which os and drivers for athlon64?

[gaurav_018]

i recently bought a athlon 64 2800+and a geforce6800. i also recentlly found out that there are 64-bit drivers available from nvidia. my questions are these-
1.in order to use the forceware 64-bit drivers do i have to use the 64-bit XP?
2.is the 64-bit xp stable enough to consider upgrading to? and is it faster that regular xp?

[amitsaudy]

Windows XP 64 bit is out ????????????

[theraven]

Originally Posted by amitsaudy

Windows XP 64 bit is out ????????????

no its in beta
not scheduled for release till mid 2005 atleast

gaurav hmmm i dun think u need 64 bit os for anything 64 bit

u see with amd64's x86-64 architecture ... 8 additional registers are allowed to the programmer ... and in full 64 bit ... 16 registers are provided
therefore any 64 bit app,driver etc will be utilising these registers ...

as far as ur driver installs on ur 32 bit os ... it should run !!!

if it aint compatible i think it'll give an error right during installation
anyways u can always rollback ur driver

[funkymonkey]

64 bit drivers are only ment to be used on 64 bit Windows XP beta.
So unless you are running that dont use 64bit drivers.
As of now Windows Xp 64bit is not a good choice if you need stable and properly working OS. it has issues. Also you may have drivers for your graphic card but not all devices have 64 bit drivers, there is problem faced by many with their modem or motherboard drivers which causes serious sluggishness of system.
A64 are fast enough in 32 for now so use 32 bit normal windows and normal windows XP drivers.
You can give it a try but backup all your data before doing that.

[theraven]

hmmm i think i stand corrected
u will need a 64 bit os for 64 bit drivers
anyways righ tnow there are linux distros which are 64 bit
for windows .. wait till late 2005

[funkymonkey]

if you really want to see the power of 64 bit processor then use the RED hat 64 bit.