Windows vista 64-bit info and some benchmarks

So we have been offering vista 64 bit for a week or so now. after playing around with it i found the following
1. if you buy an asus or most likely any other brand with vista 32bit all you need is a 64bit cd. you do not need a 64bit product key. that means all you pirates out there save between 100-200$.
2. it seems to work with pretty much all software. I have not run into any problems. just in case the o.s. comes with 2 program files folders. one for 64bit apps (default) and another for 32 bit apps if you are experiencing problems. i still dont know why it matters but i am not a programmer
3. Vista 64bit has full support for 4gb of ram
4. thus far i know that most if not all santa rosa models from asus have 64bit drivers already on the driver disk that comes with it. so far i ve checked the g2s and g1s
5. here is the 3dmark score on a not so base g1s-a1

 

Oops, Link doesnt seem to work..

 

darnit, i forgot to upload it. give it a few min

 

glad to see that Vista recognizes 4g of RAM, but that '06 score seems a little low...if you have photoshop or some other RAM intensive programs I'd like to see some benchmarks to see if it really uses 4g or if it just says you've got 4g.

 

why does it seem low? its a bit higher then 3dmark on vista 32 bit with 2gb ram. 3dmark is a 32bit app not 64bit. if futuremark had a 64bit app then the results would be better

 

The score is on a stock 8600M GT, right? Any other upgrades done other then the RAM?

If so, that score is not low but better then the stock 3Dmark06 score on Vista 32..

 

where did you get the drivers for vista 64bit?

 

Anyways, I have been using Vista Ultimate x64 for several weeks now, only issues I have had is BF2142 likes to crash every few games, and my logitech webcam's microphone is messing up.

I think I have a fix for the microphone issue tho, as for BF2142 thats for EA to fix.

I have done benchmarks comparing XP to Vista Ultimate x64 and my 3dmark06 scores and a few games with built in benchmarks gave me lower scores in Vista vs XP, however I do have a feeling that the x64 scores are higher than what I would get with x86 vista.

The OS is very fast and snappy and web browsing seems faster too than xp.

Mostly tho I would put my money on the fact that the increase in ram is whats giving you the boost in score not the x64 interface. There are test using 2gb ram Vista x64 vs 4gb of ram and the 4gb showed about a 6% increase on average in performance in games.



Game Memory Used on 2GB System Memory Used on 4GB System % Improvement
Operating System 784MB 1.11GB -
Age of Empires 3 1.03GB 1.53GB 6%
Battlefield 2 1.89GB 2.17GB 2%
Battlefield 2142 Demo 1.85GB 2.71GB 18%
Call of Duty 2 1.77GB 1.86GB 19%
F.E.A.R. 1.76GB 2.10GB 11%
Ghost Recon: AW 1.56GB 1.85GB 13%
Half-Life 2: EP1 1.50GB 1.93GB 4%
Oblivion 1.31GB 1.69GB 4%
Tomb Raider: Legend 880MB 1.18GB


source - http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=3135&Itemid=40&limit=1&limitstart=3

 

thanks, I really appreciate someone giving me a straight forward answer. Some other members on this forum would rather just dick me around for it.

 

Waayyy OT, but I love your profile pic voteccow.

 

hahaha, nice.

 

Yeah I chuckle when people say they are going to run a 32 bit OS with 4gb RAM, weather it is XP or Vista, it may see it, but it doesn't fully ultlise it!

I run XP64 ed at work with 4GB RAM, photoshop has a massive performance boost, over the same setup under XP 32.

In terms of drivers, our IT guy was recently in a microsoft discussion group in California (kind of a "quizz the hell out of a microsoft rep" regarding 64bit computing) one interesting thing Mocrosoft are doing is Vista 64 will not run unsigned drivers, however when manufacturers are requesting a 32bit driver, Microsoft are making them also provide a 64bit driver at the same time.

So hopefully this will force many more 64bit drivers on to the market in the near future.

 

There is a page called Asus Vista drivers in the sticky thread information booth, all the drivers are focused there. 32bit and 64bit.