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Apple Quietly Intros 64-Bit Windows Support in Boot Camp
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With this news, I have a decision to make. I plan on using Windows both for a handful of engineering apps not available for OS X and playing games on my future Mac Pro. I don't expect the former to be very taxing, but I imagine a few might benefit from 64 bits. I remember hearing about incompatibilities with 64-bit Windows for some games/apps, and was wondering if that's still a big issue. I'd like to take advantage of a 64-bit OS, but not at the cost incompatibility. That said, here are my choices:
• XP x64
• XP
• Vista 64
• Vista
Assuming the costs for all 4 are identical (thank you MSDN Academic Alliance!), which one should I choose?
• XP x64
• XP
• Vista 64
• Vista
Assuming the costs for all 4 are identical (thank you MSDN Academic Alliance!), which one should I choose?
If you have 4 GiB or more of RAM, get Vista 64. Otherwise Vista 32.
You could also dual-boot to either 32-bit or 64-bit Vista (each in a separate partition on the disk).
Whats wrong with the current drivers....? All I noticed was the ATI menu is not there..
So is the common internet belief that Vista is terrible for games becoming a myth? I have no real need for a flashy or even aesthetically bearable Windows OS. That said, I'd hate to have to upgrade the OS a year down the road (I can't imagine why I'd have to though).
Perhaps some people just wanna run MSN Messenger on that useless piece of software called 64-bit Windows, who knows...
Not entirely true.
Zbrush 2 runs on OS X. ZBrush 3 is still under development for Mac.
Also, just a question. What other 3D apps's are not on OS X besides ZBrush 3, Mudbox, XSI and Max? I know Rhino is currently in development.
This is good news, as Matlab for the Mac is only 32-bit and runs much slower than the Windows version. Does anyone know whether the Windows Vista drivers will work with the forthcoming Windows Server 2008 (which lets multiple users log into and use the GUI at the same time, a feature Mac OS X lacks).
I assume the Vista drivers are incompatible with Windows XP x64 and Windows Server 2003 x64.
I assume the Vista drivers are incompatible with Windows XP x64 and Windows Server 2003 x64.
Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no technical reason why these new 64 bit drivers should not work on any Mac Pro, regardless of whether it is a newer or older model.
The xeon's in the older model are 64-bit CPU's....
I doubt that these drivers would not work in older Mac Pro's.
The xeon's in the older model are 64-bit CPU's....
I doubt that these drivers would not work in older Mac Pro's.
A driver is made for a piece of hardware. It doesn't just automagically generalize to all similar pieces of hardware.
You must have a Mac Pro from late 2007?
"You must have a Mac Pro from late 2007?"
I know for a fact we do not have this, and we still loaded Vista 64 bit straight in to 10.5.1 bootcamp (but i dont think the .1 release has anything to do with this, straight 10.5 would work).
I already tested this last month, it's old news. We do 64 bit research computing here at the hospital and we loaded the 64 bit version of Vista, no issues at all. All the drivers were there. Vista sees all 16 GB of RAM in the "not late 2007 Mac Pro"
macguitarman
"You must have a Mac Pro from late 2007?"
I know for a fact we do not have this, and we still loaded Vista 64 bit straight in to 10.5.1 bootcamp (but i dont think the .1 release has anything to do with this, straight 10.5 would work).
I already tested this last month, it's old news. We do 64 bit research computing here at the hospital and we loaded the 64 bit version of Vista, no issues at all. All the drivers were there. Vista sees all 16 GB of RAM in the "not late 2007 Mac Pro"
macguitarman
Drivers are written for specific hardware components (they "drive" the hardware). If the hardware components (e.g., video cards, network cards, bluetooth, etc) have changed between the old Mac Pro and the new Mac Pro, then the drivers won't necessarily work. I'll note that I've been running Vista Ultimate 64 bit on my old Mac Pro for almost a year, since there are native drivers for most of the components, or could be obtained from the hardware manufacturer (e.g., the sound card). There have been no drivers for the Apple bluetooth, however. I'd love to hear if anyone has actually tried the new drivers on an older Mac Pro to see if they work.
UPDATE: I installed the Bluetooth x64 drivers and they DO work on the older Mac Pro!
So does 64bit make them faster or is it just the ability to address more memory the thing you are looking at? In my travels 64 bit windows Blows...chunks.. because there are quite a few issues with compatability with Games... is this true?
Also Does How many processor cores are supported on WIN XP and Vista Ultimate?
I know that the Vista 64-bit Nvidia Quadro drivers work on Windows Server 2008 - I'm running them.
Actually you can, with a little bit of effort. These instructions are for getting them out of a disk image, but it wouldn't be impossible to get them out of an install disc.
I haven't tried, but I'd look up the device name (disk3 or whatever) in Disk Utility and start from the second step.
