several flights). A few times with particle effects I saw it go down into the 50's and the worst was high thirties during an artillery shower while lifting off in helicopter. Now, switched to 2x AA it was consistently 80+ the whole time. Fantastic!

Also, the sound quality is wonderful with headphones (using software sound at max quality setting).

[Kunimodi]

Originally Posted by jrk07

That is great news, I have heard a few reports about bf2 running well, but its always good to hear it from more people. If you get around to downloading a quake 4 or something newerish I'd love to hear your reports on their performance.

Pardon my ignorance, but does Windows XP 64-bit run all the games without the need for special patches or anything like that?

Most games run very well in XP64. There are a few exceptions. Several games such as Far Cry and the Source-based ones have 64-bit builds that give them a considerable boost compared with their 32-bit counterparts. 64-bit is about more than high memory addressing; AMD added a large number of registers which allow for a lot of optimization with smart compilers.

[jrk07]

Originally Posted by Kunimodi

Wow... In single player and multiplayer (~60 people) this system shines. At max settings (1600x1200) and 6x AA the worst it maintained a 70-100 FPS nearly the whole time. A few times with particle effects I saw it go down into the 50's and the worst was high thirties during an artillery shower while lifting off in helicopter. Now, switched to 2x AA it was consistently 80+ the whole time. Fantastic!

Sounds great since the only way I have played bf2 is on my brother's computer with no AA and a much lower resolution. Now if they could only patch it to support widescreen resolutions!

[Kunimodi]

Originally Posted by jrk07

Sounds great since the only way I have played bf2 is on my brother's computer with no AA and a much lower resolution. Now if they could only patch it to support widescreen resolutions!

Yeah, seriously. I'm playing it on a wide screen monitor and the models look like they could use some less McDonalds in their diet.

[nickgwyn]

I have never been a PC gamer, but love PC games. I plan on getting Parallels for the off chance that I want to run some Windows app, and plan on using boot camp for games. I am wondering if I should install 64 bit xp or 32. I have received mixed messages on this. Should I put 32 bit on parallels and 64 on BC?

I was thinking 32 on Paral for compatibility and 64 on BC for speed. Does that sound right?

What is the ultimate setup?

[Kunimodi]

Originally Posted by nickgwyn

I have never been a PC gamer, but love PC games. I plan on getting Parallels for the off chance that I want to run some Windows app, and plan on using boot camp for games. I am wondering if I should install 64 bit xp or 32. I have received mixed messages on this. Should I put 32 bit on parallels and 64 on BC?

I was thinking 32 on Paral for compatibility and 64 on BC for speed. Does that sound right?

What is the ultimate setup?

The Mac Pro is a 64-bit machine. It will perform best with an operating system, applications and drivers optimized for its 64-bit extensions. The degree with which you can get those optimized elements currently is somewhat limited, but it is simply a matter of time before 64-bit has became the standard for PCs. With the Mac Pro you can have the 64-bit operating system, the drivers and selected applications now. However, it would be prudent to wait until Apple truly supports Boot Camp and has implemented 64-bit support in their drivers. But, less fun.

Parallels is limited to virtualizing a 32-bit view (at least for now). Parallels is a great product that has made quick strides in improving stability and supporting the Mac Pro and I would recommend it over Boot Camp for any use that does not require 3D graphics (or very CPU) intensive work. The integration with OS X is excellent, performance is good and the ease of use if high.

In summary, I think your 32 parallels, 64 boot camp is the ultimate setup.

[nickgwyn]

Originally Posted by Kunimodi

The Mac Pro is a 64-bit machine. It will perform best with an operating system, applications and drivers optimized for its 64-bit extensions. The degree with which you can get those optimized elements currently is somewhat limited, but it is simply a matter of time before 64-bit has became the standard for PCs. With the Mac Pro you can have the 64-bit operating system, the drivers and selected applications now. However, it would be prudent to wait until Apple truly supports Boot Camp and has implemented 64-bit support in their drivers. But, less fun.

Parallels is limited to virtualizing a 32-bit view (at least for now). Parallels is a great product that has made quick strides in improving stability and supporting the Mac Pro and I would recommend it over Boot Camp for any use that does not require 3D graphics (or very CPU) intensive work. The integration with OS X is excellent, performance is good and the ease of use if high.

In summary, I think your 32 parallels, 64 boot camp is the ultimate setup.

Sweet!

[aiongiant]

gonna give this a try later
thnx for the info!

[janstett]

Originally Posted by Kunimodi

The Mac Pro is a 64-bit machine. It will perform best with an operating system, applications and drivers optimized for its 64-bit extensions. The degree with which you can get those optimized elements currently is somewhat limited, but it is simply a matter of time before 64-bit has became the standard for PCs. With the Mac Pro you can have the 64-bit operating system, the drivers and selected applications now

Of course, until applications and drivers are 64-bit, I have to ask if it's faster to run the 32-bit OS to run the 32-bit applications and games and utilize the 32-bit drivers.

