32 bit v 64 bit????????
- Thread starter j0nnyd
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modo77 said:
I think the point being made is that Microsoft will only WHQL sign a 32bit driver if the company also submits a 64bit driver too.
As Microsoft don't just WHQL sign off "willy nilly" then you'll find that all devices will have both good 32bit & 64bit support.
Sure there will still be companies that won't bother getting any of their drivers WHQL signed, however I tend to stick to larger and med-way hardware manufacturers for all my hardware kit so it shouldn't ever be an issue.
We want computing to evolve and as long as people are being encouraged to stick to 32bit platforms that isn't going to happen.
Intel had the right idea with Itanium all those years ago - force people to make the jump to 64bit.
Alas the hybrid 32/64bit idea won and now we're stuck waiting even longer before everyone and everything moves to 64bit.
Soldato
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So does a 64-Bit OS run faster than a 32-bit one then?
I don't mean with installed apps/games, just the actual OS UI itself.
I don't mean with installed apps/games, just the actual OS UI itself.
Yes.mcwildcard said:
x64 has some new instructions that make thread context switching extremely quick. Windows x64 takes advantage of these. Considering the average PC will be performing around 20,000 context switches per second - it makes up for some large savings. When the CPU is under load it could be doing a few million context switches per second and this is where x64 pulls ahead.
Then of course there is the fact that 64-bit calculations can be performed in one clock cycle.
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Soldato
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Cheers for the speedy reply, is the difference really noticable?NathanE said:
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modo77 said:
Does this allow you to set 'allow unsigned drivers' as default, as i am constantly booting via the F8 menu at the moment?
Thanks
Games are getting to the 2GB barrier now. Sooner or later you will only be able to play games with hi-res textures etc on a 64-bit OS. For the simple fact that eventually they just aren't going to be able to fit it all into memory!Lysander said:
Unfortunately, once again, any performance gains would ALWAYS be offset by drivers. No company, now or in the future will go through lenghty WHQL certification process with every driver they produce. For example, most of gamers and video editors in the past would pick cutting edge, "just out" drivers if not straight hacked, modified or tweaked drivers, for obvious gains. With Vista 64bit you simply don't get any of that. Nvidia or ATI will not submit every beta for certification, MS won't accept 5 drivers every month, with tweaks for new games for signing. It won't make manufacturers make better drivers, it will only make end users suffer. Every single time you'll want to pick up chinese bluetooth dongle for £3 instead of branded one for £30 you will be reminded of how easier, cheaper and better life is for XP and 32bit users.
64bit, as it is presented now by MS and the way it is treated by manufacturers (neccessary evil) has no real advantages to regular user unless you run services that require more than 4Gb of memory. Just because it runs 32bit code as well doesn't mean it's just as good as normal Vista. Non optimized 32bit code running on badly supported 64bit system means you will experience all disadvantages of 32bit Vista with none of the advantages you should have coming from using 64bit OS, as it will be slowed down by "safe" drivers. You shouldn't be using 64bit OS because "well... it works most of the time like 32 bit version, just with more trouble", you should be using it because it should be much better and faster. And it isn't atm. If you want to be pioneer, go ahead, but it's not the amount of users that swings market stance in this case, it's the amount of programs optimized for 64bit. And that we lack. For the purpose of the example - Vista 64, today, is just as useful as NT on Alphas. Theoretically perfect, practically just complete miss.
64bit, as it is presented now by MS and the way it is treated by manufacturers (neccessary evil) has no real advantages to regular user unless you run services that require more than 4Gb of memory. Just because it runs 32bit code as well doesn't mean it's just as good as normal Vista. Non optimized 32bit code running on badly supported 64bit system means you will experience all disadvantages of 32bit Vista with none of the advantages you should have coming from using 64bit OS, as it will be slowed down by "safe" drivers. You shouldn't be using 64bit OS because "well... it works most of the time like 32 bit version, just with more trouble", you should be using it because it should be much better and faster. And it isn't atm. If you want to be pioneer, go ahead, but it's not the amount of users that swings market stance in this case, it's the amount of programs optimized for 64bit. And that we lack. For the purpose of the example - Vista 64, today, is just as useful as NT on Alphas. Theoretically perfect, practically just complete miss.
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What the hell? Since when has x64 been slow and "pioneering" v0n? Windows x64 has been out since 2005. It's used by millions of developers and 3D animators all over the world. It is rarely slated as being "slower" than the 32-bit variant of the OS.
WHQL also isn't as strict and costly as you make out. In actual fact, most vendors simply run a series of test scripts (Driver Verifier mostly) and submit the results to Microsoft (in actual fact, one of Microsoft's WHQL accredited partners - hence it is a free market economy). The company will simply check these trace files to look for any resource leakage or thread deadlocks and if it's all fine they send back a certificate to sign the driver with. Any company that has (legal) access to the WDDK can also submit requests to be WHQL'd.
The cheap Chinese bluetooth dongle example is a good one, but unfortunately you interpret the outcome in the wrong way. You see, there are only "so many" Bluetooth chipsets out there. Probably just a handful of manufacturers. When these chips are first designed the driver is also co-written along side it. The chips are then mass produced and sold off in mass quantities to third parties who wrap the chip up onto a PCB and put some plastic around it (and all importantly, place their logo onto it). They then take the stock driver provided to them by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and edit the .INF file around so that it has their branding on it. Job done. And at no stage has WHQL increased the resale cost.
WHQL has been going on for years and very few device drivers these days are shipped without being signed by it. Drivers used by software (like firewalls and such) hold the biggest share today of unsigned drivers.
