Saturday, October 08, 2005

Windows XP 64 bit and dual core processors


I am trying to decide whether or not to build my next pc with a dual core chip, and whether or not to install Windows XP 64bit.

I am currently looking at either the AMD Athlon 64 X2 64Bit 4800+ chip or the Intel Pentium D EE 840 3.2Ghx Chip. The other alternative is the single core AMD Athlon 64 FX57 Chip.

This article by the Australian Overclockers suggests that after all their testing the AMD 4800+ chip performs better then the P4 D EE 840 at the things I need. Multitasking apps and background processing of tasks while playing CPU intensive games such as Far Cry and Battlefield 2.

I currently have around 30 browser tabs open in Firefox, One Note, Outlook and Sauce Reader (my RSS reader) open, Winamp streaming internet radio, Trillian running my MSN, ICQ and Yahoo Messenger clients. Usually I would have several of these applications open at once also; Word, Excel, Publisher, Dreamweaver, Cute FTP, Photoshop, Irfanview and Internet Explorer - for testing web sites.
So I am a top end power user. I am currently running a P4 3.2Ghz chip on an Asus P4P C board with 2 GB Geil Golden Dragon Ram and a FX 5900 Ultra Video card powering two 19" Viewsonic CRTs.

Intel are trying hard to convince me with their spiel and AMD have a similar one.

So far my main concern is not the hardware. It would seem that all is working fine there.
The Pentium D 840 Extreme Edition would pair nicely with the Intel S775 D955XBKLKR Motherboard and the A64 X2 4800+ would run very sweetly in the ASUS S939 A8N SLI Motherboard. I already have one of these running a 3200+ chip as a Linux server.

No I am more worried about two other things. First the almost total lack of driver support for hardware for XP 64bit. Second the worrying lack of support.
This article by Hardware Analysis sums up these two problems nicely.

Paul Thurrott who attended a technical preview run by Microsoft makes some disconcerting statements.
Quoting Brian Marr, Microsoft's XP 64 bit Product Manager he says this:
"There is no upgrade path from Windows XP Pro to Windows XP 64-bit Edition, for example."

There is some good news:
"Realizing that applications compatibility was going to be a key goal for its customers, Microsoft made the 64-bit versions of Windows compatible with existing 32-bit applications through a new Windows On Windows 64-bit (WOW64) compatibility layer. "So we're compatible with 32-bit apps out of the box, and it runs (sic) most Win32 apps, though 16-bit installers won't work for the most part.

Rob Enderle writing for TechNewsWorld states:
"More of a precursor to Longhorn so that vendors will write the necessary 64-bit drivers, it is available on new hardware and not as an upgrade. It really isn't designed for the home market and the likely targets are those doing specialized research, multi-media authoring, CAD, and complex financial analysis. Mainstream it isn't, but if you need the power of a 64-bit platform and particularly if you like AMD hardware, this is your OS. The majority of us aren't there yet."


Tom's Hardware Guide has a comprehensive review (as always).
"As more data can be processed per clock cycle, there can be substantial performance benefits with 64 bit applications under Windows XP."

After all their testing of the Athlon X2 4800+ dual core and the Athlon 64 FX57 single core both with XP Pro and XP 64 here are the conclusions that THG gained:
# The 64 bit version of Windows looks and feels pretty much like the popular 32 bit versions.
# Windows XP Professional x64 Edition provides performance comparable to Windows XP 32 bit when running 32 bit applications.
Some programs run slightly faster, others slightly slower. At the end of the day, the difference is not noticeable.
# The perceived differences between the 32 bit and 64 bit versions are the same whether you run a single or a dual core processor.

"Given that there is no difference in performance when running 32 bit applications, it does not make sense to upgrade to Windows XP Professional x64 Edition when running them; you might be upgrading just for the sake of being an early adopter. The general conclusion here is that Microsoft's WOW64 (Windows on Windows 64) translation layer works well and allows the execution of 32 bit software in Windows X64 without any noticeable difference. This reminds us of the transition from Windows for Workgroups 3.11 to Windows 95: as long as enough RAM was installed, performance was not an issue."

I am still not convinced either way.

I think I will go for the 4800+ Dual core and install Virtual PC and see how both the 64 bit and 32 bit versions go on the same machine. That way when the promised 64 bit applications come out I will be hardware enabled for them.

What do you think. Do you have any further information or advice to add? Please comment if you do.


Posted by: Jethro | 11:51 PM |