Well it's time to get a new Q6600 crunching rig on line and saw that Newegg has both OS's for the same price (Vista back up to $95 and out-of-stock)...
Just wondering if any speed advantage of 64 bit would be offset by bloat :( of Vista relative to XP.
Thanks

Well it's time to get a new Q6600 crunching rig on line and saw that Newegg has both OS's for the same price (Vista back up to $95 and out-of-stock)...
Just wondering if any speed advantage of 64 bit would be offset by bloat :( of Vista relative to XP.
Thanks

Horse apiece, I think...

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Clk2HlpSetiCty:::PayIt4ward

I would go with WinXP Pro 64bit

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I would go with WinXP Pro 64bit

Ha! You are spending $50 more of my money!

I would go with WinXP Pro 64bit

And I would also agree with that choice....

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Me too...

OK, thanks guys... I will give XP Pro 64 bit a try

OK, thanks guys... I will give XP Pro 64 bit a try

I had xp pro 64 in my 9850 quad core, and it ran fast(until I burned up the MoBo).

I wonder how much faster it would run using BOINCpe under xp pro 64?

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Some new info to mull over: ExtremeTech is reporting that Vista isn't slower than XP after all. It appears that most of Vista's performance issues early on (that caused such performance degradation) was the use of poor drivers from Microsoft themselves and from poor video drivers from ATi and nVidia.

ArsTechnica has a write up about it as well, mentioning the ExtremeTech article.

Someone have experiences with WinXP SP3 and WinVista SP1 and could compare the SETI@home crunching-speed?
Maybe 32 and 64 bit also?

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I would go with the vista x64 since xp is older but in a couple of years there will be a new window os I think they call windows 7 it should be by 2010 or so I think. Anyway it will be beta testing so xp will be old. So I would have vista and beta test the new os windows 7.

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I would go with WinXP Pro 64bit

Why?
The only advantage of a 64bit OS is being able to use more than 3.5GB of system memory. WinXP64 has much less driver support than Vista64bit does.
So i don't see any advantge in using a 64bit OS, and if you do use one then Vista64bit would be the better choice.

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Grant
Darwin NT

When the 32 bit windows came out and replaced the 16 bit os the same was probally being said why change what are the advantages? Now we are at the 64 bit instead of the 32 bit os and the same discussions are being had why bother - because it can.

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When the 32 bit windows came out and replaced the 16 bit os the same was probally being said why change what are the advantages? Now we are at the 64 bit instead of the 32 bit os and the same discussions are being had why bother - because it can.

And i still ask the same question- why?
Unless your application(s) can make use of more than 3GB of RAM there is no advantage. The big disadvantage is the limited availability of 64bit drivers.
People went from a 16bit to a 32bit OS because there were advantages in doing so, and the disadvantages were minimal. But in going from 32bit to 64bit for most people there is no advantage & not insignificant disadvantges in doing so.

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Grant
Darwin NT

When the 32 bit windows came out and replaced the 16 bit os the same was probally being said why change what are the advantages? Now we are at the 64 bit instead of the 32 bit os and the same discussions are being had why bother - because it can.

And i still ask the same question- why?
Unless your application(s) can make use of more than 3GB of RAM there is no advantage. The big disadvantage is the limited availability of 64bit drivers.
People went from a 16bit to a 32bit OS because there were advantages in doing so, and the disadvantages were minimal. But in going from 32bit to 64bit for most people there is no advantage & not insignificant disadvantges in doing so.

Just to clarify- this rig is BOINC only, 24/7 cruncher, no email or web browsing, no other programs etc... so the question is more 32 bit vs 64 bit and which flavour as it relates to crunching and even more specifically SETI and Einstein only.
Thanks

No, still don't see any reason to use 64 bit version. Running quad with one Einstein, one Astropulse and two Seti units peak memory usage is 821,463 MBytes, and with AV, mail and browser etc running.
So memory limit is not a problem for computer that is only a cruncher. In fact installing more than one Gigabyte of RAM is also probably a waste of cash.

32 bit was a no-brainer because it allowed things like 24bit colour to be to be stored, fetched, written and processed in one move. But as that is limit the eye can discriminate they is no requirement for more there.

Seti's requirement for precision is low, accuracy is its need, so again no requirement for 64bit.

So unless computer is to be used for task where 64bit has been shown to be a great advantage why bother, as drivers are a big problem. And a Seti crunching machine by definition does not need 64bit operation.

