Windows XP 64-Bit Preview: First Look at Athlon 64 Performance

The actual performance under Windows XP 64-bit Preview showed great promise, but it is still something of a mixed bag.  We were impressed that the CPU, Floating Point, and memory ALL showed performance improvement in XP64 compared to regular XP.  This promises that we will eventually see the performance improvements in applications that is potentially there in the move to 64-bit extensions.  We were also impressed with the 15%+ improvement in Media Encoding when running the same 32-bit encoding program under XP and XP64.  Performance of current 32-bit games under SP64, however, was below expectations.

Anand's 64-bit testing with Linux at launch showed we could expect a 10% to 20% increase in performance with a 64-bit OS for the Athlon 64.  Certainly we don't see anything in these early tests that would change that expectation when running 64-bit programs under Windows XP 64-bit.  However, there are still unanswered concerns about how current 32-bit software, in particular games, will run on the release version of Windows XP 64-bit.  Drivers and further optimizations will certainly improve and possibly remove this 20% performance penalty in gaming.  This is, after all, a preview version with immature drivers and almost no graphics support.  We have no doubt after this preview that 64-bit applications will run faster, but we really don't yet have an answer to the question of how existing 32-bit games will run.  We should have a better answer to this in the next few months.

Microsoft's last major preview release was Windows XP.  One of the things that public preview accomplished was to push manufacturers to quickly update their drivers for the new Operating System.  You will be frustrated searching for drivers to get the best performance from XP64 Preview, but the release of the free Preview version will speed up that process considerably.  Nothing seems to get action from manufacturers faster than consumers screaming for driver updates.  Perhaps that was Microsoft's plan, a very clever one, to push manufacturers into completing work on 64-bit drivers for the new Operating System.

If you enjoy the bleeding edge, then by all means give the public preview of Windows XP 64-bit a whirl.  We do suggest you use the caution of setting it up on a separate drive or installing your current OS as a multi-boot with XP64 preview.  In general we are impressed with the demonstrated potential of XP64, and we are anxious to see how far drivers and updates will take performance of current 32-bit games.