64-Bit WinXP Beta Available to General Public

SteveC

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Microsoft has made the beta 64-bit version of Windows XP available to general public for a free download or CD (for cost of shipping). You previously had to have an MSDN subscription to get it. The website is here.
 

Mercutio

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I'll let y'all know how it is in a couple of days when my motherboard arrives.
I'm not expecting any earth-shattering differences, though.
 

ddrueding

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Mercutio said:
I'll let y'all know how it is in a couple of days when my motherboard arrives.
I'm not expecting any earth-shattering differences, though.

The only difference I'd expect is less stability. I have no doubt that it is the path of the future and allows for more powerfull systems; but right now all I'd expect is less mature code.
 

Mercutio

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Two things in its favor:
One of the two systems I'm putting together will have the full 3GB of RAM the board will support. I'm hoping that 64XP will handle that RAM better than plain old 2000/XP (workstations versions don't handle > 2GB very well).
If it doesn't help, I'll have 1 machine with 1.5GB and one with 2GB. :D
Let's call that the brute-force improvement.[1]

The other thing is that the Athlon64 has a whole bunch of extra general-purpose registers that're enabled in 64-bit mode. Those are what are supposed to make the Athlon64 special.




[1] Before anyone asks me why I need it: I have a Firebird session open on the PC I'm using right now, that's using 1.2GB of RAM by itself. Yes, I should probably close some tabs. :)
 

The JoJo

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Mercutio said:
[1] Before anyone asks me why I need it: I have a Firebird session open on the PC I'm using right now, that's using 1.2GB of RAM by itself. Yes, I should probably close some tabs. :)

Whoa....That's gotta be some sort of record.... :mrgrn:
 

ddrueding

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The JoJo said:
Mercutio said:
[1] Before anyone asks me why I need it: I have a Firebird session open on the PC I'm using right now, that's using 1.2GB of RAM by itself. Yes, I should probably close some tabs. :)

Whoa....That's gotta be some sort of record.... :mrgrn:

Nah, just a LOT of Pr0n
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I'm fairly certain that it wasn't all dirty pictures.
Although if anyone needs any help finding that much stuff, I can probably help out.

Testing out my first Athlon64. One thing I notice - and this has got to be someone's dirty little trick:
The management software for the 3Com 1000BT chip in my Albatron board appears to be named PROnoMGR.exe.

In other news, it's fast. I need to swap in a DVD-ROM so I can see it run DVD Shrink. I think that's my main test.

I loaded 32-bit XP from a sysprep image. It ran without a hitch.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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My plans for these PCs:
1. 64-bit Longhorn Preview
2. XP 64-bit
3. Find an appropriate Linux 64-bit distribution
4. Figure out if anything is faster/better.
 

CityK

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(I'm assuming the CPU is the retail box version - ) whats the noise profile of the stock HSF like?
 

Mercutio

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Louder than the Speeze/Spire fans I'm so fond of. :( I'm still using it with the case off and it's sitting about 18" from my head; it's a little hard to be objective at this point.
 

Pradeep

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Mercutio said:
Testing out my first Athlon64. One thing I notice - and this has got to be someone's dirty little trick:
The management software for the 3Com 1000BT chip in my Albatron board appears to be named PROnoMGR.exe.

Yeah the Intel 1000BT Server chipset in my Dull 400SC used PRONo something as the management tool exe. When I first saw it listed in Task Manager I thought I was infected with some dirty virus/trojan. Imagine my surprise when it went away after I closed the Proset utility :)
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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So, I just noticed that the 64-bit extensions Intel has made available with Prescott CPUs are in fact compatible with AMD's x86-64. Which means they'll use the same "Windows for 64-bit Extended Editions" that Athlon64s do.

This seems to be a rare time in recent memory where common sense has prevailed.
 

The JoJo

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Wasn't there just a story about how, due to deals made long ago between Intel and AMD, Intel would not need to pay a dime in royalties to AMD even if they have the exact x64 implementation (or something according to this idea)?
Gotta dig up that article...
 
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