Upgraded to XP64 - Tips or Tricks?

[Edgar Pitts]

We recently updated one of our workstations to XP64. It is a quad core Xeon with 6 gigs (soon to be 10 gig) of ram and Quadro FX 3500.

The system is working very well and there is a noticable performance increase in the CS3 suite (Premiere, After FX, PhotoShop and Illustrator).

Are there are settings or hacks that will allow us to get the most out of the system?

Any tips would be most appreciated. Thanks!

Edgar

[Greg M]

we have nothing but problems with our XP64 system, found its just not worth it due to the lack of drivers and sketchy software support

[laguun]

we have nothing but problems with our XP64 system, found its just not worth it due to the lack of drivers and sketchy software support

running Vista and XP 64 since 2007, we are very glad. softwares used (discreet, iridas, adobe) work excellent.
Especially with large VFX and massive NLE its much more solid and faster to operate with a full 64bit.

There are however manufacturers who still dont have solid 64bit support, that might explain the different experiences.

[Tom Lowe]

the one thing about x64 that seems so attractive is the ablility to use so much RAM. it's so lame to me that XP machies are capped out at an effective 3.8GBs of RAM or whatever.

[Greg M]

running Vista and XP 64 since 2007, we are very glad. softwares used (discreet, iridas, adobe) work excellent.
Especially with large VFX and massive NLE its much more solid and faster to operate with a full 64bit.

There are however manufacturers who still dont have solid 64bit support, that might explain the different experiences.

Yes if you limited the machine to specific applications that work, it makes sense...but for a more general use it is currently a pain.

[Edgar Pitts]

Thanks for the replys everyone. We are just using the workstation to run CS3 and not for general use. The increased RAM was our main motivation.

[Radoslav Karapetkov]

XP64 sucks big time.

Five times I've tried to make it happen but - total and complete failure.

There are no drivers for most of the important things and it's buggy as hell.

Vista64 is the same.

And it's been almost two years and this focking people at M-Audio still don't have drivers.

May God strike them with great vengeance and furious anger.

:ranting2:

[lgcollins]

I'm using Vista64 right now, and it handles 32-bit programs nicely, but the thing is, we need 64-bit device drivers! Most of my usb devices is not working. But going 64-bit is the only way to use more than 3 gigs of RAM, so I'll have to wait for the hardware manufacturers to make those drivers.. :angry03:

[Adam Glick]

In my experience, XP64 is a wonderfully stable and productive environment for most creative/digital media pipelines & applications.

Driver support is generally very complete and solid at this point in time. With few exceptions (M-Audio and Aja included in the short list,) as long as you are using relatively modern, "pro" add-in cards, graphics adapters, peripherals (tablets, scanners, output devices) etc., then you should have zero issues running XP64.

The extended RAM allows for much better multitasking and more effective interaction with very large projects/scenes. If your applications are also 64bit -all the better...

As an "all around" workstation OS -and especially If you're applications could use more RAM- XP64 is probably a safe choice.

Cheers,

Adam
BOXXlabs

[Adam Glick]

oh, as for CS3 optimizations, I have found that the following settings provide the fastest rendering in After Effects CS3 on a dual/quad systems (8 cores) with 8GB od RAM under XP64:

set your "Memory Usage" to 80%
set your "RAM Cache" to 30%

Cheers,

Adam

[Jeff Kilgroe]

XP64 is working great here on appropriate hardware. Consider your system first... If you're not using current hardware or you have a ton of legacy USB devices or other peripherals, you won't be happy with XP64.

Once installed properly with all proper driver support, it is very stable. IMO, Microsoft made one fatal mistake with Vista. And that was releasing a 32bit version. Now they can't get lazy programmers and hardware companies to make the complete transition to 64bit. As for software compatibility, most stories you hear are just not true. I've only encountered a few programs that would not play nice with Vista (32 or 64 bit) and those few are usually so poorly written that I wouldn't choose to run them anyway. They usually break under Vista because they violate various acceptable Windows coding standards and this could slide under Win2K and to some extent, XP, but not in Vista. ...It's amazing what some of my clients think they want or need on their systems.

[oldphart]

XP64 is working great here on appropriate hardware. Consider your system first... If you're not using current hardware or you have a ton of legacy USB devices or other peripherals, you won't be happy with XP64.

Once installed properly with all proper driver support, it is very stable. IMO, Microsoft made one fatal mistake with Vista. And that was releasing a 32bit version. Now they can't get lazy programmers and hardware companies to make the complete transition to 64bit. As for software compatibility, most stories you hear are just not true. I've only encountered a few programs that would not play nice with Vista (32 or 64 bit) and those few are usually so poorly written that I wouldn't choose to run them anyway. They usually break under Vista because they violate various acceptable Windows coding standards and this could slide under Win2K and to some extent, XP, but not in Vista. ...It's amazing what some of my clients think they want or need on their systems.

My experience is that Vista is still generally quite sucky on the hardware I have tried it on. If you have managed to get a good, stable and efficient installation of it on your hardware I suggest you avoid messing around with it.

Everything depends on what you want to use your system for, and the fewer applications you install, the better it will probably work.

For 64-bit applications, I have my best experiences with SuSE Linux which has worked fine for my needs the last five years. BSD systems are a very good choice if your applications are available and you have access to good Unix support. Windows Server 2003 seems quite robust, but I have not used it all that much except for testing server applications. Still, I believe it could be a better choice than either XP or Vista for 64 bit applications.

I have always been a fan of oodles of RAM. I have a rackful of IBM x series servers running different Linux distros, and the extra memory bandwidth on those Xeon systems makes a lot of difference for I/O intensive applications.

In my opinion, memory management has always been the Achilles heel of Apple systems, and it would be really nice if they were to fix some of their architectural problems sooner rather than later. It is also too bad that most applications I want to use are not available on IBM Power 6+ systems.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Not sure what hardware you're running on, but I've got Vista64 rocking pretty hard and stable on a few systems. Vista64 ultimate is my windows of choice for bootcamp on the new Mac Pro systems too.

SUSE 64bit is cool, I agree. But that still doesn't account for the need to run Windows software.

Windows and OSX both have serious issues with memory management, multithreading, and several other key components that they are so proud of. But such is life... Linux / BSD has their own list of serious flaws and annoyances too.

I'm an old-school SGI guy and always liked Irix, so did many early contributors to the Linux project and I believe Torvalds himself had an affinity for SGI/Irix. I guess that's why there's so many parts of Linux that mimmic Irix. Unfortunately, SGI faltered and has yet to learn their lesson, Irix is dead... It was archaic and dead even through the mid-90s when they couldn't see their own demise while the rest of the computer world was already waving goodbye. But in it's day, Irix was my favorite flavor of unix and I always thought it had so much more potential than AIX or anything SCO or Sun was pushing. I was also a DEC fan too... Ah, the Alpha, a whole world of potential and all the marketing savvy of two pre-teens trying to run a lemonade stand in a Dairy Queen parking lot.

[Jason Ing]

xppro64 has been working fine for me for awhile. usually, the people who don't like it have a specific app or hardware that fails to work or they have trouble installing it, again usually some specific hardware issue. i work with ps, fusion, and a few other graphics, post, editing apps that works fine. i've only found a few minor apps that don't play well with 64... security apps and a few web apps.

[Andrew M.]

Vista 64 and NVIDIA Quadro FX 3600M working perfect with SCRATCH REDCINE AE PR EN UL Sb (CS3 Production Premium)