Originally posted by: BadKarma
Do you notice any speed improvement running apps, playing games, web surfing, etc. in XP 64?
I have a Dual boot set up with my old 32bit XP and 64bit XP beta.
I can't migrate totally to XP x64 yet as there are no drivers for my "Edirol FA-101"... But here is my experience.
Once I got the 64bit drivers installed, I found it a stable and very responsive system, more so than 32bit. All my programs newer than 4 years worked fine, but older programs tended to freak out due to total lack of 16bit support. I was able to get drivers for all my hardware except my "Edirol FA-101" which is very important to me, that's a shame. I Emailed Edirol, and they said drivers would not be available until XP64 is released (This makes sense, as Edirol never release drivers until they are 100% stable, they have built their reputation on this).
I will be getting XP64 as soon as Edirol get some drivers for it.
32bit programs show no difference from running on 32bit windows... but I've noticed that programs that have a 64bit verison do actually run faster... probably due to the better piplining and optimisation of the AMD64 ISA... not to mention the ability to use 16regs... I found the 64bit drivers to be more responsive than their 32bit counterparts (could be psychological, based on the GeForce drivers).
I know that 64bit apps are not able to use the old x87 FPU, but instead have to use the much more powerfull SSE units, I think that improves performance a bit.
I hope that helps a bit.