x64 and x86 Question

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Recently I purchased an AMD 64 Bit Processor in my new system, on the box for the processor it says its backwards compatable with 32 bit.

So if I installed Windows XP Pro x64 on this, would i be able to run 32 bit applications inside XP pro x64?
 
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Steve Watford said:
Recently I purchased an AMD 64 Bit Processor in my new system, on the box for the processor it says its backwards compatable with 32 bit.

So if I installed Windows XP Pro x64 on this, would i be able to run 32 bit applications inside XP pro x64?

Yep

I have done for about a year now

A few applications don't work on XP x64 - Alcohol (use Daemon tools instead), MS Virtual PC 2004 (use VMWare instead) and a few old DOS and Win 3.1 programs spring to mind. I don't think games with Starforce copy protection work either

Everything else works perfectly though. I can play all of the current games and software and most of this is 32-bit. Windows x64 just seems a bit quicker

If you can find the drivers then I'd use it personally :)
 
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Thats what worries me, drivers, I heard bad thigns about the beta x64 drivers most of my hardware needs. I'll check aroudn see if there stable enough anyway, im thinknig of going full x64 Pro system next week, just going to get EVERYTHING i need, incase my internet shuts off while im doing it.
 
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Steve Watford said:
But Programs Can/ If so, can anyone explain why this is? is it because the x64 kernel is different from the x32 kernel? (NT and 2003)

32bit applications dont run natively, they run using what is basically a pretty form of emulation.
 
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If the drivers exist for your hardware you won't have "any problems" with them per say.
However the fact they are immature and only (at the moment) get updated with half the regularity that 32bit drivers seem to - any performance gain from moving to 64bit is quickly negated with lower driver performance.

X64 Windows was released to keep the AMD crowd happy as they had a 64bit CPU and no OS to run on it (except Linux).
Once Vista becomes mainstream, that'll be the time to make the move to 64bit Windows.
 
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ajgoodfellow said:
I haven't had any problems with the drivers I'm using on my current setup:

AMD Opteron 146
ASUS SK8V Motherboard (Via K8T800 chipset)
PowerColor Radeon X800Pro 256MB DDR3 graphics card

Using on board LAN and sound

Are you using 64Bit XP?
Are you running x64 or x32 Drivers?
 
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