For those of you who have successfully installed Win64, which is better. a clean install of 64 or over Win XP Pro? I have backed up my hard drives to my external backup and have down loaded all the 64 drivers I can find for my Hardware. Now I may be asking this prematurely since I don't even know if this beta is an"upgrade or original version, but thought I'd try to head off any unnecessary problems. I'm actually thinking of taking a spare 80gb drive I have, loading Win xp on it, then try loading 64 on top of that so I don't have to nuke my Sata drive.

Any suggestions? Thanks

The 64 bit version of Windows would certainly be faster and better... but keep in mind that most of your programs are still only 32 bit and will not see any enhancements from your 64 bit processor. It's just like a dual processor machine... your programs have to utilize a dual processor for it to actually use both.

Know what, I think you're right. Considering the fact there isn't any 64 bit programs out there, I think I'll wait until more soft ware is available. My system's runing just fine now, why muck it up!

Good idea. I will also wait for more drivers & software before upgrading.

avast(Antivirus) will work on xp 64x,all others won't work yet,driver support is crap,otherwise almost everyapp that worked on 32 bit oses will work on 64 bit xp.

Yes, they will work on it, but you will not get any added bonus from the chip being 64bit as the programs themselves are written to work in 32bit.

i just wanna see 64bit games

*drool*

I'm running a 32bit Jave app on XP x64 and have seen a 40% increase in the client output. This was measured over a 28 day period with the java client running at 99% 24x7.

This out put was measured against the same hardware running Windows 2003 Server.

You may say what you like about performance but it really comes down to each individual 32bit app and how it runs on x64.

Well it could be the increased number of registers the program code now has access to. Very nice numbers Marsden.

In certain applications you may see a boost, apps such as photoshop may get a small boost in the time taken to do specific tasks, but i cannot say how much of a boost.

As for drivers they will come in time, developers will adopt win64 soon, so no need to worry.

Yes I believe xbitlabs IIRC did an article on the performance difference betwenn XP and the then beta XP64 bit and there were performance increases both on 32 bit and 64 bit apps...very nice numbers actually.

For those of you who have successfully installed Win64, which is better. a clean install of 64 or over Win XP Pro? I have backed up my hard drives to my external backup and have down loaded all the 64 drivers I can find for my Hardware. Now I may be asking this prematurely since I don't even know if this beta is an"upgrade or original version, but thought I'd try to head off any unnecessary problems.  I'm actually thinking of taking a spare 80gb drive I have, loading Win xp on it, then try loading 64 on top of that so I don't have to nuke my Sata drive.

Any suggestions? Thanks

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

In case you didn't read the release notes, there is *no upgrade* installation option. You can't go from Win32 to Win64 with an upgrade install.

Also, the upgrade has always been a half-assed approach, usually resulting in some form of corruption. It's much preferable to force a clean install.