64 Bit windows Beta

[Mattica]

Anyone have the 64 Bit windows beta on a disk? I downloaded it from Windows.com but I can't boot from it.

[Sami]

If anyone is using it, how well does it work? Any improvement in speed? I have Athlon 64 but I haven't had the guts to try Win64 yet.

[Mattica]

Sami - I"m going to email MS today to see if they can mail me a hard copy. I'll let you know when I get it if they send me one.

[AbecX]

Yes, it is a LARGE performance increase, boot times are pretty much instanteous.

[Sami]

Yes, it is a LARGE performance increase, boot times are pretty much instanteous.
Any experience/reviews on how well it runs? If reliability is decent then I will definately give it a try.

I will try to download it from MS tonight and if I get it to boot, I will pass you a copy Mattica.

[AbecX]

Its fine, its just as stable as regular, its just blazing fast booting up.

[Sami]

Ok, got it downloaded. Clean install, upgrade or dual boot? I would hate to do clean install again but I guess that's the way to go.

[Mattica]

i would reccomend a dual boot....how did you get it to work?!?!?

[Mattica]

AbecX do you have a copy of it?

[AbecX]

its freely downloadable from them. My copy is works copy.

[Mattica]

hmm....it says that it should be downloaded as an .iso file, but i got a setup file that says needs to be booted through a CD

[Mattica]

sami did you download it and then run it directly from the setup file?

[Sami]

Writing this from Win XP64 right now. Save the ISO and burn it to CD with Nero, then reboot the computer. It starts the install. You should have received e-mai from MS with serial number for it.

Make sure your BIOS is setup to boot from CD-ROM first.

Seems faster than XP but I will have to play with the settings first and run some benchmarks. I just received 6600GT in the mail today, I have to run the benchmarks against my 9800Pro/XT as well so kiss goodbye to the movie night I was planning...

[Mattica]

sami, they didn't send me an iso file....they sent me a series of folders and a setup file.......any chance you can let me borrow the CD, via mail or something?

[Sami]

To quote Rentboy (from Trainspotting)..."it's good....oooooh, it's f#$king good". I haven't ran any through tests but I can tell this OS is making things run faster. I will try some DVD ripping and 3D benchmarks and I will get back to you.

[Sami]

sami, they didn't send me an iso file....they sent me a series of folders and a setup file.......any chance you can let me borrow the CD, via mail or something?
Sure, PM me. I would try this one first though:

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

[Mattica]

i'm going to redownload it, and see if that works, the link you sent didn't work

[Sami]

It's going to ask you to register and then lets you download the ISO. Did you get the serial by e-mail?

[Mattica]

yeah, I have everything....this appears to be an iso file this time....

[Mattica]

which one did you end up doing? dual boot? full install? upgrade?

[Sami]

which one did you end up doing? dual boot? full install? upgrade?
Dual boot. Sucks to install all of the software again but I don't have to worry about the license expiring when I have the 32-bit running on separate HD.

[Mattica]

sami, i downloaded the file again...is there a setting in nero that i'm missing or something......i restart the computer with the CD in and nothing happens...it go's straight to windows....i have boot from CD selected first....not sure what else to do

[Sami]

Maybe your CD drive isn't reading it right. Have you tried if your copy of XP boots up from that drive?

First results of 3DMark are in, looks like 32-bit is faster in 32-bit 3D...

3DMark05, version 1.2.0:
WinXP x64, NVidia 6600GT AGP 128MB, stock settings (not OC'd), score: 2876
WinXP 32b, NVidia 6600GT AGP 128MB, stock settings (not OC'd), score: 2985

I might have to tweak the Windows settings on x64 side, the 32b is quite tweaked.

[Mattica]

well...i'm giving up....i've tried everything I can think of....and it still boots straight in to windows.....

[Sami]

well...i'm giving up....i've tried everything I can think of....and it still boots straight in to windows.....
I can copy you the disc so we can see if it is that. Where do you live? I can put it in the mail if you're not close.

[Rafa]

I just DL & installed it on one of my parti. It boots pretty fast/ but to me it's about the same as reg XP b4 all the SP updates. I could be wrong.

[Sami]

It's not any faster, it looks actually to be a little slower than the 32bit.

DVD rip, Saving Private Ryan with DTS & DD tracks, the whole movie shrinked to 4.3GB.

x64: 21min10s
32b: 20min53s

We will have to wait for the 64bit software to come out.

[Mattica]

I finally got it working....I'm dumb....wasn't copying as an image, rather a data disk...whoops :D. Not only did it take longer to install, but it seems about the same as far as speed. 3dMark is the same, etc. I did find one cool thing though. Nvidia has released their 64 bit nforce 3 drivers, and geforce drivers, so all of the main chipset, audio, gfx, etc are 64 bit.

[AbecX]

Sami, you do realize that application is not going to run any faster just because you are using a 64bit OS? I highly doubt that ripping software was written for 64bit processing and its not even pushing the cpu much anyway as it is mainly just doing a copy from the dvdrom ( fyi it takes about 20-30 minutes to copy 4gb of data from a dvd to a computer using a 4x dvd reader ). Unfortunatly there is not many applications in Windows that are 64bit to get a good benchmark, at least none that I am aware of.

Comparing boot speeds, the 64bit for me was just stupid fast.

[Sami]

I know (I should, I'm a SW Engineer :)), that's why I said we'll have to wait for the 64bit software to come out. DVD ripping takes a little bit of CPU as I was compressing that 8GB movie to 4.3GB. 3DMark05 favoured 32bit by a large margin. Might have been NVidia's drivers as I installed the WinXP drivers on 32bit and the x64 specific on x64.

I was just running the tests to see how it compares to the 32bit. Some of the internal OS routines could have been different and make it run faster (or slower). Knowing MS this could be just WinXP compiled with 64bit compiler... ;)

I am going back to 32bit as some of the programs don't run in x64. Most importantly Nero as it is doing a check for 64bit OS and recommends their enterprise edition to be installed. Not that I couldn't live without it, DVD backups are burned by DVD Decrypter now and I have already backed up all my CD's and could find a different freeware software to do that in the future. Once 64 bit software hits the market then I will make the switch. I just hope by then games are starting to emerge for Linux so I can ditch Windows totally from my home network.

[Sami]

DVD rip, Saving Private Ryan with DTS & DD tracks, the whole movie shrinked to 4.3GB.

x64: 21min10s
32b: 20min53s
Just for comparison, P4 3.4GHz with similar equipment (same DVD burner):

18min09s

That's almost 3 minute difference, 15%. :eek:

Very similar numbers on 3DMark05, this P4 is with 6600GT PCI-e card. Athlon 64 3200+ was the other machine.

[Sami]

3DMark05, version 1.2.0:
WinXP x64, NVidia 6600GT AGP 128MB, stock settings (not OC'd), score: 2876
WinXP 32b, NVidia 6600GT AGP 128MB, stock settings (not OC'd), score: 2985
Actually not. With stock video card settings the P4 system scored 3536 so there is quite a lot of difference there. I think I might be keeping this P4 for myself... :D

[01WhiteCobra]

It's not any faster, it looks actually to be a little slower than the 32bit.

DVD rip, Saving Private Ryan with DTS & DD tracks, the whole movie shrinked to 4.3GB.

x64: 21min10s
32b: 20min53s

We will have to wait for the 64bit software to come out.

Your bottleneck will still be the DVD player.

[Sami]

Your bottleneck will still be the DVD player.
Might be but video decoding still requires a lot of processor power. 15% off from the ripping process is a lot. I guess the difference wouldn't be that much if I wasn't compressing (which I usually don't do).