News Industry says Vista 64 not ready

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/01/15/Industry_says_vista_64_not_ready/

 

hmmmm thats a bit crap! I wonder when CK will comment

 

64-bit is next to useless outside of scientific computing anyway. The benefits would probably be minimal anyway. It was a good move, but nothing revolutionary. Marketing took advantage of how people think "ZOMG MORE BITS ITS FASTAR!!"

 

Emon, while you're right to a point, take a look at the 64 bit enhancements to Far Cry.

Are we sure this isn't just FUD being thrown up by a couple of manufacturers?

 

No, 64-bit drivers are still sketchy in their availability, and many are still not overly stable.
This, despite the fact that 64-bit XP has been widely available for 18mths+ and hardware manufacturers have known about Vista's requirements for over a year...

 

If I recall correctly, a modern graphics driver is roughly 20 million lines of code - that's more lines of code than there were in Windows NT 4.0, to put things into perspective.

 

I'll be waiting until mid-year before I buy either version, as that's when I'll hopefully be upgrading.

 

Well, i made the mistake of getting XP X64 and have re-gretted it every single day. The drivers are a nightmare, and it took almost a year to get the correct drivers for me to be able to get onto the Internet with.

I'll be buying the 32 Bit version, but only when its required for my school network.

 

I had originally planned to pick up the 32 bit ultimate in a couple weeks, but now I'm debating waiting til my next upgrade. I'm hoping by then that x64 will be more widely supported and I will see a real benefit. For now, I just can't justify x64, and will get the 32bit if I decide not to wait.

 

doesnt the retail DVD ship with all the versions of Vista on it? both 64 and 32bit (at least the RTM ones did...)

So, its not that MS has broken Vista x64, its that the companies cant be assed to rewrite 64bit drivers, even though all the chips are now 64bit, xp 64 was released what, 2 years ago? and linux supports them too... so where is the incentive NOT to get off their asses and redo their drivers that they haven't touched in many a year.

This isn't Vistas fault that lazy companies haven't updated their drivers... maybe support for that hardware should be dropped in Vista and watch the companies then beg to get put back onto it.

 

I have the 64 bit version of XP and I dont have a problem with it. All my hardware works fine and my system is 100% stable.

 

im hanging on with XP, maby experement with X64 XP. Wont get vista till 64bit is stable for my hardware.

 

Hell I can't even get 32bit drivers for all my hardware in Vista let alone 64-bit!

I'm holding off for a while, but once driver support is there I'll move towards 32-bit Vista I think - the only benefits I've seen so far for me for 64-bit are the patches for Far Cry and HL2 - not worth the extra hassle IMHO.

I will definitely be moving to Vista as soon as driver support is there though - I've been running the RC's for the past couple of months on my old desktop machine and I really like it.

 

Retail Vista is 32 and 64 bit on the DVD. I think it was for this reason aswell.

With the retail version people will be able to start with 32bit and when driver compatibility increases to a usable extent people will be able to easily migrate to 64bit without any extra payments.

Thus preventing customers from complaining that they have to pay for the extra features.

OEM builders should know if the drivers are there for their hardware and can therefore decide which version they want to pass the savings to the customer.

 

Honestly, I don't think I'll be upgrading to Vista unless I ABSOLUTLY have to, especially after reading this.

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

Its a Cost benefit artical, and its a real eye opener on what they are doing with Vista. while its a long read, I think this community will find it EXTREAMLY interesting.

 

I'll be going to Vista 32 (XP-64 still doesn't have drivers for all my hardware ), to be installed on a separate partition and used ONLY for gaming.

Day to day use will still be with XP.

Aggies

 

After breifly reading over the linked article, my good mood for the day vanished. Also the "Vista Bumper"" article from a month back killed most of my enthusiasim for Vista.

The linked article is very good from HellRazor, can bit-tech fact-check, comment, or do a follow up article?

 

I was not entertaining the possibility of getting Vista until SP1 is released anyway; so this doesn't have a great impact for me right now. I don't see that it's Microsoft's fault, however... it's just companies who can't be bothered to write 64-bit drivers.

Although the issue seems to be that the computing industry itself seems to think that 64-bit is the way to go, but no one wants to take those first steps out of the norm... look how long it took for 16-bit to finally die. AMD made the first 64-bit steps with the Athlon 64, and it took ages for 64-bit software (other than linux) to make use of it. Windows XP x64 was a lot of a miss, as hardly any companies bothered to write drivers for it. I think 64-bit Vista will (and is) suffer the same problems...

...but then, 32-bit Vista seems to have the same lack of enthusiasm...

 

Im using the 64bit version of Vista as my main OS and Ive got drivers for pretty much everything and the stuff i havnt got is not because its x64 its because there just arnt any Vista drivers for those things at all

 

I was just thinking the same thing.

Vista x64 is pretty good, but I have no 64-bit tv card drivers, as soon as the driver problem is fixed then goodbye x86.