Ignoring the driver support problem, does anybody have benchmarks of how much of a hit a 32-bit app running on 64-bit XP takes versus running on 32-bit XP on the same machine?

Followup:

While I'm waiting for my Mac Pro, I just realized my Dell XPS (Pentium Extreme, dual core w/ Hyperthreading, aka Smithfield) supports the x64 extensions, so I'm downloading the eval to play with it.

I found some useful info on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows...al_x64_Edition

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Windows XP x64 Edition uses a technology named WOW64, which permits the execution of 32-bit x86 applications. It was first employed in Windows XP 64-bit Edition, but then reused for the “x64 Editions” of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Since the AMD64 architecture includes hardware-level support for 32-bit instructions, WOW64 simply switches the process between 32- and 64-bit modes. However, on the IA-64 architecture, WOW64 was required to translate 32-bit x86 instructions into their 64-bit IA-64 equivalents—which in some cases were implemented in quite different ways—so that the processor could execute them. As a result, AMD64 microprocessors suffer no performance loss when executing 32-bit Windows applications, whereas IA-64 implementations experience noticeable performance loss.

But on second reflection, is IA-64 Itanium? I think so...

[aiongiant]

i'm gonna do some render test of it using maya 32bit in 64bit windows
and maya 64bit in 64bit windows

[aiongiant]

alright folks heres some updates

Windows XP 64 bit is running great on the Mac Pro
all my drivers seems to all work.. hdd speed is at normal..

Here are some Benchmark results...

both on Windows XP SP2 32bit..and both have 1GB of ram

Dell 3.6Ghz - 32Bit Maya 8.0
Maya 8.0 -> 23:00 min. (1380 sec.)

Mac Pro Quad 3Ghz - 32Bit Maya 8.0
Maya 8.0 -> 3:47 min. (227 sec.)

both on Windows XP SP1 64bit..and both have 1GB of ram

Mac Pro Quad 3Ghz - 32bit Maya 8.0
Maya 8.0 -> 3:49 min. (229 sec.)

Mac Pro Quad 3Ghz - 64Bit Maya 8.0
Maya 8.0 -> 3:45 min. (225 sec.)

so it does shave off a lil bit more time using a 64bit and 64bit maya
and a lil bit slower with the 64bit and 32bit maya
but it's too close to call it anything.. considering that 64bit works alot better when you have more than 1gb of ram hehe =) well see what happens when i use up all quad channels how much faster it would be.. stay tuned =)

[janstett]

What the heck, when my Mac Pro gets here I'll give x64 XP a whirl.

[nickgwyn]

FYI: http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2832

[Bugnacious]

I was amazed once I got through the installation process that it all went flawlessley - accept for boot Camp Assitant Not working as it should from install point.
Formated using NTFS (slow Format as opposed to quick format - I would recommend it as this may be where some people are finding issues afterwards).

I have MP 2.66 + ATI XT1900 (which I am totaly in love with - back to Max after many hard years using Microspastic windows due to industry standard!
Love the OS X even more now (although having issues with FINDER being unstable during CD opperations & external drives etc - Lightening fast USB connection to I-RIVER mp3 player though!

BUTTTTTTTT . whilst XP 64bit runns, I was unable to locate the so-callled "new Found Hardware Wizard" which we all know and love. - It's not there - I've done a FIND on the HD but nadda!!
This is odd and as result I am restricted a bit.
At the end of the MAC driver installation it said "Need to be running Windowns XP" - but it didn't say "you are not running...."

SO what's the go?

i have just download Monitor Drivers for the Graphics card as the current res (1600 x 1080) looks wrong on my 24" Dell Widescreen (Which totally compliments the system BTW).

So is it that:

2. The Boot Camp 1.1 driver disc does not support XP64, so you'll likely want to assemble drivers ahead of time and put them on a CD or thumbdrive prior to installation. The drivers are:

as stated at the start of this discussion!
Seems odd as I had no hickups with the Install - and that was a compilation of Zipped & Rar'd files back to disk.img!

GLAD to hear BF2 runns well also!

DIGG it!

[Bugnacious]

PS what is this Slipstreaming thing.

Do I need to do something more - a slipstream?

[Bugnacious]

I have downloaded the drivers via the links posted in the forum.
In particular I am having problems with the Sound and graphics drivers.

Main Problem with AT Xt1900 drivers was that the "Categoray Managment" componet of the driver download go to set up .NET FRAMEWORK "version 2.0" and then says that it is not compatible with 64bit XP. So what has everyone else done to get that working?

It also mentions part way through the intallation process that the ".INF" which is being looked for by "THUNK.exe" cannot be found - what's this about?

I have downloaded updates including .NET FRAMEWORK 1.1 but that has not helped to be able to use the ATI drivers - ie. the drivers are installed but no option appears under MONITOR settings!

how do I get Service pack 2 for 64bit XP - is that my problem.

Consequently BF2 doesn't run either!


suggestions?