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Windows 64 bit on 8-core Mac Pro

macanudo

macanudo

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 9, 2006
138
0
Philadelphia, PA
All,

First, I apologize for a repost, but I am unable to find what I need so far so I am turning to you guys for some assistance.

My lab wants to get a kick-ass desktop PC that can run Windows XP 64 bit edition and take advantage of as much RAM and processing power as possible for 3-D modeling. I don't have too much experience with WinXP 64 bit edition, but I am wondering if any mac pro owners out there that have an updated box w/8 cores and lots of RAM do have WinXP 64 bit edition can answer my questions:

1. What is the bootcamp experience like (with regard to drivers, etc)?
2. Can WinXP take advantage of all 8 processors?
3. Can WinXP take advantage of up to 16GB of RAM? (I think the answer is yes...)

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
macanudo said:
All,

First, I apologize for a repost, but I am unable to find what I need so far so I am turning to you guys for some assistance.

My lab wants to get a kick-ass desktop PC that can run Windows XP 64 bit edition and take advantage of as much RAM and processing power as possible for 3-D modeling. I don't have too much experience with WinXP 64 bit edition, but I am wondering if any mac pro owners out there that have an updated box w/8 cores and lots of RAM do have WinXP 64 bit edition can answer my questions:

1. What is the bootcamp experience like (with regard to drivers, etc)?
2. Can WinXP take advantage of all 8 processors?
3. Can WinXP take advantage of up to 16GB of RAM? (I think the answer is yes...)

Thanks in advance for your help.
Click to expand...

Apple only supports running 64bit Vista on bootcamp, not XP
 
macanudo said:
All,
1. What is the bootcamp experience like (with regard to drivers, etc)?
2. Can WinXP take advantage of all 8 processors?
3. Can WinXP take advantage of up to 16GB of RAM? (I think the answer is yes...)
Click to expand...

Only Vista Ultimate 64 bit can use all 8 processors and all 16GB of RAM.
In our case, we had to first install Windows XP to format using NTFS.
Then we installed Vista 64.

We did NOT install Apple's Boot Camp drivers. We downloaded all needed Vista 64 compatible drivers from the appropriate websites. For example, we got the Vista 64 drivers for the Radeon HD 2600 XT from AMD.com. We got the GeForce 8800 GT/GTX drivers from nVidia.com.
 
barefeats said:
Only Vista Ultimate 64 bit can use all 8 processors and all 16GB of RAM.
Click to expand...

As far as I am aware this is incorrect. Windows is licensed on a socket basis and not a core basis. Windows XP Pro is capable of using a two CPU socket machine and thus using all 8 cores and I do not see any reason for the 64 bit edition of XP to be any different.

barefeats said:
In our case, we had to first install Windows XP to format using NTFS.
Then we installed Vista 64.
Click to expand...

You can install Vista 64 without having to install XP first. You just need to restart from the CD again once you have done the partitioning otherwise the installer says something like "No suitable partitions".

barefeats said:
We did NOT install Apple's Boot Camp drivers. We downloaded all needed Vista 64 compatible drivers from the appropriate websites. For example, we got the Vista 64 drivers for the Radeon HD 2600 XT from AMD.com. We got the GeForce 8800 GT/GTX drivers from nVidia.com.
Click to expand...

By far the best way of doing it.
 
I stand corrected.

Thanks, Cromulent, for correcting me.

I forgot about Windows XP 64. You are right. That will support the 8 cores. (We only had a copy of XP Pro 32 bit in the lab.)

Nice to know about the workaround for formatting the partition without having to install XP first. That saves time.
 
Thank you all for your help and expertise. I am gonna try this on my mac pro and see if it works before we get one of the newer ones.
 
I coincidentally just finished a few days messing around with this, and can confirm that 64 bit Windows XP will run on the new (early 2008) Mac pros -- the only problem I had is XP64 would get stuck in a installer loop when trying to put it on a Boot Camp created partition (NTFS) shared with the Mac boot partition. It installed perfectly fine on it's own separate NTFS formatted hard drive.