It's probably worth mentioning at some stage that WHQL is not a requirement for any driver on any variant or edition of Windows. The only requirement for all drivers on Vista x64 is that they are signed with the publisher's code signing certificate - which is used to verify their authenticity/integrity and also to allow the administrator to make a trust-based decision at install time.
What is "safe" driver anyway? For the record, to create a x64 driver you simply change one flag on the C++ compiler. Assuming your code was written correctly in the first place (and driver developers are usually the best C++'ers out of any industry) then you won't have to do anything else. Just recompile, job done.
"you should be using it because it should be much better and faster. And it isn't atm."
And that's exactly the reason why people are using it! Vista x64 is more secure, faster and more future proofed.
"For the purpose of the example - Vista 64, today, is just as useful as NT on Alphas"
Again, WTF? NT4 for Alpha didn't have WOW64. XP and Vista x64 does. These operating systems can run 32-bit x86 code at native speed.
WHQL also isn't as strict and costly as you make out. In actual fact, most vendors simply run a series of test scripts (Driver Verifier mostly) and submit the results to Microsoft (in actual fact, one of Microsoft's WHQL accredited partners - hence it is a free market economy). The company will simply check these trace files to look for any resource leakage or thread deadlocks and if it's all fine they send back a certificate to sign the driver with. Any company that has (legal) access to the WDDK can also submit requests to be WHQL'd.
The cheap Chinese bluetooth dongle example is a good one, but unfortunately you interpret the outcome in the wrong way. You see, there are only "so many" Bluetooth chipsets out there. Probably just a handful of manufacturers. When these chips are first designed the driver is also co-written along side it. The chips are then mass produced and sold off in mass quantities to third parties who wrap the chip up onto a PCB and put some plastic around it (and all importantly, place their logo onto it). They then take the stock driver provided to them by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and edit the .INF file around so that it has their branding on it. Job done. And at no stage has WHQL increased the resale cost.
WHQL has been going on for years and very few device drivers these days are shipped without being signed by it. Drivers used by software (like firewalls and such) hold the biggest share today of unsigned drivers.
It's probably worth mentioning at some stage that WHQL is not a requirement for any driver on any variant or edition of Windows. The only requirement for all drivers on Vista x64 is that they are signed with the publisher's code signing certificate - which is used to verify their authenticity/integrity and also to allow the administrator to make a trust-based decision at install time.
What is "safe" driver anyway? For the record, to create a x64 driver you simply change one flag on the C++ compiler. Assuming your code was written correctly in the first place (and driver developers are usually the best C++'ers out of any industry) then you won't have to do anything else. Just recompile, job done.
"you should be using it because it should be much better and faster. And it isn't atm."
And that's exactly the reason why people are using it! Vista x64 is more secure, faster and more future proofed.
"For the purpose of the example - Vista 64, today, is just as useful as NT on Alphas"
Again, WTF? NT4 for Alpha didn't have WOW64. XP and Vista x64 does. These operating systems can run 32-bit x86 code at native speed.
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As a relative Vista newbie I went with 64-bit purely for the future-proofing reasons. I had expected lots of problems due to the fact that I knew that XP x64 wasn't well supported in drivers, but everything has been seamless. I haven't had any problems at all - although I would stress I'm not using any esoteric hardware (just ATI, Creative, Intel, ASUS, etc stuff)
v0n said:
Dood your pretty clueless tbh I realise this is gonna go right over most peoples heads but still, there are many advantages 64bit not just that it can address a larger physical address space. For a start you can have a larger virtual address space. I.e you can have very large files can be operated on by mapping the entire file into the process' address space (which is generally faster than working with file read/write calls), rather than having to map regions of the file into and out of the address space.
Instruction pointer relative data access - I.e you can now reference data relative to the instruction pointer thus shared libraries which use position independant code are more efficient.
More xmm registers/more general registers allowing more local variables to be stored instead of on the stack (which is quicker to operate on).
So yes you do get a slight performance increase when code is written to use these features.
And one of the most important features for me, ASLR is near impossible to bruteforce on 64bit where on 32bit its totally possible.
Im not sticking up for vista here (its crap, but an improvement on xp in most areas).
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Soldato
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same hereDurzel said:
i upgraded to vista 64bit on my laptop(AMD turion64x2/nvidia7600) and i only had 1 driver that i had to wait a few weeks to come out(built in webcam).
every thing else went fine and the laptops running great on vista 64
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leaskovski said:
Just as i thought. The option in Vista Boot Pro doesn't work.
Does anyone know how to tell Vista 64 to always allow unsigned drivers without having to go through the F8 boot process?
leaskovski said:Just as i thought. The option in Vista Boot Pro doesn't work.
Does anyone know how to tell Vista 64 to always allow unsigned drivers without having to go through the F8 boot process?
You first need to open a Command Prompt window in Administrator mode.
1) Click Start, All Programs, Accessories.
2) Right click on the Command Prompt program and choose "Run as administrator".
Next, you need to alter the Boot Configuration Data store to disable signed
driver checks.
1) Type the following into the command prompt EXACTLY (yes, that is two D's)
bcdedit -set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
This was taken fom the the XBCD vista-64 360 driver txt file.
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Whoop whoop!
That seems to have done the job! Many Thanks.
Now i just need to get my Webcam working (Logitech QuickCam Express) and somehow figure out how to be able to use all my buttons on my mouse (Logitech MouseMan Wheel)
Edit....
Mousewheel solved!
http://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/XMouseButtonControl.htm
Great little app!
That seems to have done the job! Many Thanks.
Now i just need to get my Webcam working (Logitech QuickCam Express) and somehow figure out how to be able to use all my buttons on my mouse (Logitech MouseMan Wheel)
Edit....
Mousewheel solved!
http://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/XMouseButtonControl.htm
Great little app!
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