64-bit AMD Athlon CPU and 64-bit enhanced OS from Microsoft

[Connie]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/downloads/upgrade.asp

has a sign-up, a CD or download (450 MB) and a newsgroup for the Microsoft "beta" 64-bit enhanced XP operating system, specifically for the AMD Athlon 64-bit CPU.

There exists a "beta" 64-bit driver for the Creative SB Audigy sound card, HOWEVER, Creative's "beta" program sign-up pdf form is CLEARLY for owners of things like the QCD Player, or the developers, as you can see of their "beta" program form:

http://developer.creative.com/policy/WebRegForm_2003.pdf

BTW, I have a lovely new Gigabyte K8N Pro MOBO, Thermaltake Silent Purepower 480 watt PSU, AMD 64 3200+ 1 MB L2 cache, Kingston 1 GB PC3200 CL2 "kit", Seagate 120 MB 7200 Baracuda SATA hard drive, Plextor PX 708A, and Artec DVD and I want to use MY ..QCD Player right away.

I CAN dual boot, however I request Paul (or a developer at the QCD forum) obtain Creative's "beta" driver for Microsoft XP enhanced 64-bit "beta" operating system for the Athlon 64-bit CPU ..and let me have a copy !

..a copy could be posted HERE ! :carrot:

However, I STRONGLY suggest no one email or bother Creative about their "beta" ..unless and only ..Creative sent their "beta" direct to their signed up "beta" tester.

[acozz]

I thought the processor would emulate 32-bit.

[Tokelil]

If this beta release is for developers I think it is because Creative would like if it stays with developers... Surely because it isn't up to speed or what ever. My guess is that Creative will release a driver as soon as ATI will... When M$ releases Win64.

Acoss: Yer the CPU can run native x86 code. Im not even sure its emulating it. (At least not more than P4 emulats x86, since internally P4 is quite alike a RISC CPU AFAIK)

[brian]

I'd like to welcome Connie back to this forum, from which she has been too long away.

[Connie]

Hi ! Where is my coffeecup !

Yes, will run 32-bit software ..no, will not run 32-bit hardware ..
at least not that soundcard. I got the info on THAT at their newsgroup.

Maybe QCD Player can use the nVidia nForce3 150 chip 5.1 AC97 sound
on the motherboard ?

I have been looking for the nForce 3 150 chip specs.

The nForce 2 chip AC97 has 5.1 sound.

[Tokelil]

I believe Nvidia has 64-bit drivers for their mothersboards but Im not sure. (They have for their graphic cards)

[Connie]

yes !

The Gibabyte K8N Pro motherboard has the 64-bit nVidea chip and drivers.

I didn't get very far, on the boot up and install because the drivers CD was punched through by little MOBO sharp solder points, in the box. Email and asked Gigabyte for another drivers CD, today.

Where's that coffeecup !

[brian]

Connie - are you hoping for a better listening experience from these developments? QCD doesn't support 32-bit or even 24-bit output at the moment, unless you use the ASIO playback plugin. In any case, although my ears are pretty sharp, I wouldn't be confident of hearing a difference between one bitrate and the next highest. I sometimes use XMPlay, an excellent player with 24-bit output, and it sounds about on a par with QCD's 16-bit output.

How do you like your coffee? I'll take mine strong and black with no sugar, please.

[Connie]

Brian, My interest in 64-bit goes back to 6 cpu's up and running, on BEOS, at their corporate office. That was about 5 years ago.

There has been talk here in the QCD forums about having streaming video enabled in the little screen, on the QCD player. I think having streaming video and the audio along with that, run through the QCD player would be very, very cool. Save streaming audio. Wow.

That is why mainstream windows product having 64-bit extensions interests me.

My coffeecup is on the little notebook. I will get it up here.

My avatar is that coffeecup !

[Connie]

and yes, other software saves streaming video and audio, but nothing sounds as good as the QCD player. QCD player has the BEST audio !

[Connie]

I don't want to be talking to myself, but look at this ..

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/24/1822229&mode=thread&threshold=-1

intel has the same 64-bit extensions. maybe.

[Tokelil]

Intel has had a 64 bit CPU for several years, IA64, and there is 2 or more Windows versions for that CPU. I even believe that there is okay driver support for Windows XP IA64 but Im not sure. One of the biggest problems with that CPU is that it doesn't support 32bit code, so it has to be emulated at software level (AFAIK) which is slow... So it has only been used in servers.

