[mknabster]

Hey guys, i currently have XP Pro Sp2 32bit installed on Bootcamp, but i would love to be able to utilize my 4 GBs of RAM with XP 64bit. I tried Vista 64bit, but it wasn't compatible with half of my programs. So i was wondering, can i upgrade my existing 32bit version of XP to 64bit, and would the drivers still work? Like i know Apple doesn't have a set of drivers for XP 64bit, but would the 32bit ones work if i upgraded?

[Kaoro]

From Microsoft's site:

Quote

Q. Why is there no driver for my [Insert your device name here]?
A.
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition requires that all system drivers be rewritten as 64-bit drivers, 32-bit drivers will not work. The hardware manufacturers are the ones who need to write new drivers, and they're working on it, but it's a resource issue. Writing and certifying a driver takes time and lots and lots of testing. Resources are always constrained, so the manufacturer needs to make a business decision about which hardware has priority for new drivers. This generally means that the focus is on the newest equipment, and older drivers may take a while, or never be done.

I have no experience with XP 64bit or Vista, though.

[J'nathus]

The general consensus I've heard is that XP 64-bit is more trouble than it's worth. If you want 64-bit then Vista 64 is the way to go. Windows 7 64-bit has similar tolerances as well.

You said Vista 64 wasn't compatible with 'half' of your programs. Could you tell me which programs those were? Were they games?

[Dark_Archon]

64 bit XP has issues. If you want to be able to address more RAM, Vista 64 bit is the way to go. I had no issues with Vista Business X64 and software compatibility. A few things didn't work right, but setting the apps to run in compatibility mode fixed that.

Having said that, if you only have 4GB RAM, you shouldn't see that much of a performance difference between 32 and 64 bit windows.

[J'nathus]

Agreed. Anything that'll run in 32-bit Vista, should run in 64-bit as 64-bit is sort of really 32-bit AND 64-bit. In 32-bit Windows, If you have 4 GB of RAM and a 256 MB video card, you should still have at least 3.3 GB free for system RAM, which should suffice.