Running XP64 on your 570RU/5793

So you want to use all 4GB of RAM in your laptop and also get the 64-bit experience, but Vista is a little scary. It's OK, I sympathize. What's a person to do?

Did you know MS makes Windows XP in a 64-bit flavor?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/default.mspx

This isn't XP up-ported to 64-bit, this is actually Windows Server 2003 64-bit cut down to a workstation level. It's very nice, very fast, and is a nice low-resource alternative to bloaty Vista x64. It's a server-grade OS, for the desktop!

XP64 does suffer from a certain "red-headed stepchild" effect. Microsoft originally promoted it fairly well (I have an XP64 t-shirt) but suddenly shifted gears and decided to make it an OEM-only affair. OEMs don't seem big on it either, so it is kind of lost. However, being based on 2003 Server, it has support, and will have support for the foreseeable future, at least from MS.

Drivers have always been the big sticking point for XP64. Most people say "it has no drivers nothing runs it sucks blahblah" but in all truth this is overstated. There ARE drivers for XP64 for most things. As you will see, for our laptops we can get most stuff working with recent, supported drivers. XP64 is also highly compatible with 32-bit apps, and yes, it makes for a good gaming OS.

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Note: I have found working drivers for most things. I was not able to get the Infrared or STK1135 web camera working. I don't know about the other model of web camera. I also did not try to get drivers for certain things.

Chipset:
Intel's chipset drivers are an all-in-one thing. XP64 support is provided in the same utility that handles other Windows OSs. The drivers that come with the laptop should also work, if they use the stock Intel installer. Otherwise, just get them from Intel.com.

Video:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18339 . nVidia tends to release XP64 drivers around the same time as the XP32 drivers. If 174.93 is not to your liking, feel free to try any older version. I had good benchmarks with the 169's. The laptopvideo2go site has the necessary INF file to install nVidia's drivers on laptops. Yes, even the 32-bit OSs need this.

Sound:
Realtek has drivers for XP64 at their website, www.realtek.com.tw. They use the same package for XP32/64. The drivers are current.

Network:
Wired:
I believe this works out of the box. However, Realtek also has drivers on their site. I checked there just now, and the XP64 drivers were updated on 04/21/2008. Yesterday.

Wireless:
Intel has current 4965AGN XP64 drivers on their website.

Bluetooth:
I didn't fool with this, as I have no use for it. However, the "Vista" bluetooth driver on Clevo's website is a generic AMD64 (ie. Windows 64-bit) installer. I believe I tried this and it worked.

Fingerprint reader:
No use for this either, but the Vista drivers appeared to install the device.

CIR (Infrared):
Never got this working. No driver I tried would get the thing to recognize, and it caused me some grief for a while cuz the driver got stuck in a "installed but wrong" state. GRR.

Webcam:
The STK1135 never worked in XP64. The drivers don't even want to install.

Hotkeys:
To be honest I never tried a driver since I never use these. XP64 does recognize the "mail" and "W" keys and uses them as labeled. The "A" doesn't do anything. This is the same in Vista if no driver is loaded. The "Fn+<x>" keys all do as they say.

Touchpad:
I never tried a driver for this, as I use a mouse. The pad does function with normal capabilities as if no special driver was installed.

USB, FireWire:
Recognized by default, no other action needed.

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XP64 is a good way to extend your fear of Vista for a while longer while still getting the full use of your 4GB of RAM and also getting your feet wet with 64-bit apps. I am not sure I recommend buying it for a whole lot (newegg has it for $139) but if you have access to it from work or whatever, and want a good reason to re-do your laptop (and don't need the webcam or infrared) give it a try.

 

XP64 has no official support in the Sager factory,and the drivers are very scarce indeed.
As you mentioned,some things just don`t work. IR, Webcam, Bluetooth. A lot of people use them on a regular basis,myself included.
Vista x64 is far better in driver support,albeit still lacking quite a lot.With 4gb RAM , vista won`t feel sluggish anymore.

