Is buying a 64bit processor such as a Xeon worth it??

[simon1980111]

Hi, I am pretty sure I'm going to buy a Q9550 but I'm wondering if anyone has any opinion on the new 64 bit processors from Intel and AMD - such as the pentium 4 6 series which are true 64 bit (rather than 64 bit compatible) - I'd like to run up to 8gig ram so I'm sure if I had the 64bit cpu i would see a big improvement, only thing is those pentium 4's are duo core I think so just wondering what people have to say about this emerging tek???

 

[JDocs]

Erm... All moderm processors are 64bit as are most of the later Pentium 4 and AMD processors from that time.

The compatible part you hear of is their ability to run either 32bit or 64bit code. The original 64bit processors couldn't which is why they never did well.

 

[Mondoman]

Pretty much all current CPUs available for the consumer market ARE "true" 64-bit processors. I'm not sure what you mean by "rather than 64 bit compatible".
The Pentium 4 6xx series is a number of years old by now -- perhaps you were reading an old article by mistake?

 

[A_Dying_Wren]

wow... just wow...

for starters, all half-decent cpus these days are 64 bit. Have been since Athlon64 some 4~5 years ago.

Secondly, u need a 64 bit OS to use 8 gigs of ram.

thirdly get the Q9450. Better value. Or get core 2 duo if u dnt need quad core. the E8400 is really nice

"emerging tek"... ROFLMAO

 

[JDocs]

I think perhaps simon misunderstood the concept of compatibility.

Todays processors are 64bit with 32bit compatibility, which is why they score higher is 64bit environments. Perhaos he got it confused and thought it was the other way around which kinda makes sense with how technology normally "evolves" rather than under go a "revolution".

 

[simon1980111]

Hi everyone, thansk for the comments - yeah looks like I've got this a bit backwards (I think)... haha yeah I just checked and the article was 2005, sorry, I guess I don't need worry about this anymore, thanks again! : )

P.S the Q9550 and others will be better value soon (apparently) see this article

http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/324083.aspx

 

[amdfangirl]

lolz... buying 64 bit is spiffy but buting a Xeon however...

 

[amdfangirl]

^ There's expensive compared to normal desktop CPUs so unless you want a server....

 

[randomizer]

Except for a few, like the Xeon E3110 which is essentially an E8400 identified by different microcode.

 

[amdfangirl]

Yup, Listen to the smart guy =)

 

[Vertigon]

Looking at Intel's feature set, there's very little between many of them, including the transistor count.

 

[takealready]

I've enjoy my AMD x2 4200+ on my XP64. Bust sadly there aren't may programs that take full advantage of 64bit.

So like me some of your old programs might not work on x64 (even thought there's the wow64 emulator). For example; my multimedia keyboard drivers refuse to work and there's not x64 version of my keyboard drivers. so I can only use the media player functions (not the shortcuts or even the web browsing functions)

To give you an idea of the speed difference between x86 & x64. It took 1 hour & 30 minutes to burn a DVD of my sisters graduation. After I installed my XP64 the next day, I re-burned the same graduation footage (out of curiosity of how fast 64bit really is) and it took 58 minutes.

Hope that helps answer your question if it's worth it.

 

[simon1980111]

Thanks to everyone, yes that helps takealready, I'm probably goignt to stick with the q9550 and try to find a mobo with a wide budswidth fsb, thne have 8 gig ram and see what happens (I'll spring for Xeon technology when I've got some more coin), : )