I installed it on a new 2.8 GHz MacPro with 2GB ram and the ATI HD 2600XT card, using the free trial download of XP64 from the Microsoft site (which is SP1, by the way). I used Boot Camp to start the process, and selected the second hard drive, and all went normally. I previously found the drivers for the ethernet (Intel), sound (Realtek), the ATI card and Airport (Broadcom) on the www and had burned them to a CD. No luck for the Bluetooth yet (Cambridge Silicon), or for utilizing the Apple specific keys on the aluminum keyboard. I added an additional 8 GB RAM and it saw all of it. Updated to SP2 and all current Windows Updates.

I then took out the XP64 drive, along with all the RAM, and swapped it into a new 3.2 GHz Mac Pro with the nvidia Quadro FX 5600. I had two blue screens ("...windows is shutting down to protect your compter...") after installing the Quadro FX5600 driver before uninstalling the ATI stuff, but after taking out the ATI stuff, it's been solid. Donloaded the Halo demo just to mess around -- nice !
 
I'm having some troubles with a Boot Camp Vista Business 64-bit installation. I have four hard drives...

1: 1TB OS X
2: 1TB for Vista
3: 500GB Time Machine
4: Stock 320GB, currently has the factory boot image, but will eventually hold VMWare images

When I tried to use boot camp with the 1TB drive being an HFS+, Vista said it couldn't find a supported volume during the install. Subsequently, I held the eject key to get out of an endless loop that kept booting up the install CD.

After that I formatted drive 2 as FAT, loaded the installer, during the install process I had the installer format the FAT drive (I believe this would have put it into NTFS), and then the installer began working away and unpacking.

However, somewhere during the unpacking or installation, it did a reboot (Windows installer said the system may reboot a few times during installation). After the system rebooted, it booted back off the install CD and tried to start the installation all over again.

Does anyone who's had success on their early 2008 have any suggestions on the "install loop", or some steps? I wonder if having OS X boot volumes in slots 1 and 4 is throwing off the boot camp attempt in slot 2?
 
EFI Support

With Vista SP1 supporting EFI, and Windows Server 2008 supporting EFI - do we even need bootcamp? I'm interested in throwing Windows Server 2008 on my MP - any reason why I can't? Other than drivers - which should use the typical Vista drivers...
 
mogrefy said:
Does anyone who's had success on their early 2008 have any suggestions on the "install loop", or some steps? I wonder if having OS X boot volumes in slots 1 and 4 is throwing off the boot camp attempt in slot 2?
Click to expand...

That happened to me too. One way around it is, as the computer reboots hold down the option key and explicity tell it to boot off the Windows HD. But I don't know why it happens in the first place. Maybe it is important what bay the Windows drive is in?
 
Cromulent said:
As far as I am aware this is incorrect. Windows is licensed on a socket basis and not a core basis. Windows XP Pro is capable of using a two CPU socket machine and thus using all 8 cores and I do not see any reason for the 64 bit edition of XP to be any different.
Click to expand...

yep, vista business and xp pro both accept multiple physical processors too
 
All,

I appreciate all the responses here. I haven't gotten a chance to load my MP yet with WinXP 64 bit because my MBP died yesterday :( and I'm in the process of replacing it with a MBA :). But it looks like I'll be able to boot camp on a separate NTFS drive, download original device drivers directly from the OEM and it'll see al the CPU's and RAM. I'
 
DrSynth said:
I coincidentally just finished a few days messing around with this, and can confirm that 64 bit Windows XP will run on the new (early 2008) Mac pros -- the only problem I had is XP64 would get stuck in a installer loop when trying to put it on a Boot Camp created partition (NTFS) shared with the Mac boot partition. It installed perfectly fine on it's own separate NTFS formatted hard drive.

I installed it on a new 2.8 GHz MacPro with 2GB ram and the ATI HD 2600XT card, using the free trial download of XP64 from the Microsoft site (which is SP1, by the way). I used Boot Camp to start the process, and selected the second hard drive, and all went normally. I previously found the drivers for the ethernet (Intel), sound (Realtek), the ATI card and Airport (Broadcom) on the www and had burned them to a CD. No luck for the Bluetooth yet (Cambridge Silicon), or for utilizing the Apple specific keys on the aluminum keyboard. I added an additional 8 GB RAM and it saw all of it. Updated to SP2 and all current Windows Updates.

