64Bit OS from Windows is anyone trying this out?

[Papa Smurf]

Hello all i will be buying me last few bits to build me new putter in 2 weeks and i was thinking of using the new beta version of longhorn the first true 64 bit OS, is any one here using it?

http://www.amd.com/us-en/0,,3715_10707,00.html?redir=CPXP13

the download for the OS is here

https://microsoft.order-9.com/winxp64/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=MSTrialandEval&category%5Fname=winxp64&product%5Fid=winxp64&id=dl

I guess my question is the obvious one to any one that is using this, whats it like?

I am fairly sure ill give it a blast, but will not OC till i know its running well (planning to run that little sucker at over 5gig if it stays stable)
It removes the pointless 1GIG of RAM constrait, which i like, and will be great for gaming for that reason hummmm my MSI K8N SLI Platinum can take 4 gig

[00025]

I tried longhorn build 4074, looks good but I really didnt find any use for the other stuff like the sidebars and whatnots, just takes up resources. If I want a good looking OS, I already have Gentoo running on KDE so there's no point in using longhorn.

[mOle]

i dont think your games will be able to use 4gigs of RAM

you could play l like 5 games at once.. but that would be pointless

[Psy]

dont think your games will be able to use 4gigs of RAM

ram disk anyone? :D

[Papa Smurf]

emmmm if i played 5 games at once i think the cpu would disconnect itself jump out and strangle me.

the point of ram is that in theory you could just load the whole game into ram and have it run from there, rather than having bit fed out from your HHD, thus reducing lag as this is a common area for lag to occur, virtually no seek time less transmission time. Also because the CPU is not having to transfer large amounts of data across the buses it has a lot less work that it has to do, and thus more POWA avalable to your game. Basically its good thing the current 1G constraint is a little backward.

but back to topic, man is this a piece of work, eeeeeeeeeeek, crashes about every thirty seconds (well maybe minutes), can not get anything to run, it will not recognise alot of my hardware (the generic drivers you create on formating are there but for some reason some will not work), holy crap its been a nightmare i have had to install XP now just to make sure i aint broken everything or anything, once thats done ill format and try again, maybe i have missed something, i can not find a read me file either which is very annoying, and have to refer constantly to the web. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

[LardGibs]

I don't know for sure, but I think the game would need the 64 bit memory address support coded into it.

that said as soon as the dual core amd chips are cheap I'm building a new box and getting made current, and I'm sure I'll have xp 64 on it.
The current constraint is 4gig not 1gig depending on how the north bridge is designed, and if the board has enough sockets.
32 bit address space=4 gigs of memory maximum
64 bit address space=a lot.

I'm sure there are some windows inefficiencies but there's little to stop you from having a 4gig 32 bit setup if you buy the right motherboard (server board)

If you want to run from ram, buy a SCSI ramdrive they're bbqpwn.

[Shackled Phoenix]

And where would one find that lard?

[Papa Smurf]

well you could buy a SCSI drive, but its a bit of a waste of money, S-ATA raptor drives have similar seek times and are a fracton of the cost.

You are talking hardware constraints problem is not the hardware its the software, XP only utilises 1G of ram not matter how much you have in there, this is what i have always understood, however someone correct me if i am wrong.

[LardGibs]

SCSI RAMdrive

RAM

as in

RAM

http://www.cenatek.com/product_rocketdrive.cfm

[Morpheus]

So, you'd have to load your harddrive in it after every boot?

Besides, from what I've seen, most games try to load everything they need to run in RAM before starting a game - look at DoW load times. In order to make RAMdrives actually benefit the games, games would have to treat it as RAM, not as a drive, and then load everything in it.

[LardGibs]

Completely incorrect.

OS pages memory to disk whether you want it to or not. In windows you can disable virtual memory but it's not that easy and somewhat foolish.

What the ramdrive does is emulate a hard disk but with about 1/10 the latency. It can be battery backed up so that it is a hard disk in all but name.

[Morpheus]

So, you would use this only for memory paging.

