64 bit XP

[PJ101]

I have XP SP2 right now, I am building a new comp. on a 64 bit processor with 2 gigs of ram. I plan on playing FarCry at 64 bit and whatever other games support it. Is it necessary to have a 64 bit OS in this situation.

 

[MrCommunistGen]

yes. FarCry 64-bit will only run on a 64bit OS. I'd suggest not using XP-64 bit because the drivers aren't as good. I have it on my secondary hard drive and only really used it for benchmarking. Processor and RAM benchmarks did a bit better, but Graphics benches ran significantly worse.

-mcg

Should read: I'd suggest not using Windows XP 64bit ANYMORE THAN YOU HAVE TO... oops

 

[PJ101]

Thanks again mcg... you seem to be helping me a lot lately I appreciate it very much. My only question is, Is there another way i can obtain the graphical improvements of the 64bit patch in FarCry?

 

[MrCommunistGen]

Other than running Windows XP 64bit no... you could dual boot like I am... install XP 32bit on 1 HD or partition and install the 64bit version on a different HD or partition. You could then run XP 32bit most of the time and only boot into the 64bit version when you want to play a 64bit enhanced game. Thats what I was going to do except that I don't have any software that will benefit from 64bit... except a few processor benchmarks that have been rewritten for 64bit

-mcg

 

[PJ101]

So really the benefits of windows XP 64bit are few and far between. Aside from allowing more memory (I understand that you need 64bit to support 4gb) and supporting 64 bit games are there any other benefits?

 

[emogoch]

At this point, no. At a basic level, 64-bit computing allows for more data to be accessed at once, but software has to be written to take advantage of it. Since there's such a small install base to consider, software vendors don't consider it a priority. And truthfully, neither does Intel, else the first Core-duo processors would have been 64-bit rather than 32 bit.

There is a slight performance gain in some instances, but this is reall only shown in benchmarking, and isn't practically noticable to a regular user.