I then took out the XP64 drive, along with all the RAM, and swapped it into a new 3.2 GHz Mac Pro with the nvidia Quadro FX 5600. I had two blue screens ("...windows is shutting down to protect your compter...") after installing the Quadro FX5600 driver before uninstalling the ATI stuff, but after taking out the ATI stuff, it's been solid. Donloaded the Halo demo just to mess around -- nice !
Click to expand...

Did you try using the Leopard DVD to install the Boot Camp drivers? I think I might try putting on XP 64 to see what happens but if the Boot Camp drivers work fine I don't see why I shouldn't use those.
 
I have loaded XP64 on 2 new 8-core macs in the last week, the 10.5.1 OS X install disc has all the 64 bit drivers needed for the install, the only one you will need track down is the Intel ethernet drivers.

I have had no problems at all with anything hardware/driver related in 64bit EXCEPT for the new 8800GT card, I'm not sure if the nvidia drivers just suck for XP64 or what but the performance is sub-par at best. Our 8core with the ATI 2600 HD is outperforming it in most benchmarks, making me angry that I waited 3 extra weeks for my 8800GT mac :mad:

I have tried the newest forceware 169.28 drivers, the current non beta 169.21 & the previous release 169.09 with no performance changes.

Hope that helps!
 
goums said:
I have loaded XP64 on 2 new 8-core macs in the last week, the 10.5.1 OS X install disc has all the 64 bit drivers needed for the install, the only one you will need track down is the Intel ethernet drivers.

I have had no problems at all with anything hardware/driver related in 64bit EXCEPT for the new 8800GT card, I'm not sure if the nvidia drivers just suck for XP64 or what but the performance is sub-par at best. Our 8core with the ATI 2600 HD is outperforming it in most benchmarks, making me angry that I waited 3 extra weeks for my 8800GT mac :mad:

I have tried the newest forceware 169.28 drivers, the current non beta 169.21 & the previous release 169.09 with no performance changes.

Hope that helps!
Click to expand...

Sounds like I should just stick with 32-bit for now :) That saves me a lot of hassle though, so I can't complain.
 
Where to download the right ethernet drivers

Quote goums: "the 10.5.1 OS X install disc has all the 64 bit drivers needed for the install, the only one you will need track down is the Intel ethernet drivers."


Can anyone tell me, which Intel ethernet drivers I need to download in order for the hardware to work on Windows XP64bit ?

Thanks alot in advance.
 
Cromulent said:
You can install Vista 64 without having to install XP first. You just need to restart from the CD again once you have done the partitioning otherwise the installer says something like "No suitable partitions".
Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean here - If the Vista media can't find a suitable partition, how do you get one on there in the first place?
 
Inlakech said:
Quote goums: "the 10.5.1 OS X install disc has all the 64 bit drivers needed for the install, the only one you will need track down is the Intel ethernet drivers."


Can anyone tell me, which Intel ethernet drivers I need to download in order for the hardware to work on Windows XP64bit ?

Thanks alot in advance.
Click to expand...

It's an EB series controller so this should be the one I used... Click Here
 
If youre going to use 3ds max, you should install windows on a separate hard drive to avoid license issues which result in a constant need to reactivate the program.
 
#$&#$@ Vista x64 lost my Superdrive drivers after installing Adobe Premiere, running Adobe update and reboot. Does anyone know the specific exe file to run for reinstalling the drivers fro Mac Pro install disk 1? I have already tried multiple restarts.

MK
 
I finally had time to put Win XP x64 on one of my HDs today in my MP and, with a little help from the IT guy, we successfully loaded the OS - it recognizes all 4 cores and all 16GB of RAM! All drivers were loaded separately (as noted here) since Apple doesn't support XP x64 on bootcamp publicly.

Now I am just waiting on our 3-D electrical modeling engineer who will test drive it before we buy the new 8-core MP!

Thanks everyone for your help here!
 
How did you get the MacPro keyboard working (CD eject button, for ex) without using the drivers on the Leopard/bootcamp DVD?
d.
"We did NOT install Apple's Boot Camp drivers. We downloaded all needed Vista 64 compatible drivers from the appropriate websites." [/QUOTE]
 
Now if only someone would figure out how to do bootcamp on the APPLE RAID card or ODD SATA connector
 
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