64-bit Blues (problems in general)

[Cyrus Dragonas]

Are all 64-bit processors so unreliable? I bought Windows XP Pro 64-bit edition, and it seems so insanely unstable. I get a crash within 15 minutes if I do anything other then, you know, just stare at it. Am I doing something wrong? They couldn't seriously sell this like THIS, something must be wrong. Anyone here with OS X that could give me some insight into whether or not that works okay with this processor? NOW my computer won't even boot into XP; it just loads until after the Welcome screen, goes black, and continues to taunt me with its not working-ness.

Cyrus

 

[Tedster]

there is no real need to go 64 with your OS. Most software is designed for 32 bits. Your crashes can be atrributed to a variety of things, ram, drivers, psu, overheating.

 

[Cyrus Dragonas]

But then I won't get the extra functionality of the 64-bit processor, will I?

Cyrus

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

LOL a 64-bit OS only means that the OS doesn't have limitations of RAM configs that exceed 4GB, among other things. Windows XP 32-bit will recognize only upto 3GB of RAM, even if you have more than that. That won't happen with XP 64-bit. But XP 64-bit has a lot of issues, as you've most likely found out. A program will run just as well on a 32-bit OS running on a 64-bit CPU. Install XP 32-bit and get over with it.

 

[nickc]

Rage, that is not true as this machine I am posting this from is a new build and has not been posted in my sing. but has one of the fist builds of XP and I have 4GIGs of ram and windows is showing that I have 3.5GIGs installed and assume since windows is showing it, it is using that much.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Well, the actual amount of RAM may vary from 2.75GB to 3.5GB, but not beyond that. So some of your RAM is still wasted. Windows XP 64-bit and Vista 64-bit do not have these limitations, but they're not very stable, since programming for 64-bit OSes is still in a relatively early stage. Even so, most programs nowadays do come in 64-bit versions as well. But if the OS is not stable, what's the point?

 

[Tedster]

It's a trade off. In reality, you won't see much of a difference with the usage of a 64 bit processor except for some high end computational software like auto-cad, video-editing, and the like.

Most driver support for 64 bit is limited and there are few widely distributed softwares that take advantage of it. The good news is that most of the 64 OSes can step down to run 32bit software, but there will be glitches and errors.

I am not familiar with OS X, and just somewhat familiar with win 64. What I will say, see what you can do with it. If you can't, you may just have to stick with XP 32bit.

 

[Cyrus Dragonas]

I agree. I did realize that a big plus of 64bit was the 4gig (3.5) standard. I think the trade off may be worth it, although I've actually found a few problems with VBasic code compiling correctly, (may just be my setup) and when stepping down to 32 bit programs, it still compiles double the lines of code, just fills them either with a copy of the previous strings, or leaves them empty. Not to complain, but I thought it could be handled better then that. Yeah, 64bit is pretty new, and I understand that its still in the works kind of; But I think I need a little more crunching, due to massive computation requirements for Lightwave 9.2. Actually, after a few uninstalls, formats, resizing of the partitions on the drive, it actually seems realitively stable; don't get me wrong, it still crashes every now and again, but its less frequent then before.

Thanks for your input guys,

Cyrus