64bit 3ds max is upto about a third faster than xp on the same system in my experience.
cores is as many as the drivers support, the number of sockets is the issue - xp home and the lower vista iirc can only support one socket.
Because of the way most apps are written and compiled, you won't see much direct performance benefit from using x64. Memory utilization is certainly a primary driver for many folks using x64 versions of Windows, but I use it because it is MUCH more stable than the x32 versions (in part because x64 is much stricter about hardware drivers than the x32 version). Compatibility may indeed be an issue if you are running older games - but that lack of support for legacy games is also what makes it a more stable platform. I'm not a hard core gamer, but I've never had a problem with any games I've run that were written in the past two years. I've been running Vista Ultimate x64 for almost a year now, and its been far more stable than any version of Windows I've ever run.
All cores are supported under XP or Vista, 32 or 64 bit, if you have a version that is licensed to support them.
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger could run 64 bit Applications but the graphically interface part could only be 32 bit. Lots of science and maths applications run 64 bit from the command line.
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is 64 bit all the way to the GUI.
Vista for gaming?
I don't know. Personally, I've stuck with XP for gaming. I know there's a bit of a push on Microsoft's part to get people to hop on the Vista bandwagon for games, since "only Vista supports the new Direct-X 10.0 extensions". Regardless, if you look at the side-by-side comparisons of current games running with Direct-X 9.0 and 10 support, you quickly realize the additional features in 10 are of minimal significance at best. (For example, Bioshock offered slightly more realistic-looking waves in the water when you ran around in it. But as they pointed out, you'd hardly notice this during gameplay. You almost need a screen-shot to study it, compared to a screen-shot of the same scene without it, to see the improvement.)
On the other hand, Vista boots noticeably more slowly when I've used it, and has a lot more "overhead" all the way around. I imagine it's pretty good at putting background tasks on hold and "stepping out of the way" when a properly-coded game is launched and tells the OS it needs all the system resources.... but I still don't like the sluggish feel outside the games.
Plus, XP has a 3rd. service pack coming along soon - and I believe some of the improvements in Vista are slated to get rolled into it too. Given that, I don't think you're really going to feel a need to "ditch XP in a year". Surely, it will be longer than that before you feel like driver support for new devices has "dried up".
I don't know. Personally, I've stuck with XP for gaming. I know there's a bit of a push on Microsoft's part to get people to hop on the Vista bandwagon for games, since "only Vista supports the new Direct-X 10.0 extensions". Regardless, if you look at the side-by-side comparisons of current games running with Direct-X 9.0 and 10 support, you quickly realize the additional features in 10 are of minimal significance at best. (For example, Bioshock offered slightly more realistic-looking waves in the water when you ran around in it. But as they pointed out, you'd hardly notice this during gameplay. You almost need a screen-shot to study it, compared to a screen-shot of the same scene without it, to see the improvement.)
On the other hand, Vista boots noticeably more slowly when I've used it, and has a lot more "overhead" all the way around. I imagine it's pretty good at putting background tasks on hold and "stepping out of the way" when a properly-coded game is launched and tells the OS it needs all the system resources.... but I still don't like the sluggish feel outside the games.
Plus, XP has a 3rd. service pack coming along soon - and I believe some of the improvements in Vista are slated to get rolled into it too. Given that, I don't think you're really going to feel a need to "ditch XP in a year". Surely, it will be longer than that before you feel like driver support for new devices has "dried up".
XP Home and lower Vista SKUs support one socket - or one to four cores currently.
XP Pro and higher Vista SKUs support two sockets - or one to eight cores currently.
Windows Server versions, using essentially the same code, support up to 32 cores (Server 2003) or 64 cores (Server 2008).
32-bit XP is using an older code base - SMP support is better in the Server versions, 64-bit XP and Vista.
While I made as complete a switch as possible to OS X as I could, Windows still does a number of things I need that OS X as yet cannot, so having 64-bit support for Windows is important to me and I thank Apple for helping me until that glorious future when I can be 100% OS X.
Late 2006 Macbook Pro
I was under the impression that my Macbook Revision 2 is 64 bit capable.
Why wouldn't I be able to install 64 bit Windows.
Apple is just not going to write 64 bit drivers for hardware, that isn't much diffrent than the current Macbook Pros? I think the main difference being the Graphic Card that would need a separate driver one being ATI, and the other NVIDIA. Elsewhere it would be small things here and there.
I was under the impression that my Macbook Revision 2 is 64 bit capable.
Why wouldn't I be able to install 64 bit Windows.
Apple is just not going to write 64 bit drivers for hardware, that isn't much diffrent than the current Macbook Pros? I think the main difference being the Graphic Card that would need a separate driver one being ATI, and the other NVIDIA. Elsewhere it would be small things here and there.