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Hey,
I'm expecting a new PC today. Guess what, my courier had installed Windows Vista on it. I have love in command line and old skool programs and I dislike the fancey 3D shiny desktops etc., no need to say that 65% programs aren't running properly in vista, plus games are having bigger system requirements (remember the Windows's installations?: "This version of Windows will make your PC run more faster"... yeah right. ) -> So I'm planning to de-Vista the PC , repartition the harddisk of my own and to install the good ol' XP. As I've mentioned I like older applications and the CPU in the new PC is dualcore amd athlon 64bit... Would it have negative impact on speed and performance if I would install the 32bit version? Or it would run much better if I would install the 64bit one? for example STALKER or Crysis... But what about the legacy applications? I just can't say goodbye to them (I know XP x64 has MS-BOSS emulation like XP 32, but some applications aren't running in x64). Of course if the games would run better in 64bit version , I would install that.

What's your advice?
Regards
inflater

AFAIK 64bit versions of Windows do not include 16bit emulation.. so if that's important to you, downgrade or find an alternative.

I have read that Windows 64 is not really 64 bit, that there is no real change and all it does is support 64 bit programs and more memory.

I read this a while ago, so don't hold me to it.

-JL

I have read somewhere that Windows XP 64 doesn't have the best driver support and that the people writing the drivers spend a lot more time on the 32 bit drivers so 64bit windows may be slower than 32bit windows because of the drivers.

Unless the games are written specifically to take advantage of 64bit mode running then in XP 64 will make no significant difference in the speed of the game(assuming the drivers are of the same quality). The game will just get run in 32bit compatibility mode (processor mode not the thing you can get to by going to the properties of a process.)

Running the processor in 32bit mode is also just as fast as 64bit mode once you get rid of the benefits of larger registers. I have a core 2 duo processor which is a 64 bit processor but I still have a 32 bit version of windows and I am sure that it runs just as fast as a 64 bit version would. Note I have never actually tried a 64 bit version of windows so take my advice lightly.

One more thing, I'm not sure of this but to run 64 bit windows you may have to have a 64 bit chipset. If this is true even if you have a 64 bit processor you may not have a chipset that can support 64 bit mode.

I am running XP x64, and it is 64-bit as it puts the processor into Long Mode and runs from it that way.

32-bit programs run in WoW, which is just an extrapolation of Compatibility Mode, in which is a submode of Long Mode that preserves a full 32-bit x86 processing environment without actually having to formally switch processor modes.

The only programs I could not get to run are 16-bit ones (e.g. COM files), and that is usually done better in DOSBox, Bochs or VirtualPC anyhow.

Drivers are a PITA, but things are getting better since 64-bit Vista has been forcing manufacturers to face reality. I wouldn't expect some obscure webcam or printer to run. Logitech has been particularly annoying, but my webcam does work now. If you have a SATA drive, you'll want to get the 64-bit version of your MOBO/SATA driver onto a floppy disk for the installation.

One thing you can expect to lose is the context/shell (i.e. desktop right-click) menu entries from 32-bit programs. You can regedit and add them manually or find their 64-bit equivalents.

Avast anti-virus has had 64-bit support for the longest time, and were the first quality developer to do so if I am not mistaken. The home edition is free, lightweight and does its job with scanning and integration (e.g. e-mail clients) quite well. Norton used to be quality, as well as McAfee and AVG... but any time you have a software company that starts renting software to you... it is time to throw their garbage away since they have fallen into the hype+bloat category due to profit margins becoming more important than quality.

7zip has a 64-bit port. I would drop WinRAR/ACE/ZIP and get used to 7zip even if only for the great compression ratio of LZMA and the various options. The GUI is not the best in the world, but it is straight-forward and the context/shell menu as good as any other.

For whatever reason, with 32-bit XP on this computer, it would take Counter-Strike Source nearly 3 minutes to load. With 64-bit XP, it took less than 10 seconds. Even though some programs might be 32-bit, the operating system and core libraries are 64-bit and that allows for faster file I/O along with more CPU time for all other processes. The worry about 64-bit programs having larger addresses resulting in more bytes per instructions seems to be quite unfounded in terms of reality.

All-in-all, my experience with XP x64 is that it feels more light-weight than your default install of 32-bit XP. I lost the capability to run 16-bit programs, but I can freely develop and run 64-bit programs... which seems to be much more interesting anyhow

I know nothing of XP 64-bit, but I'll say that 64-bit Vista worked like a charm for me. Also, what's the comment about the command line supposed to mean? Vista has the same command line as XP.

Anyway, I've also heard the claims about XP 64-bit not having much driver support, but I haven't had any such trouble with Vista. The only thing was some ancient video card I had installed, and there was no 32-bit driver for Vista either. I can confirm that 16-bit apps won't work though.

Vista hasn't given me any slowdown either, but I am running eight 2Ghz cores with 4GB of RAM.

Honestly, if you plan on going 64-bit, I would go with Vista if you could, since it is going to probably get more support than XP 64-bit will. Of course, if you're going to stay 32-bit to keep using legacy apps, either will be fine. If you're more comfortable with XP, keep it.