Author Topic: Any XP users switching to Windows 7 yet? (Read 93179 times)

tomos · « **Reply #50 on:** November 19, 2009, 08:58 AM »

OT (a bit) - what settings are people using for the XP VM? I'm at default, which assigns 512MB of RAM. Performance is not brisk!
-Darwin (November 19, 2009, 08:12 AM)

I wonder how that ties in with the whole 32 vs 64-bit thing - i.e.
if on 32-bit OS, does that amount come out of the allocated 4GB memory?

f0dder · « **Reply #51 on:** November 19, 2009, 11:28 AM »

OT (a bit) - what settings are people using for the XP VM? I'm at default, which assigns 512MB of RAM. Performance is not brisk!
-Darwin (November 19, 2009, 08:12 AM)

I wonder how that ties in with the whole 32 vs 64-bit thing - i.e.
if on 32-bit OS, does that amount come out of the allocated 4GB memory?
-tomos (November 19, 2009, 08:58 AM)

Yup, the VM app still has to allocate from what the OS makes available to it.

For a new OS install on a decent machine, I wouldn't go 32bit these days.

Darwin · « **Reply #52 on:** November 19, 2009, 12:44 PM »

Overall, 64 bit has been an awesome upgrade for me. On new hardware with enough RAM and video memory, the performance "hit" that you experience running a 32-bit program under a 64-bit OS is negligible in my experience AND you can install up to 16 exabytes of RAM! OK, so the reality is that you can't currently install or access anything near that (8 terabytes is the current limit, apparently), but still... 6, 8, 12 GB of RAM vs 3 to 3.5 under 32-bit. Even if your 32 bit programs can only access 2GB of your RAM on a 64 bit system, the OS still has plenty of RAM to play with.

urlwolf · « **Reply #53 on:** November 19, 2009, 12:55 PM »

I'm actually moving full-time linux. But win7/w2008 was ok.

Darwin · « **Reply #54 on:** November 19, 2009, 12:59 PM »

I'm actually moving full-time linux. But win7/w2008 was ok.
-urlwolf (November 19, 2009, 12:55 PM)

I'm loving Windows 7, but increasingly I'm losing my "loyalty" to the 3rd party shareware that I have purchased over the years that has kept me on Windows. For example, when I moved from XP to Vista, I simply didn't re-install a bunch of shareware that I've purchased over the years. Similarly, moving to Windows 7, I uninstalled a lot of shareware that I wasn't really using. This leaves me, essentially, with Office 2007, my AV/AS app, some text editors, and my PDF suite to "worry" about. Not sure that I care that much anymore... Maybe it's time to do as I have long threatened and re-purpose my Win2k or XP machine as a Linux box and see how I get on...

Anyway, good luck!

40hz · « **Reply #55 on:** November 19, 2009, 01:02 PM »

I'm actually moving full-time linux. But win7/w2008 was ok.
-urlwolf (November 19, 2009, 12:55 PM)

@urlwolf - Just out of curiosity - which distro do you use or plan on using?

JavaJones · « **Reply #56 on:** November 19, 2009, 01:02 PM »

I haven't seen any recent benchmarks actually showing *any* performance hit from 32 bit apps on 64 bit OS. The only time I ever saw evidence of such a thing was back when 64 bit Windows was first coming out (XP x64), and things have come a long way since then. Certainly there is a theoretical reason why it might have a performance impact, but practically speaking I don't think there is one.

Also there is a way for developers to compile 32 bit apps such that they can take advantage of more memory on properly configured 32 bit systems. The /largeaddressaware flag I believe is what does it, and it lets an app theoretically access up to 3/4GB of RAM even on a 32 bit Windows OS using the /3gb boot switch. What's more interesting though is that apps compiled in this way when they are run on a 64 bit OS actually *do* get up to 4GB of RAM, and if the machine has enough memory, they can really get access then to twice as much memory as they used to have. In many cases this is enough to make moving to a 64 bit app version unnecessary.

