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Windows XP 64-bit edition?
- Thread starter Asazman
- Start date
I could be wrong but I was under the impression the version out right now is for the Itanium only. It will not work on the Athlon 64. I am not positvie on this though. However if this is the case then you most likely will only see it bundled with a new itanium machine.
BillLeeLee
[H]F Junkie
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- Jul 2, 2003
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Last I heard, yeah, you can only get it with Itanium workstations. Microsoft is still prepping the 64-bit version for athlon 64/fx systems.
that windows is the (semi) ia64 version. It will only run on itaniums, and even if you had one of those it is not designed with people who want to game, play mp3s and browse the web in mind. If you want to run a fully 64 bit os, get an a64 and try linux
There's two released versions of XP for 64bit systems:
Windows XP - 64bit edition
- released at the same time as regular XP
- same code base as regular XP
- runs on Itanium 1 only
Windows XP 2003 - 64bit edition
- released at the same time as Windows Server 2003
- from the same code base, as Windows Server 2003
- runs on Itanium 1 or 2
There's also been a press release from September saying that a beta had been released that supports the AMD64 chips. The final version was said to be sometime in the first half of 2004. While I don't know that the press release explicitly stated it, the AMD64 version should work on Athlon64, FX, and Opteron processors (at least from my experience).
The link mentioned is public, so I'll just copy it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/64bit/extended/trial/default.mspx
It is for AMD64 systems, despite any statement to the contrary. Even though the AMD64 version of XP is based off the win2k3 sources, I'm not sure XP is available though that download program, it may be limited to server versions of the OS. If you check it out and there's no XP, I might still be able to get a beta nomination into the system (not positive though).
Originally posted by cloaked
that windows is the (semi) ia64 version. It will only run on itaniums, and even if you had one of those it is not designed with people who want to game, play mp3s and browse the web in mind. If you want to run a fully 64 bit os, get an a64 and try linux
I assure you, as far as native code goes, you can't have semi IA64 versions. The architecture and instructions are different. An executable compiled for x86 can't natively run on IA64, and an IA64 executable can't run on x86 natively.
You are quite right that while the IA64 Windows OSes have emulators\translators\thunking layers that allow 32bit x86 applications to run, you wouldn't buy an Itanium to run 32bit applications. Itaniums can scale out pretty well for big jobs using 64bit apps though.
As for AMD64, 32bit applications can run natively within a 64bit OS, though a thunking layer is still required to translate APIs to the 64bit versions. I haven't tried running any games on the AMD64 systems here at work (using a 32bit or 64bit OS), but all the 32bit apps I have tried seem to work fine (except winamp).
I am running an Athlon 64 on a 32-bit OS (WinXP) with 32-bit games and programs, and I have had absolutely no problems doing that. There is a 64-bit version of Windows 2003 Server for Itanium. There is also a beta 64-bit version of Windows 2003 Server for the Athlon 64 family of processors, including (and especially) the Opteron, and you can download that for free, by joining the beta program.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/64bit/extended/trial/default.mspx
However, you will only be able to find Nvidia drivers for this operating system, and I have no idea how well the Server OS handles games, including whether or not it even allows you to install the latest DirectX API.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/64bit/extended/trial/default.mspx
However, you will only be able to find Nvidia drivers for this operating system, and I have no idea how well the Server OS handles games, including whether or not it even allows you to install the latest DirectX API.
yes i realize they are two entirely different isas, i was just saying i think that not all of the miscellaneous drivers were made to run in 64 bit, that they would be in slow 32 bit cpu microcode (or maybe just api proccessed) emulation. Or maybe this was apple who only ported the complex math functions and such libraries to run 64 bit for the g5.
On the 64bit versions of Windows, there is no way to run any 32bit drivers. This is why you'll see separate drivers posted for the alternate architectures.
For example, if you look here: http://nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
You'll see that the AMD64 versions are listed separately from the regular versions.
