Did anyone happen to get in on the WinXP-64 Beta Test? Did you find any benefit to it?

I've just made a quantum leap from an AMD 800 Mhz machine running Win98 to a new AMD Athelon-64 3000+ running XP Pro Media Center Edition. This would be about a 10 fold increase in computing power, and of course being brand new it's lightening fast and glitch-free. Would the 64-bit OS add significantly to this already great performance?

Dave

Yes. It works fairly well on my gaming system. It is fairly stable, but the drivbers you need for some hardware to work still isnt availible. Although I do have to say that it does help with alot of the systems performance. It helps processing large apps. I think that the beta version is still a free download from microsoft..... What are the specs of your computer?

I am running an Athlon 64x2, 2 gigs of ram, ~450 gigs of storage, DVD-R, and some other goodies. And it runs XP x64 fairly well.

__________________
-Justin

91 560 SEC AMG - other dogs dd
01 Honda S2000 - dogs dd
07 MB ML320 CDI - dd
16 Lexus IS250 - wifes dd

it's automatic.

It's an Athelon 64 single processor, 3Ghz, 512 MB Double Speed RAM, 160 GB HD, ATI Saphire Graphics + eHome TV tuner, 6 port USB card reader, 4 USB 2.0, 1 Firewire, a LG super CD/DVD RW / RAM Optical Drive (3X RAM speed), WiFi-g, wireless KB / Mouse, Media Center Remote and on-board audio.

It's all in a Cooler Master case (not a tower) that looks like a black face stereo amp, so I've got it installed right in with my Audio Video system. It is replacing the DVD player / recorder, VCR, Tape Deck, Digital Cable box and CD player, as it will do all of the above. I suppose my biggest need for "PC horsepower" would be when recording video capture to DVD- that seems to work great with what's on it now, so I'm not sure if Win64 would add much benefit.

Dave

I never tried the beta, but recently tried setting up a new machine with XP64 (can be ordered that way from Dell).

It may well be a fine OS, but there are a few things that make it not the right answer for my desktop at this time:

1.) Several of my peripherals don't yet have drivers available.

2.) Several pieces of necessary software can't be readily installed. They may be 32-bit applications, but the software is installed using 16-bit installers. Some of these apps are a few years old and a little bit outside of the mainstream, so a prompt solution from the vendors is unlikely, IMHO.

If I had a compelling need for 64-bitness, I'd do more legwork to find out about expected availability of drivers, upgrade a couple of fairly inexpensive peripherals, look for workarounds to the application installation problems, etc. I don't, though, so it's XP32 for the immediate future, with all of my "must haves" working very satisfactorily.

Don't let this scare you away - such problems may not touch you at all - but be aware.

XP 64 SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Its crashes more than a Win95.