But yes it is good that Intel supports the same instruction set as AMD. (Even though they don't want to give credit to AMD for it...)

I see no reason why streaming video should get any better or faster with a 64bit CPU compared to a 32bit though. MMX, SSE, SSE2 optimazation is probably more importent.

[Connie]

Hmm ..The demonstration of BEOS there were many multiple different media input, in multiple windows, heavy processor software running, editing, plus streaming video and streaming audio ..with no lags, no freeze-up and finally, there was breakdown of the visual content (not the audio) in a nice visually appealing way.

The software running was not 32-bit emulation.

I "think" all 64-bit software versions are good.

[Tokelil]

And this was running on 5-6 64-bit CPU's or?

Anyway, I still don't see why we need 64-bit processing for what you describe. A multiprocessor system sounds like a better idea for heavymultitasking in my oppinion. (And maybe BEOS instead of Windows when doing multimedia. A shame that OS didn't have a bigger break through!)

[Connie]

Finally, I found that coffeecup.

I will try using the nVidia3 150 chip on the motherboard.

That chip supports Dolby 5.1 and I will see if QCD player will run.

My friends all think I should have the m-audio Revolution sound card.

However, my assembler's wholesaler does not have the m-audio card.

I guess I will have to pry my MAX system from the assembler's hands to get everything I want to try.

[brian]

Connie - nice to see your beverage is now on the table! Yes, the M-Audio Revolution is definitely recommended; once you've been using it for a while you wonder how you ever lived with anything less! Good luck with your researches.

[h00k]

does anyone know if QMP or other 32-bit software will run on Windows XP or Vista 64-bit?

[Todd The Kiwi]

it runs on xp, not sure about vista.
nice necro too by the way - 2004! :ditsy:

[Tokelil]

32-bit software runs fine under XP-64 and should under Vista-64 as well. (I haven't tested Vista 64bit yet though)
32 bit programs runs in something called WoW64 (Windows On Windows) which translates some of the system calls etc. Performance doesn't seem to be affected (much) but they don't get any of the benefits either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOW64

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

32-bit software runs fine under XP-64 and should under Vista-64 as well. (I haven't tested Vista 64bit yet though)
32 bit programs runs in something called WoW64 (Windows On Windows) which translates some of the system calls etc. Performance doesn't seem to be affected (much) but they don't get any of the benefits either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOW64

Just like 16bit processes are grouped in windowsXP under wowexec.exe. The grouping is not a great idea by microsoft imo. Limits the amount of memory the processes can read.

[Tokelil]

Just like 16bit processes are grouped in windowsXP under wowexec.exe. The grouping is not a great idea by microsoft imo. Limits the amount of memory the processes can read.Im not sure what you mean by that. AFAIK all 32bit processes have access to the full 2GB address space when running in WOW64.

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

Im not sure what you mean by that. AFAIK all 32bit processes have access to the full 2GB address space when running in WOW64.

No i was still referring to the 16 bit processes. They get grouped in one process, ie wowexec which probably means they are only limited to the memory space that that process is occupying. If my logic is flawed, please point it out to me. Then i was wondering if that is the same with win64 and 32 bit processes.

[Tokelil]

Well in theory I can see the point, but in practice it's a non issue IMhO.

16-bit programs under Win3.1 could use up to 32-bit of address space, which wasn't expanded in Win32. So yes in theory running enough 16-bit programs they could run into the 2 GB barrier, but my guess is that you need to run a lot for that to happen. Or the programs has some huge leaks... After all 16-bit programs was written in a time when 2-8 MB RAM was the norm.

In Win x64 there's a 48bit address space for each process, so for grouping to be a problem you will need to run more than 2^16 32-bit programs all using 2 GB of RAM.

Edit: Assuming they have to compete on the address space, which I don't really think is the case.

[acushla]

AMD's processor plans examined in detail. (http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/12451)

[h00k]

if this (http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/server/microsoft_looks_to_64bit_future.html) has any cred, it l00ks like vista will be the last 32-bit operating system.

[Toe]

Frankly, I was kinda surprised they made Vista 32bit. Oh wait, they started on it 6 years. ago... :cheeky:

[Tokelil]

Im pretty sure MS have release a press release somewhere after this article came, that they haven't decided whether there will be a 32-bit edition of their next consumer OS.
The server versions will be64-bit only though, as the article says.