MacPro2,1 and 64 Bit Kernel

[artinnj]

I read the article on the 64 bit capabilities of Snow Leopard on appleinsider.com

It seemed to state that any of the old MacPros with EFI-32 would not be able to boot the kernel in 64 bit. I was hoping to take advantage of the larger memory spaces while running Parallels at the same time and eventually when Adobe gets around to making there apps 64 bit compliant.

What chip on these motherboards prevents them from upgrading the firmware to EFI-64? If it is the graphics cards, I would gladly go out and buy something the replace the 7300 I have now. But most of those cards require EFI-64.

Has Apple truly abandoned the early adopters? I never thought they would already be giving up on some Intel based Macs.

 

[grue]

I read the article on the 64 bit capabilities of Snow Leopard on appleinsider.com

It seemed to state that any of the old MacPros with EFI-32 would not be able to boot the kernel in 64 bit. I was hoping to take advantage of the larger memory spaces while running Parallels at the same time and eventually when Adobe gets around to making there apps 64 bit compliant.

What chip on these motherboards prevents them from upgrading the firmware to EFI-64? If it is the graphics cards, I would gladly go out and buy something the replace the 7300 I have now. But most of those cards require EFI-64.

Has Apple truly abandoned the early adopters? I never thought they would already be giving up on some Intel based Macs.

Neither Parallels nor Adobe software are going to give a rat's ass if you're running the 64bit kernel as I understand it. Just because the kernel is 32bit doesn't mean you can't run 64bit software…

 

[Cindori]

A 64-bit kernel gives the feature that you can assign more then 4GB ram for the Operative System only. This is something that becomes useful when you have massive amounts of RAM, over 100GB. Do you have that?


No, the 2.1 Mac can only use 32bit EFI. It's in the motherboard.

 

[Guiyon]

A 64-bit kernel gives the feature that you can assign more then 4GB ram for the Operative System only.

Not true. Apple has supported PAE since 10.4.4, IIRC. This means that the kernel can use up to either 32 or 64 GB (PAE allows for 36-bit addressing but I'm not sure if Apple uses it all) of RAM organized into 4GB pages that it can swap around. As for Parallels, having K64 enabled is a big deal as I doubt their kexts are 64-bit compatible. If you try to boot into K64 and run Parallels it will either not work at all or crash.

 

[Cindori]

Not true. Apple has supported PAE since 10.4.4, IIRC. This means that the kernel can use up to either 32 or 64 GB (PAE allows for 36-bit addressing but I'm not sure if Apple uses it all) of RAM organized into 4GB pages that it can swap around. As for Parallels, having K64 enabled is a bit deal as I doubt their kexts are 64-bit compatible. If you try to boot into K64 and run Parallels it will either not work at all or crash.

"However, running a 64-bit kernel on these machines is of limited benefit. While there are certain advantages with the move to a 64-bit kernel, including new security enhancements, the primary benefit of a 64-bit kernel is being able to directly work with significantly more than 4GB of RAM, something that most existing consumer Macs and generic PCs can't do anyway."

-Apple insider

this is what I meant

 

[Guiyon]

"However, running a 64-bit kernel on these machines is of limited benefit. While there are certain advantages with the move to a 64-bit kernel, including new security enhancements, the primary benefit of a 64-bit kernel is being able to directly work with significantly more than 4GB of RAM, something that most existing consumer Macs and generic PCs can't do anyway."

-Apple insider

Even K32 allows you to use 32GB+ of memory. Anyone who has that sort of memory need is not going to be considered a run-of-the-mill consumer.

 

[Cindori]

Even K32 allows you to use 32GB+ of memory.

ofc it does, still not what Im talking about. Talking about the maximum capacity of a single assignment.