No, still don't see any reason to use 64 bit version. Running quad with one Einstein, one Astropulse and two Seti units peak memory usage is 821,463 MBytes, and with AV, mail and browser etc running.
So memory limit is not a problem for computer that is only a cruncher. In fact installing more than one Gigabyte of RAM is also probably a waste of cash.

32 bit was a no-brainer because it allowed things like 24bit colour to be to be stored, fetched, written and processed in one move. But as that is limit the eye can discriminate they is no requirement for more there.

Seti's requirement for precision is low, accuracy is its need, so again no requirement for 64bit.

So unless computer is to be used for task where 64bit has been shown to be a great advantage why bother, as drivers are a big problem. And a Seti crunching machine by definition does not need 64bit operation.

Sorry, but Winterknight, isn't precision and accuracy , not about the same?
You want to buy/build a PC, for 'crunching' purposes. Also depends, for S@H only, since the WU's are rather small, a 32BIT XP or VISTA will do.

Ofcoarse you have to go with a MoBo, where you can put an Q6600/6700/6800* or
a QX9450/9550/9650 .

But how much money do you want to spend on this . I think that too is a limmitting factor.
I compaired a Q6600 to a QX9650, with X64 SiSoftSandra, @ stock freq. there is a 38%+ difference in SSE3 FLOPS . Will open a website @ imageshack or something like it, to show some graph's, about this.In favor off 9650.

Personally i'de choose XP64,(maybe also VISTA 64, but have NO experience with it.

So Whatever You Build or Buy, Keep On Crunching ;^)
I want my shrubbery now! Ni N!

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When the 32 bit windows came out and replaced the 16 bit os the same was probally being said why change what are the advantages? Now we are at the 64 bit instead of the 32 bit os and the same discussions are being had why bother - because it can.

And i still ask the same question- why?
Unless your application(s) can make use of more than 3GB of RAM there is no advantage. The big disadvantage is the limited availability of 64bit drivers.
People went from a 16bit to a 32bit OS because there were advantages in doing so, and the disadvantages were minimal. But in going from 32bit to 64bit for most people there is no advantage & not insignificant disadvantges in doing so.

There is not just 64bit address space advantage, but 64bit OS also makes all the 64bit registers available (each of these can hold twice the data, and there are more of them than 32bit ones) also, bear in mind that 64bit OS does 64bit transfers, and so on... Concerning lack of 64bit drivers, well sorry, but IMO that's just plain BS! I have been running XP pro 64bit since late march, and never had issues with any of the drivers - on a gaming machine! - except for a decent free AV, at the moment only Avast supports 64bits. Indeed currently there aren't many native 64bit apps, however 64bits are fairly recent addition to the desktop computing world, and things are apt to change quickly where computers are involved.

One more thing regarding XP vs Vista: XP is mature, proven OS, whilst Vista is still on its way from infancy to puberty and therefore more likely to cause trouble. I would wait with Vista until at least SP2 comes out (if ever).

Kind regards,

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Ok on a 64bit compatible AV that I use on all 3 of My PCs here(4th is in storage & the 5th is out of commission, 5th motherboard needs a quad cpu & a heatsink), I use AVG 8.0(FREE) under XP Pro x64 and It does both AV and ASW(Anti SpyWare) and at least one file avgrsa.exe is a native 64bit app, the other 3 exes that are running are 32bit of course.

Eww... Totally forgot about AVG, however I don't like it anyway. ;) But lets not get too much OT...

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Well it's time to get a new Q6600 crunching rig on line and saw that Newegg has both OS's for the same price (Vista back up to $95 and out-of-stock)...
Just wondering if any speed advantage of 64 bit would be offset by bloat :( of Vista relative to XP.
Thanks

I have a Q6600 that is dual boot XP Pro X64 and VISTA Ultimate 64.
The system is OC and when I am home and push it up, it is more stable at higher clock speeds under XP Pro X64.
MB is ASUS P5K
RAM is Corsair PC 8500

Other issues with VISTA and Dual Boot environment is that VISTA will not recognize my scanner [Epson] and some other devices while X64 will.

VISTA will recognize the devices when in stand alone or single boot mode.

Strange

VISTA boots more quickly than X64, but is more restrictive with it's annoying rights management. Im not sure why MS chose to annoy it's own customer base for the benefit of others.

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When we finally figure it all out, all the rules will change and we can start all over again.