My results with XP x64
I'm up and running with XP x64 Edition for the first time ever on my Mac Pro. Here are my results; I have the 3.0 GHz Quad with the ATI card.
I got the system with the smallest drive (160GB) and ordered a 750GB drive. Rather than reinstalling OSX, I was glad I was able to move OSX to the big drive with Disk Utility, and pleased even more that I didn't have to move the boot drive to the 1st SATA bay. So I left the small disk in bay 1 with nothing on it and the big disk in bay 2 with OSX moved to it. Thankfully, it still booted.
With my ATI card I'm using two displays (identical Samsung 20" LCDs). When it boots XP, both are mirrored (or trying to be mirrored). The text-mode display for the install is corrupted, but barely readable. There is a lot of flickering of half the screen. I don't know if this is because I'm driving two displays, or if it's just the ATI card and nobody's tried this with the ATI card yet.
Even though the display is corrupted I can see well enough to proceed with the install. I find the small disk and format it NTFS, which seems to be going OK so I guess the SATA drivers are working. With the system up and running I get 72 MB/s with HD Tune. I used a pristine install disk (no slipstreaming).
Once it installs, here are the problems I've encountered.
- The XP logo screen is corrupted on both displays.
- The default video driver is corrupted just the same as the text mode during install once the desktop comes up -- but luckily it's enough to continue. Sounds like the ATI doesn't do VGA/VESA low res modes correctly.
- Once I install the ATI drivers, the corruption is gone for the desktop and I can continue. (The corruption is still there for the boot screens).
- The Network card isn't picked up automatically so prepare a disk with at least those drivers.
- The display order is reversed (the desktop comes up in my 2nd display). I can't do anything to force my 1st display to be the primary, so it's the opposite of how it was in OSX. I moved the task bar and desktop icons to display #1 but all my windows open on display #2. Anybody have any ideas as to how to force which display is primary? The Catalyst control center has this option but it's greyed out.
- Obviously the boot camp drivers don't work, but I wish I at least had the startup disk to go back to OSX by default.
Other than that, it's working pretty well. This is my first seat time with 64-bit XP, so I'm still getting used to the odd 32-bit incompatibilities herer and there; but I'll give it a try. The display corruption during boot and desktop order reversal are what's really annoying me.
EDIT: MacDrive doesn't work, so I don't have any way of sharing files between operating systems. Grrr, I might have to do 32-bit XP after all.