The point is that a game does not access harddrive directly, because it loads all the necessary data into memory, if it fits. If it doesn't, then it goes into virtual memory. When I play DoW, the harddrive is only accessed when I try to switch my view to a different point of the map. In hw2, harddrive is amlost never accessed after the initial load. So, I think more RAM is a better option than using RAMdrive for virtual memory.

Edit : alhough using a combination of both should provide some kick ass results.

[mOle]

emmmm if i played 5 games at once i think the cpu would disconnect itself jump out and strangle me.

the point of ram is that in theory you could just load the whole game into ram and have it run from there, rather than having bit fed out from your HHD, thus reducing lag as this is a common area for lag to occur, virtually no seek time less transmission time. Also because the CPU is not having to transfer large amounts of data across the buses it has a lot less work that it has to do, and thus more POWA avalable to your game. Basically its good thing the current 1G constraint is a little backward.

look missy.. i know... but the game cant run enough from the RAM with 1gig before the CPU have gotten the HD to send over more 01010's to the RAM

and i dont know what CPU you have... but my 2,8ghz is far enough to do all this crap at once... i got 512mb RAM and its working great :P

[Polaris]

and i thought i was happy that my 1.67GHz 2000+ out does 2.2GHz P4's?
i cant wait untill i get the necesary funds for my next upgrade: Athlon 64 3200+ and a gig of hyperX ram, dual channeled

[mOle]

bah... fuck RAM... SLI vid cards.... <3

[Lt_Omega]

I cannot live without Hyper Threading right now.

There's always an irc session, and a bunch of torrents running with 5 firefox tabs loading at any given time (gotta love that middle mouse click which opens new tabs).

I heard the next dual core chips by Intel could also have HT. So that would mean heaven for heavy multi-taskers out there. I was just wondering what the advantages of 64 bit are right now?

[FluxX]

:shakes head in shame:

1) PApa Smurf. The OS is percifically for 64bit chips. If you don't have one, I guess its not reccomended to install it :P . Also, there are not many drivers for the os yet, as it is so new (just out of beta). So your crashes are probably due to having no drivers for your hardware yet. Once these are made, you will get a large (not quite twice) speed boost to your pc :) . But only for software written for 64 bit processors (I guess its the same as dual cpu systems, and most programs only supporting 1 cpu). Although I may be wrong on that one...

2) Morph. I would have thought a ram drive on the last 2 or 3 GB would be very good. As, you will get even less HDD access than in your example ;) . The game/windows does not cache everything to RAM does it? Plus level load times ect could be greatly reduced with RAM drives...

[Papa Smurf]

please sort yourself out i have a 3.2 90nm AMD 64bit I was going to do FX55 (as to OC it i only had to alter the top multiplir as it is not locked), but as this is my first time seriously OC'ing a socket 939 chip i though it prudent to stick to the cheap option at the moment, it is currently clocked to about 4gig maybe a little less, i am none to hot at working out AMD speeds. Its duel boot so i have XP and this 64 bit OS on there, the problem with OC'ing a 64 bit system as addy pointed out to me just in time, is that timing are the most important thing with RAM in a AMD 64 system. As this runs through the PCI bus it will alter the timings? (thats a educated guess) and so it unsuitable for me.

Mole i run very heavy CPU programs (Q-base for one) so its helpful for me to push my CPU extremally hard. I have serveral comps one is a 2.4 semparon on a NF7, clocked to about 3gig never really look too hard at what it runs at, this is my GF's computer now, i also have a 2.8 athlon on a gigabite GA7, its ok clocked to about 3.2 (this is my main gaming PC atm) very stable never crashes, and i have a 3.2 64bit AMD on a MSI K8N platnium clocked to about 3.9 with an Asetek waterchill system in it, which is my project PC (ie i made it because i wanted too) and will ultimatly be used to make music on, waaaaah 4gig of powa thats got to be 50+ channels

[mOle]

you done bragging about your PC's?

[Morpheus]

Fluxx, 64 bit processors will run 32 bit application faster than 32 bit processors. The boost however is small compared to converting applications to 64 bit.

And the load times : for singleplayer, maybe. What good does it do to you if you load in 10 seconds and then have to wait another minute for others to finish? Unless everyone gets them.... But for virtual memory - a very good idea. I'll even try it on my next pc, whenever that is going to happen...