Windows XP 64-bit Coming End of April

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119878,tk,dn030305X,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119878,tk,dn030305X,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Microsoft plans to release the delayed "x64" versions of Windows Server and Windows XP at the end of April, a company spokesperson says. General availability of the 64-bit products could be announced at Microsoft's annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), scheduled to begin April 25 in Seattle. Microsoft will have 64-bit news at the event, the spokesperson says. Until now, Microsoft had said the products would ship in the first half of 2005. The products were delayed last year from an end-of 2004 delivery target."</i><br /><br />64 bit Windows is finally coming - and not a moment too soon, as I'm running a 64-bit AMD processor on my Media Center PC. The article doesn't make any mention of when the Media Center version, but I imagine that will come later. I'm curious how the pricing will work as well - will Microsoft expect us to shell out for a full-priced copy? Or will there be some sort of 32-bit to 64-bit upgrade option? The advantage of having a 64-bit OS, as I understand it, is that the OS can feed double the number of instructions to the CPU, resulting in faster overall execution. Where things will really start to change for the better is when we get 64-bit versions of our digital media applications - Photoshop, Premiere, Windows Media Encoder, etc.

[ianbjor]

The advantage of having a 64-bit OS, as I understand it, is that the OS can feed double the number of instructions to the CPU, resulting in faster overall execution.

Not quite. 64-bit allows for processes to address more memory. There might be some small performance improvement because 64-bit math had to be emulated on 32-bit processors, but otherwise there's no inherent performance advantage to 64-bit.

That is not to say that Intel/AMD have not added other performance-enhancing features to their x86_64 CPUs, but that is a separate issue.

[Jason Dunn]

I'm definitely not an expert, but my understanding was that 64-bit instruction execution would have significant speed increases with certain types of applications. Here's an article that talks about it:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2090247/

"Second, on a 32-bit machine, numbers that run longer than 32 bits (for example, fussy values of pi) require lots of juggling in order to perform calculations. That slows down computer-aided engineering and animation, corporate data mining, and other number-crunching applications. It adds bugs, too, as these overlong numbers are shuffled among registers. Upping the register size to 64 bits is like widening the freeway, which is why high-end servers and professional graphics workstations moved to 64-bit processors years ago...For video, doubling the CPU's word size means the billions of bits in a movie can be encoded and decoded more efficiently, enabling higher resolutions and faster editing."

[mcsouth]

I'm curious how the pricing will work as well - will Microsoft expect us to shell out for a full-priced copy? Or will there be some sort of 32-bit to 64-bit upgrade option?

According to what I've been reading over at Extremetech and ArsTechnica, Microsoft will be allowing people to "swap" their 32 bit version of Win XP for a 64 bit version - you will use the same registration key that you have now, but MS will disable that key for use on the 32 bit version. I'm not sure, but I think I may have seen that you need to mail your 32 bit install CD in as well, although I'm not sure how that would work for folks who bought a bigbox PC - I think most manufacturers end up creating a custom Win install CD, right?

I understood that most "Restore CD's" only worked with that brand PC - custom drivers, etc. I would think that things would start getting complicated when you bring the PC makers into the mix - will they offer the upgrade? I can't say that I've seen any mention of this on either of those two sites......

[yada88]

I also read that the 64 bit version upgrade will be free, although I heard nothing about having to physically send in a Cd. Sounds fabricated.

Jeff

[Crocuta]

I'm definitely not an expert, but my understanding was that 64-bit instruction execution would have significant speed increases with certain types of applications. Here's an article that talks about it:

Mathematicians, engineers, animators... yeah, I see how they might deal with numbers larger than 32 bits. But how often would that really be an issue for regular people like us? Don't get me wrong, things will keep growing and getting faster; they always do with computers. And we always find uses for the greater capacity. But I find it hard to get excited about this right now when my processor isn't even close to being the limiting factor in my system. My bus speed (still PCI) and hard drive (still PATA) help ensure that my CPU is never the thing holding me up. Even in a system with the newer technologies in those two areas, I imagine that there will only be a few applications where the 64 bit instructions could make a difference.

[Filip Norrgard]

Mathematicians, engineers, animators... yeah, I see how they might deal with numbers larger than 32 bits. But how often would that really be an issue for regular people like us? Don't get me wrong, things will keep growing and getting faster; they always do with computers. And we always find uses for the greater capacity. But I find it hard to get excited about this right now when my processor isn't even close to being the limiting factor in my system. My bus speed (still PCI) and hard drive (still PATA) help ensure that my CPU is never the thing holding me up. Even in a system with the newer technologies in those two areas, I imagine that there will only be a few applications where the 64 bit instructions could make a difference.
Probably most things you do everyday will get slightly faster. Photoshop, Windows Media, iTunes, anti-virus software, watching digital TV, calculation sheets in Excel, and so on. Most software are always utilizing some sort of calculations, thus the more calculations required by the program, the faster it will seem to be running on 64-bit processors and OSs. People have also been reporting that e.g. Photoshop works much faster in Windows 64-bit than old 32-bit version, although the program itself isn't truely 64-bit yet. So, the future looks promising... ;)