damn, ya beat me... DEC Alpha running MicroVMS not only kicks azzz but it's bullet proof tooo!!! writting FORTRAN routines for the Alpha was 75% of what i did back in the 80's... i never thought of picking one up for home though, hhhmmmmmm...
Posted on 04/25/2005 7:47:12 AM PDT by 1FASTGLOCK45
If any OS can have twice as many bugs from running 64 bit than 32 bit, then Microsoft can do it! :-)
64-bit OSes are a necessity for server operating systems which may well have a need for an address space greater than 32 bits. For most desktop and home uses there is not yet any great need for more than 4GB of memory, not does the larger word size yield any great improvements in the power of the systems. In fact, 64 bit chips can be less efficient and may produce more heat due to all the extra address lines used internally. However, as Intel and AMD switch over to producing all 64-bit chips we can expect the operating systems to follow eventually, but I don't think most average users will see any real improvements related to the switch to 64-bit processing itself, although of course the chips themselves will continue to increase in speed. Eventually as costs continue to fall and software continues to bloat most users probably will be using systems with more than 4GB of memory. The next MS IE will probably have a memory footprint of 1 GB all on its own (only partially kidding).
One of the neat things coming is a screen the thickness of card stock that can be rolled up inside a tube (see "Red Planet" with Val Kilmer for a glance) and virtual keyboards that sense where your fingers touch on any flat surface. Your entire PC could be the size of cigar tube and a pack of cards.
The Blue Screen of Death will come up in half the time as it did before with the 32-bit version.
So he ends up burning them to CD and mailing it to me, and when it arrives, sure enough - he's got a pair of .doc files on the disk, at 18.2 MB apiece. Two files - ONE PAGE EACH. Jeeeezus, I know Office is bloated, but c'mon. After some prying, I finally figured out what was going on. Turns out that he'd embedded a picture that he took with his digital camera into each file. Said picture being a 3000x2000 uncompressed TIFF image, which he simply resized to fit the page. ;)
There is that.
Microsoft is actually the LAST mainstream provider of operating systems to hit 64bits.
- Apple's 10.3 had some 64-bitness and Tiger has more of the system running in 64bit mode.
- Sun's Solaris OS has been 64bit for many years and runs in 64bit mode on Opterons.
- Linux has been 64bit for many years and runs in 64bit mode on Opterons as well.
My Alpha (bought surplus for $25 several years ago after it had been retired by a university) laughs at your puny list of 64-bit newcomers.
There is a performance hit on running 32-bit apps on a 64-bit OS as it has to run in Compatibility Mode. Running in Long Mode or full on 64-bit mode would not have this hit.
NVidia and ATI have stepped up and released full on optimized drivers for graphics apps. The Linux community has already been optimizing apps and OS's for 64-bit registers. MS is a bit behind, but the release of XP-64 is a step in the right direction.
Releasing Longhorn, optimized for 64-bit and multi-core, will be the biggest thing to hit the computing desktop since Win95. Assuming they avoid their usual practice of code bloat.
Either way, AMD rocks.
Powerpoint files just get HUGE if unless care is taken to reduce the size of bimap images. :)
I understand that this is a big deal for Microsoft. Its not as important so much on the end-user side, but if MS SQL Server really wants to compete with the other database vendors they need to be able to address more than 4 gigabytes.
damn, ya beat me... DEC Alpha running MicroVMS not only kicks azzz but it's bullet proof tooo!!! writting FORTRAN routines for the Alpha was 75% of what i did back in the 80's... i never thought of picking one up for home though, hhhmmmmmm...
The world went through the same discussions and confusions 10 years ago when we went from 16-bit to 32. And I've got a dollar the same thing happens 10 years from now when we go to 128.
LOL
Game players are buying AMD 64s because right now, AMD is faster on games. Intel is faster on some important professional apps. For ordinary users it's a toss-up.
But if I wanted a computer that will be ready for the world three years from now, I'd go with the AMD 64. Not more expensive than Intel. Among other things, 64 bit chips have built in protection against overflow errors that are the gateway for a lot of viruses.
There's a sad thought...
MS had a 64bit version of W2K out 4 or 5 years ago. But I guess that wouldn't qualify as a desktop o/s.
DEC Alpha running MicroVMS not only kicks azzz but it's bullet proof tooo!!!writting FORTRAN routines for the Alpha was 75% of what i did back in the 80's...
Two minor quibbles:
True, but that's not because of the 64-bit goodness, though - I don't know of any 64-bit PC games yet.
I guess we'll see... I know the next version of Unreal is supposed to be a massive jump in graphics and physics. Optimizing for dual-core/64-bit could go a long way towards making it a hit.
must be my bad then cause i thought that was what the MicroVAX's had as a chipset... what were they using then??? i had a MicroVAX under my desk in 1988 and that's all i wrote in was FORTRAN for process control.
sometimes i think i need a faster chip... 8^)
I'm just putting in a plug for AMD. They pretty much set the standard for 64 bit extensions. (I'm old enough to remember 8 bit chips with 16 bit extensions.)
Microsoft wrote XP64 for the AMD extensions, and Intel was forced to accept them.
AMD 64 and AMD dual core have been designed from the ground up to work with future programs and operating systems without paying a penalty in price or performance for today's software.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.