Windows 7 or vista..?

[trd1587]

Originally Posted by Geek

XP Pro.

Cheers!

I Second That
Wait for SP1 for WINDOWS 7 before Going there.

PS: you can Install OPEN SOLARIS wich is absolutely free and run XP PRO image on Virtual Machine.
BTW you can run WINDOWS XP, VISTA AND 7 at the same time with SOLARIS.

Such software can be called Sphere or VIrtual BOX

[MJL21193]

Originally Posted by 5th element

you can reach far higher theoretical amounts of RAM, more then you'd ever need.

What was it that Bill Gates said about memory a few years back...

There are physical memory address limits with a 32 bit bus width that limit it to 4GB. This is a hardware limit. A 64 bit bus can address quite a bit more (double the amount for each extra bit width, for example: 33bit bus width can address 8GB, 34 - 16GB, etc. you get the picture).

[theAnonymous1]

Originally Posted by MJL21193

What was it that Bill Gates said about memory a few years back...

There are physical memory address limits with a 32 bit bus width that limit it to 4GB. This is a hardware limit. A 64 bit bus can address quite a bit more (double the amount for each extra bit width, for example: 33bit bus width can address 8GB, 34 - 16GB, etc. you get the picture).

Wowzer that would be a lot of ram. Too bad the average memory slots non-server motherboards have is 4. That would pretty much mean a limit of 32GB.

That would only be roughly $800 worth of 4GB PC3-10666.

[planet10]

Originally Posted by MJL21193

There are physical memory address limits with a 32 bit bus width that limit it to 4GB. This is a hardware limit.

Are you sure it is a general hardware limit and not an OS limit? Many of the Intel Macs support >4 GB RAM even when running 32 bit OS X. The same machine booted into Windows using Boot Camp is limited to <4 GB.

dave

[MJL21193]

It's been quite a while since I thought about this stuff (high school, I was HEAVY into the hardware of the day and did a lot of research on the way my Color Computer worked. I did programming in assembly language as well, for what that's worth. Yeah, geek (but a cool one )) but here goes:
To directly access ram, the memory controller (Northbridge for PCs or the intergated memory controller in the AM2 processors from AMD) needs to be able to address it, as in select a "bank" of ram that is at the physical address. To do this, it uses some of the bits in the bus width (I can't remember if they are the ones at the left or the right) to "pick" which bank to access. This is the physical limit, the bus width.
If there is a software work around, the amount of accessible memory would not be significantly higher and access time would longer (more clock ticks).

[Luke]

this is interesting but not that surprising.

Microsoft denies it built 'backdoor' in Windows 7

[star882]

Originally Posted by AndrewT

Why is the 64bit a better system than the 32bit?

Will the 64bit run on all systems?

64 bit offers higher floating point precision and support for larger numbers. As for its relevance to audio, higher floating point precision can possibly improve audio quality if floating points are used in processing, but I believe FLAC uses only integers so it's a moot point. 32 bit is already much more precision than any practical audio frequency delta sigma modulator so going up to 64 bits wouldn't make any difference.

In other applications, however, it can make for a big difference. I remember that the exact same version of D2X-XL ran at about 100FPS when compiled for 64 bit as opposed to only 60FPS in 32 bit.

Also note that business servers and workstations have been available in 64 bit for many years before the first consumer 64 bit PC. And there's a good reason for it. Going to 64 bit would roughly double the number of transistors, which would be acceptable to get more performance from a business machine but was cost prohibitive for home use. Now, advances in semiconductor technology made it very practical for home use.

Another way to think about it: Would you buy a car with a 7 speed transmission and only use 4 of the gears?

Note that a 64 bit CPU does not use less power running in 32 bit compatibility mode. The second half of the transistors apparently continue running but do no useful work.

[slam]

Originally Posted by planet10

Are you sure it is a general hardware limit and not an OS limit? Many of the Intel Macs support >4 GB RAM even when running 32 bit OS X. The same machine booted into Windows using Boot Camp is limited to <4 GB.

dave

It is both a hardware and software limit. Intel 32 bit CPU has 32 bit virtual adddress space, but it has 48 bit physical address space to address 64GB of physical memory. In order to access those memory, you will need to map them into the virtual address space in order to use them. This requires extra OS support -- Windows NT /PAE mode. Note that the paged memory is usually not first class citizen. You need to utilize special API in order to utilize them. SQL server is a good example of a program that utilize the PAE API -- we have them accessing 14GB RAM at work. I guess the OS could make the memory more available if it puts more efforts on it. I am not familiar with how MacOS implements/support PAE though.

Intel 64 bit CPU supports 64 bit virtual adddress space. If you run 32 bit OS on it, you do not utilize the extra address space. If you run 64 bit OS on it, the OS will utilze the whole address space. All 64 bit applications can utilize the 64 bit address space without special API as well.

Note that 64 bit OS is benefital even with just 4 GB of memory. The memory on your video card needs to be mapped to somewhere, and Windows NT 32 bit makes rooms for them in the 32 bit address space by not utilizing some of those 4 GB of memory. That's why on a 32 bit system you don't see the whole 4 GB available (usually somewhere between 3 - 3.75 GB available). However 64 bit executable is somewhat larger in size and that offsets some of the saving from video memory mapping.

[DigitalJunkie]

I'm on XP pro,and will probably stay here for a while. Vista (nicknamed $hitsta with my friends and I) is a heap. Wait a bit,and go to Win7.

[phofman]

32bit systems can address more than 4GB of RAM if the CPU and the OS support PAE Physical Address Extension - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . Still the limit of 3GB per process applies (in linux, I do not know the situation in other OSes).