 

I use Vista x64...

XP x64 have a huge problem... yes it works and yes there is some drivers that "work" on it... I said "work" because is that the best word to describe it. Most of the drivers for XP x64 if not all are code transpositions from "others" versions of Windows, briefly there is no direct driver optimizations on that OS. As a consequence of that, is frequent bugs and problems on that drivers, affecting the stability of the OS.

The XP x64 never was supported by all terms of this word, since it´s 1st day. Now with the countdown to XP's discontinuation... it´s even worst...

And because XP x64 is W2003 kernel based, I don't believe that microsoft will even work on updates for it(aka SP3). As you know, the SP3 will be only disponible to x86 versions of XP...

On my experience, an Vista x64 well tweaked will be very near in terms off GUI and kernel operations speed of XP.

I go for Vista x64...

 

I use vista 64 on my desktop, its fine once you disable all the BS services. I recommend checking out this site for tweaking vista or any OS. http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/supertweaks.htm

 

Yeah, XP64 isn't particularly popular, and it does have a certain taboo to it. However, it's not a bad OS, and as you can see, many of the drivers are still updated and current. I ran XP64 on my 5793 for a brief time, and I still run it on my desktop rig. I'm still debating if Vista's pretty Aero theme is worth the 8+GB extra disk space and several hundreds megs of extra RAM Vista gobbles up.

I was *originally* going to detail use of a different OS, but I thought the mods might take issue with it.

 

Great read, can I add this to the owners lounge/FAQ?

 

Add it wherever ya like!

 

I just ordered my Sager NP5793 on 21st Apr!!!
I configured it without an OS, as i already have Vista x64 + SP1!

I wanna know,
is Vista x64 good for gaming? i mean as compared to xp(32bit)??
I've read that gamers prefer XP SP3!!? nd their 3DMark scores r better in XP?

But, since mine will be coming with 4GB ram, i'll have to use a 64bit OS to utilize all 4 gigs!!?

so is Vista x64 ok? will i notice any loss of fps in games??

Thanks

 

i run vista myself just fine.. i may even be one of the very select few who (dare i say this here) like vista better than xp.. once vista is configured the way i want to and i re-gain total admin control over my system i really like vista..0 crashes to date (well ok 1 but that was due to a bad update which could happen to xp also) running on 24+ machines in our business' about half run vista 64.. the rest run 32.. i dual boot 32 and 64 myself.. no issues whatsoever

 

S. Subzero have you ever tried to install fedora or ubuntu on it?

 

I run Windows XP x64 on my desktop and it has been very stable and reliable for me. It is basically Server 2003 as the original poster noted without the server parts.

The problem with XP x64 for notebooks is the lack of driver support. However if you found the drivers to get everything working with the NP5793, that's great and I would recommend using it. It's definitely a better choice than Vista in my experience.

 

I just read an very interesting article about gaming-performance on vista-64 and SP-1 in comparison with XP. The website is called "computerbase" and is in my opinion a serious source for all kinds of information regarding PCs. Its also very popular with IT-students and gamers.

Its widely beleaved that vista will cut a lot of performance from your system. (10-15% maybe?) According to the comparison the gap between XP and Vista performancewise has been closed and even in some cases (especialy true for ATI-Cards) can outperform XP-platforms, because the gpu-developers started to concentrate their driver-development on VISTA, thus some new driver-features dont even find their way into XP-based drivers.

Just have a look at the benchmarks. I thought it a quite interesting read:
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/software/2008/bericht_windows_vista_geschwindigkeitscheck/

On the right side you find quick-references to the bechmarks.

Maybe a change is on the wind? Maybe other websites come to a similar conclusion?
If the theroy stated above should be turn out to be true, it should also be an interesting find for the thread opener....

I`d like to hear your thoughts...

greetings
Paendrag