In short there's really little or no reason not to go 64 bit these days. I honestly wish MS had just not published a 32 bit version of Win7 (except maybe for Netbooks - but hey wouldn't that be a much better differentiator than removing features!?). Essentially every new CPU these days supports 64 bit, and many older ones besides.

- Oshyan

superboyac · « **Reply #57 on:** November 19, 2009, 01:03 PM »

I'm actually moving full-time linux. But win7/w2008 was ok.
-urlwolf (November 19, 2009, 12:55 PM)

@urlwolf - Just out of curiosity - which distro do you use or plan on using?

-40hz (November 19, 2009, 01:02 PM)

Yes, I'm curious also. Zridling recommends opensuse and KDE (i think).

Darwin · « **Reply #58 on:** November 19, 2009, 01:46 PM »

I haven't seen any recent benchmarks actually showing *any* performance hit from 32 bit apps on 64 bit OS.
-JavaJones (November 19, 2009, 01:02 PM)

I'm more or less going on "hearsay" - the latest Windows Secrets newsletter discusses the pros and cons of 32 bit vs 64 bit and this is one of the things that they mention. I honestly didn't notice a difference when I made the move, even though most of my software is 32 bit.

EDITED for clarity

JavaJones · « **Reply #59 on:** November 19, 2009, 01:48 PM »

Honestly I think the 32 bit on 64 bit performance issue is mostly a myth (in practice - in theory there is a genuine reason for it) that has been perpetuated. I'll clam up on that if I see some real-world benchmarks to the contrary though.

But regardless, as someone who has used a 64 bit OS consistently for the last several years, I can say the difference is negligible at most.

- Oshyan

superboyac · « **Reply #60 on:** November 19, 2009, 03:58 PM »

Honestly I think the 32 bit on 64 bit performance issue is mostly a myth (in practice - in theory there is a genuine reason for it) that has been perpetuated. I'll clam up on that if I see some real-world benchmarks to the contrary though.

But regardless, as someone who has used a 64 bit OS consistently for the last several years, I can say the difference is negligible at most.

- Oshyan
-JavaJones (November 19, 2009, 01:48 PM)

Hold on, I'm not familiar about this, can you clarify? What is the myth? That 32-bit applications suffer in performance in 64-bit OS? Or that the difference in performance in general for 64-bit OS's is negligible relative to 32-bit? Because I was considering moving to Windows 7 64-bit and taking advantage of the additional RAM.

Eóin · « **Reply #61 on:** November 19, 2009, 04:07 PM »

Hold on, I'm not familiar about this, can you clarify? What is the myth? That 32-bit applications suffer in performance in 64-bit OS? Or that the difference in performance in general for 64-bit OS's is negligible relative to 32-bit?
-superboyac (November 19, 2009, 03:58 PM)

Since the days of WinXP x64 I dual booted with a 32bit XP install. So that's identical hardware and never noticed any performance hit on x64. Mind you since switching to Win7 x64 I haven't even bothered to add the existing XP install to the boot manager. I've just not had a reason to use it at all.

f0dder · « **Reply #62 on:** November 19, 2009, 04:23 PM »

For just about every normal game and application, I haven't been able to feel a speed hit when running 32bit applications under a 64bit OS (this is perceived speed, I haven't bothered to run anything resembling a scientific benchmark) - and things in general has felt a bit smoother running 64bit.

There's been a single instance where performance took an abysmal hit, though: Foxit PDF reader. I'm not sure what the problem was, but at least on XP64, rendering complex PDFs is (or was) extremely much slower when running 32bit Foxit on 64bit Windows - so slower that running 32bit foxit in a 32bit XP virtual machine in vmware on the 64bit host actually rendered those PDFs faster

I haven't dealt with complex PDFs in a while though, so I don't know if the problem has been fixed with later Foxit versions, and I'm also running Win7-64 right now, where the situation might be different. But it's been one application with slowdown, and pretty special circumstances.

