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32bit vs 64bit Vista performance comparison?

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f0dder:
Not just a load of 64-bit apps - but apps that actually take advantage of 64-bit and has a performance gain :)

Ralf Maximus:
Ah.  So you don't my 64-bit version of "Hello world" then?

Carol Haynes:
I read somewhere a while back (can't remember where) that some benchmarking actually found 64-bit XP slower than 32-bit. The main advantage seems to be unlocking the memory limit.

Can someone answer a simple question though - if I upgrade to XP64 do I have to also upgrade all of my software to 64-bit versions or will 32 bit versions install and play happily on a 64-bit OS ? If there are software compatability issues is there a good site with a list of issues and workarounds for software that has never been released in 64-bit format?

Presumably if I installed XP64 I could install VMWare or similar and run XP32 in a virtual machine?

f0dder:
Carol: some 32-bit software might break, but I haven't seen that myself. My guess is that it'd mainly be things that's very dirty, and would have already broken on 32bit XP on a 64bit CPU running on PAE mode with DEP turned on. Also, 16bit support is completely removed, this affects some old installers (yeah, 16bit installers for 32bit apps - wonderful).

I haven't been running 64bit for very long, but so far everything works just fine. While you generally don't need to upgrade 32bit apps (only sensible reason to do so is for apps that can take advantage of it), you will need 64bit drivers for all your hardware, and that can be a trouble for some peripherals.

You can run xp32 in a vm just fine (and surprisingly enough, you can even run xp64 in vmware on a xp32!), but it wouldn't make that much sense, unless you need 16bit stuff... since obviously vmware doesn't help much wrt. driver peripherals.

As for 64bit xp being slower, dunno... could have been when drivers where immature. Code size does increase a bit, but not as badly as it could have, thanks the the instruction format (RIP-relative addressing rather than fixed 64bit offsets, for instance), but that is still pretty little, and data files (which is the size hog) don't magically grow :)

Carol Haynes:
Thanks - that is useful info. If you decide to go the 64-bit XP route do you need a new installation key for XP or can you change base without having to buy the product again?

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