In WoW64 (Windows on Windows 64bit), one of the things in play is a thunking layer. Since all the Windows APIs are native AMD64 in the AMD64 version of Windows, the thunking layer is what does the translation. When executable runs, other modules are loaded that contain the APIs that the OS provides. When a 64bit process in run on an AMD64 Windows install, these modules are naturally the built in API provided by the OS. When a 32bit executable is run on the same OS, the modules are wrappers, which then call into the 64bit native versions. Thus, to the running executable, the API's appear identical to the versions it was built against. Each API in the thunking layer simply passes the call off to the equivalent 64bit API, so the OS only has to provide native AMD64 APIs, along with this translation layer.
The exact same thing exists on IA64 versions of Windows. Of course, for IA64, there are also some other important elements since the CPU can't actually execute x86 binaries natively.
What's more, the some of the same things happen in x86 versions of Windows to allow the running of old 16bit apps.
Of course, there's more to an OS than just the system APIs. The 64bit versions of Windows contain native and x86 versions of most of the programs normally used. Some of the full applications are ported over to 64bit, so there are two versions of Internet Explorer and Outlook Express for instance. As for OS tools and utilities, there are two versions of each. The reason for this is to ensure that any 32bit applications depending on the windows tools\commands will still function. For example, a 32 bit application using a COM object would have to use the 32bit version of said object. Apps that make calls to a command interpreter also require these older 32bit versions of tools and utilities.
Some of the other things that WoW does is change environment variables and other various translations.
As a few example, I just started up a native 64bit command prompt and an x86 command prompt. A few variables differ:
Code:
AMD64 command prompt:
%programfiles%=d:\Program Files
%processor_architecture%=AMD64
x86 command prompt:
%programfiles%=d:\Program Files (x86)
%processor_architecture%=x86Second, when running from an 32bit process, some environment vars like the architecture are changed as part of the emulation. A 32bit app that is aware of 64bit system can easily check what it's running on, but if it's an older app (or a newer one that only expects x86) it won't know the difference.
One last thing, even the registry is changes slightly so that non-native apps have their own area, separated from normal native apps (AMD64 in this case).
By now I've probably made it clear that the AMD64 version of the OS is, in fact, truly a 64bit OS
. It's probably also clear that WoW64 is just that, a fairly complete version of Windows-32bit built on top of Windows-64bit. Keep in mind though, that there are some drawbacks to having a 64bit system at this time. To list a couple......32bit applications which install their own drivers are not likely to work at this time (which I suspect is what breaks winamp, but that's just a guess on my part). It might be possible to just include alternate drivers, though most vendors will just make a native version.
...additionally, as you might guess, including almsot two OSes in one consumes a fair amount of disk space. The beta of AMD64 enterprise server consumed ~1.5G with the options I used (being specific info about a beta product, keep in mind that it may change before the final release). With average drive sizes nowadays though, that amount isn't a big issue.
Lastly, I don't want to give IA64 a bad rap. It's excellent at what it was designed to do, and can scale out to very powerful systems. I just know that I'm not going to buy one to run my games
.With that A64 Mobile out there, I was wondering if 64bit was ready yet. I have known since the get-go that the A64 would be out before the software but thats the price to pay of early adaptation.
Its still one screaming 32bit proc and Ill be happy with that.
Im suprised about the driver situation tho ... that worries me. For some reason, I presumed that it would be designed such that win32 drivers would work. There needs to be some emulation layer for at least SOME drivers! I mean, emu on a video card driver or sound driver or EIDE controler driver would be messy.
But printer driver? Id hope that would work okay.
...
Another reason why companies need to offer source to older products' drivers.
Its still one screaming 32bit proc and Ill be happy with that.
Im suprised about the driver situation tho ... that worries me. For some reason, I presumed that it would be designed such that win32 drivers would work. There needs to be some emulation layer for at least SOME drivers! I mean, emu on a video card driver or sound driver or EIDE controler driver would be messy.
But printer driver? Id hope that would work okay.
...
Another reason why companies need to offer source to older products' drivers.
Well, I've never had to write and drivers, and only rarely use tools from the DDK, so I'm not sure if some drivers can run on top of WoW or not. My guess is no, since WoW normally occurs on a process level...
Here is the exact quote as available on the beta site already linked to:
32-bit kernel-mode drivers will not function properly on 64-bit Windows Server 2003. We anticipate many applications that fall into this category (for example, anti-virus solutions and hardware drivers) will provide 64-bit versions before the final version of Windows Server 2003 for 64-Bit Extended Systems is released.