Darwin · « **Reply #63 on:** November 19, 2009, 04:31 PM »

Hold on, I'm not familiar about this, can you clarify? What is the myth? That 32-bit applications suffer in performance in 64-bit OS? Or that the difference in performance in general for 64-bit OS's is negligible relative to 32-bit? Because I was considering moving to Windows 7 64-bit and taking advantage of the additional RAM.
-superboyac (November 19, 2009, 03:58 PM)

The myth is that 32 bit programs run slower under 64 bit OS's. As you can see, three of us have not really seen that in real world usage (bar f0dder's Foxit Reader example).

JavaJones · « **Reply #64 on:** November 19, 2009, 04:38 PM »

Hold on, I'm not familiar about this, can you clarify? What is the myth? That 32-bit applications suffer in performance in 64-bit OS? Or that the difference in performance in general for 64-bit OS's is negligible relative to 32-bit? Because I was considering moving to Windows 7 64-bit and taking advantage of the additional RAM.
-superboyac (November 19, 2009, 03:58 PM)

The myth is that 32 bit programs run slower under 64 bit OS's. As you can see, three of us have not really seen that in real world usage (bar f0dder's Foxit Reader example).
-Darwin (November 19, 2009, 04:31 PM)

Exaaactly. I'm curious as to the nature/cause of the Foxit problem too. Might just be a special case.

- Oshyan

superboyac · « **Reply #65 on:** November 19, 2009, 06:08 PM »

i see, I understand. I'll keep an eye out and report if I notice anything as I try out these 64-bit OS's.

MilesAhead · « **Reply #66 on:** November 20, 2009, 01:41 PM »

For just about every normal game and application, I haven't been able to feel a speed hit when running 32bit applications under a 64bit OS (this is perceived speed, I haven't bothered to run anything resembling a scientific benchmark) - and things in general has felt a bit smoother running 64bit.
-f0dder (November 19, 2009, 04:23 PM)

That was my feeling when I got my quad with Vista64 SP1 8 GB ram. I wish there were more 64 bit apps around so I could look at memory consumption and other factors. I noticed when I compiled my AHK scripts as 64 bit the working set was much larger. Maybe page size issues or perhaps it's just a quirk of the AHK compiler. I have no quibbles with this OS other than I set Superfetch to only cache system boot files in order to minimize HD running on.

edit: btw I haven't noticed any issues with Vista64 with SP1. I use the shell copy. I found no need to use dedicated copy apps for general purpose copy. Unfortunately I can't get Vista 32 bit pre SP1 to take the service pack so it looks like I'll wait for W7 SP1 to put on that machine. Unless I hit the lottery and get one of those Intel i7 things with TB ram LN2 cooled or something.

f0dder · « **Reply #67 on:** November 20, 2009, 05:51 PM »

MilesAhead: IMHO there's no reason to go compiling everything as 64bit, unless you know for certain that the application can take advantage of the extra (and wider) general-purpose registers, or the much larger address space. For a lot of things, you might as well stay 32bit and enjoy the somewhat smaller executable images and memory consumption.

I love SuperFetch, and have left it at default settings. Yes, you might get some additional harddisk access early after system start, but the launch speed of applications after that far outweigh this "annoyance"; my laptop running Vista64 starts Visual Studio faster than my workstation running XP64 (with quadcore, 8 gigs of RAM, and (back then) 10k-rpm Raptor drives...)

MilesAhead · « **Reply #68 on:** November 20, 2009, 06:45 PM »

There isn't that much option to compile things 64 bit. The software development environment hasn't caught up to 64 bit yet. At least not for people who don't have $1000+ to shell out for development tools. 64 bit has been lurking in the background, then all of a sudden when Vista went SP1 it exploded. Even $500 systems are coming with 6 GB and 64 bit OS now. I think it took the software development makers by surprise. Seems they are one step behind.

afa Superfetch goes, running locate32 was likely the culprit for most of the drive run-on. I switched to Everything Search and turned as much indexing off as I could. I don't cache or shadow network shares, don't index for faster searching, etc.. I tried Superfetch fully enabled, then with the setting I use. I couldn't detect a difference so why keep gathering stats for no gain? Runs fine as it is. No annoyance no strain.

