FWIW, many apps don't really benefit from moving to 64-bit, so there's little incentive to convert them. Which is not to say they won't be, but I doubt it'll happen on a massive enough scale for Microsoft to completely drop support for 32-bit apps from Windows.

You're kidding, right?

The x86-64 extension is a complete crapheap, the computer i'm using right now is still based on technology invented in 1981. So that side of it is true. But if legacy support was REMOVED, a new system was invented to replace the x86 architecture, but still capable of hardware emulation (as I mentioned previously) then... well, it'd be BRILLIANT and there are definately advantages to a true 64-bit system. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit#Pros_and_cons

Of course it won't happen for a while, but it will one day.

If you don't care about the technicals, basically the reason why Mac is still the dominant machine in high-end production and creative industries is because they are pure 64-bit (well not ALL, but the ones that are 64-bit are REAL 64-bit, not like IBM-based PC's we're using here). If you try editing a 2 hour long BluRay-definition video on any 32-bit Mac or Windows machine; you'd need a crazy RAID rack to compensate for the constant swapping. And of course the application has to be 64-bit compiled to get all that extra bandwidth to the CPU too.

Midori FTW!!!! I hope windows 8 is based off this! MANAGED CODE FTW!!!!

If that was directed at me, then no, I'm not kidding. Look at the examples in the Wikipedia article (data encryption software, complex numerical analysis algorithms), or your own example (hi-def video editing software) - does that sound like the vast majority of the software people are using? Not to me. I'm not denying the advantages of a 64-bit system, they're definitely there, and numerous. What I'm saying is that the majority of applications (not necessarily users) out there wouldn't benefit from being converted to 64-bit. Browsers, email and IM clients, office and multimedia software - that's what most people are using most of the time, and they don't need massive address space or 64-bit registers. Since there's no need for the conversion, I doubt it'll be happening soon enough and massively enough for MS to drop 32-bit support completely from their client OS in the near future. That's all I'm saying. Whether or not the x86-64 architecture is a crapheap is completely irrelevant.


Well, yes, I suppose eventually office documents and websites will grow to gigabytes in size, at which point even the most stubborn developers will have to make the jump.

64 bit IE and WMP11 are a TON more stable becuase they are 64 bit that I use. (I still gotta use 32 bit IE though becuase of adobe's laziness of not having flash 64) WMP11 x32 crashes harder becuase I got a HUGE music collection. x64 can handle loading my ENTIRE 120GB music collection in one list without crashing! x32 sits there and dies on me profusely.

32 bit does not have multicore support, cannot access more then 3 GB RAM.

*shrugs* 32-bit versions of IE and WMP work perfectly well for me (although my music collection is but 1/6th the size of yours). I suspect whatever problems you're having with 32-bit IE might be caused by add-ons, rather than any inherent instability of the x86 platform, perceived or real.
And at any rate, we can keep bringing up niche scenarios like 120 GB music libraries until the cows come home, but that doesn't change the fact that there's currently no need for the entire home computing industry to move to 64-bit.


Come again?

with a little trick you can allocate more then 3GB by PAE ( physical address extensions ) and optionally ( on my board ) there is an option for it

The AMD x86-64 architecture along with a 64-bit operating system gives full hardware DEP to boost the Driver Signing to a low-level, this has made Vista/Win7 x64 the most secure x86 OS in existence. You heard me, more secure than Linux - there's a reason why ParadoX, Skidrow and Fairlight run Vista as their OS of choice. Anyway, all that's an extremely important security aspect of 64-bit machines - keeping that Driver Signing enabled along with UAC, DEP and in this example i'm about to give - running a 64-bit browser - makes the system practically immune to rootkits and a variety of other memory pool overruns and thread code injections. Basically, you don't even need to run antivirus on Windows 6 x64 if you know how to navigate the web safely. {FYI: I'm only saying that as a disclaimer, i.e. there's no excuse for a stranger not in our current conversation to go click a commercial on a torrent site and run a file called "omg_hot_chick_wif_huge_bewbz.jpg.exe" then accuse me of being wrong}.



32-bit only supports dualcore CPU's, that is - it can only simultaneously process two threads at a time. A 3-or-more core CPU I think is still detected on Vista 32-bit (not sure about XP, but XP is complete crap with thread management anyway) but the quantum scheduler can't actually handle more than two threads simultaneously. It's a laneway limitation with the L1 cache from memory, it needs to be in x86-64 mode (and whatever Intel's equivalent is) to use it all properly.

Anyway, yeah - x64 is not as useless as you might have thought. It was at first, but it's slowly taking off as developers take advantage of the additional extensions. SSE2 instructions for example, in 64-bit realmode, is at least 10% faster in every test I remember seeing (video encoding, JPEG decoding, RAR extraction/compresion, etc). Take a look at these benchmarks of Firefox 32-bit Vs Firefox x64. And that's a 1 year old article, running an experimental/unofficial 64-bit compile of Firefox.

Times are a changin'


That won't work for me since I have a 1GB PCI-e v2.0 graphics card. I'll actually get ~2.8GB max with this card if I only ran 32-bit, otherwise I will have to start pulling out wireless card/firewire controller/USB hubs/mouse/etcetera And BTW, PAE slows your CPU down because it has to translate 32-bit calls to 36-bit calls with every memory request. Try it - do a CPU becnhmark in Everest with PAE on, then repeat with it switched off.

EDIT: 32-bit OS's also can't use Hardware Virtualization featuresets. VMWare, Virtual XP Mode in Windows 7 and the exotic nature of encoding my DVD's to WMV for Windows Media Center with CUDA acceleration, they are all faster in 64-bit. So is DXVA playback - I couldn't imagine playing a BluRay movie on one monitor while working in Adobe CS4 on the main one in 32-bit

It's true, the majority of grandpa's and girlfriends will have no use for 64-bit really so you still have a good point. They won't care that it takes 2 seconds quicker to skip through a movie, or load an 8Megapixel photo (my GF does tho she's a hardcore photographer lol), just as long as it works. And we all know that 32-bit wins in compatibility.

Pardon, but I don't think I ever said x64 was useless. Quite the contrary, in fact. However, since most of the software we use is produced by businesses, usefulness is only part of the equation. Even a lot of non-commercial and open-source software is x86 only.


Ah, I didn't know that, thanks.


That's the key here, I think. x86 works just fine. Yes, x86-64 is technically superior, but for most people the differences are either minute, or too complex to understand. Until the consumers don't fully understand the benefits, there won't be much demand for 64-bit software. Until there's any real demand, there won't be a large-scale move to it. And for as long as there's a significant amount of 32-bit only software, Microsoft is unlikely to drop support for it.
You're right, though - times, they be a-changin'.

even my cat would appreciate totally x64 applications becuase it would give me more time to attend to her since she is a demanding cat that wants petted and feeded alot.