f0dder · « **Reply #69 on:** November 20, 2009, 06:55 PM »

You don't have to shell out $1000 to do 64bit development - Visual Studio Express is free... only produces 32bit executables, but you get the 64bit compiler for free from the PlatformSDK, and with a bit of hacking you can integrate it into the VSE IDE. You probably can't debug those executables from the IDE though, which will make it hard to trace 64bit related issues; but you can do your main development+debugging for 32bit, and produce (possibly even working

) 64bit output for free

MilesAhead · « **Reply #70 on:** November 20, 2009, 07:38 PM »

It doesn't sound appealing. Like I say, they're a step behind.

I looked at Lazarus and even there, dialog paint routines that I used in Delphi 5 looked washed out with that IDE's gui libraries. It just doesn't look the same. Setting up a bunch of environment variables and messing around for 2 days is old. 64 bit is here!! They need to get on the stick with one click install, drag & drop development of stand-alone executable applications.

f0dder · « **Reply #71 on:** November 20, 2009, 07:43 PM »

It doesn't sound appealing. Like I say, they're a step behind.
-MilesAhead (November 20, 2009, 07:38 PM)

I guess Microsoft's reasoning is that 64bit support is a "pro" feature that "hobbyists" don't need - if you're producing 64bit applications, you're probably doing "serious business" and can afford the full compiler package. I don't necessarily agree, but I think it's fair enough of MS to impose a restriction like that... and after all, you do get the full 64bit compiler in the PlatformSDK.

Whether the strategy hinders the adoption of 64bit as the main platform... *shrug*

MilesAhead · « **Reply #72 on:** November 21, 2009, 01:48 AM »

I'm not just talking about MS. I don't see any compilers coming along as one would expect in 64 bit flavors.

It seems like the only people trying to do it are open source programmers. That doesn't usually imply it's gonna' happen real fast.

Stoic Joker · « **Reply #73 on:** November 21, 2009, 08:21 AM »

Hold on, I'm not familiar about this, can you clarify? What is the myth? That 32-bit applications suffer in performance in 64-bit OS? Or that the difference in performance in general for 64-bit OS's is negligible relative to 32-bit? Because I was considering moving to Windows 7 64-bit and taking advantage of the additional RAM.
-superboyac (November 19, 2009, 03:58 PM)

The myth is that 32 bit programs run slower under 64 bit OS's. As you can see, three of us have not really seen that in real world usage (bar f0dder's Foxit Reader example).
-Darwin (November 19, 2009, 04:31 PM)

Make that four of us ... I've been x64 for a few years and haven't seen foot dragging at all.

@MilesAhead - The thing is if you don't really need a program to be 64-bit, then compiling it that way is just an academic exercise/waste.

Let's use T-Clock as an example; there is both a 32bit & a 64bit version of the program compiled with MSVS2005 . Both use the exact same source code but are referenced under different project names in the same solution (both are running on Win7):

x86: Memory (Private Working Set) 1,508
x64: Memory (Private Working Set) 2,188

...Which makes the question, why gobble up a bunch of memory that you don't need & can't use for program X. T-Clock has to be 64 bit because you can't inject a 32 bit (clock) hook into a 64 bit (system tray) process. None of my other software is 64 bit as there is just no (way to justify the memory usage waste) need for it.

Eóin · « **Reply #74 on:** November 21, 2009, 09:40 AM »

The thing is if you don't really need a program to be 64-bit, then compiling it that way is just an academic exercise/waste.
... [snip] ...
None of my other software is 64 bit as there is just no (way to justify the memory usage waste) need for it.
-Stoic Joker (November 21, 2009, 08:21 AM)

Well there is the rarely seen processor efficiency. In theory x64 apps should run a bit faster as they can avail of more recent processor instructions which 32bit apps usually avoid to maintain backwards compatibility with older CPUs. Exactly how that manifests in day to day applications would be debatable.