[Need Info] 32 bit applications in a 64 bit environment

[Need Info] 32 bit applications in a 64 bit environment
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devolic @ 1st Nov 12:01PM:
[Need Info] 32 bit applications in a 64 bit environment

How good do 32 bit applications perform in a 64 bit system? The system in particular is XP Pro.

(1) Is there a lot of 64 bit software out there?

(2) If the software isn't designed for 64 bit what will happen?
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WinXP Pro SP3
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sivran @ 1st Nov 12:43PM:
Re: [Need Info] 32 bit applications in a 64 bit environment

quote:
(1) Is there a lot of 64 bit software out there?

Not really but I haven't really looked for 64 bit versions of software that works on x64.

quote:
(2) If the software isn't designed for 64 bit what will happen?

Depends on what the software is doing. Q-Dir, for example, crashed. Fortunately there's a 64bit version available.
Sandboxie, OTOH, functions but cannot provide complete isolation on x64 like it can on 32.
Antivirus and Firewall programs will either refuse to install or just crash. Incidentally you're stuck with Comodo or Outpost for firewall on XP64.

Most of the software on my XP64 box is 32 bit and runs just fine.
--
In dadkins' memory, Think outside the Fox...
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Ryan @ 1st Nov 01:35PM:
Re: [Need Info] 32 bit applications in a 64 bit environment

1. Not too much out there right now since it is not really necessary for most applications.

2. Nothing. Most of your 32 bit applications will run just like they would since x64 is backwards compatible. The only trouble you would run into is drivers (you need 64) and applications that rely on drivers to run. For example sandboxie wont work on x64 since they refuse to release a 64 bit version of their application. The benefit is really in the OS which allows it to address more then 4 gigs of memory properly. Also some applications that do a lot of cpu based work will also benefit from 64 bit.
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devolic @ 2nd Nov 03:41PM:
Re: [Need Info] 32 bit applications in a 64 bit environment

said by sivran :

Antivirus and Firewall programs will either refuse to install or just crash. Incidentally you're stuck with Comodo or Outpost for firewall on XP64.

What about ESET I know they have a 64 bit version. Will it work on XP?
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WinXP Pro SP3
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sivran @ 2nd Nov 04:25PM:
Re: [Need Info] 32 bit applications in a 64 bit environment

If it says it will, then it should. I was mainly referring to freebies when I said you're stuck with Comodo or Outpost.
--
In dadkins' memory, Think outside the Fox...
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tim_k @ 3rd Nov 06:41AM:
Re: [Need Info] 32 bit applications in a 64 bit environment

I've heard that there are lots of problems with 64 bit XP. On 64 bit Vista & Win 7, I haven't had any troubles with 32 bit programs so far.
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Pyrion @ 3rd Nov 07:19AM:
Re: [Need Info] 32 bit applications in a 64 bit environment

said by Ryan :

Most of your 32 bit applications will run just like they would since x64 is backwards compatible. The only trouble you would run into is drivers (you need 64) and applications that rely on drivers to run.

I seem to recall that AdAware won't run properly on x64 installs due to x64 utilizing dual registry hives. Don't know if they've fixed that yet.

The benefit is really in the OS which allows it to address more then 4 gigs of memory properly. Also some applications that do a lot of cpu based work will also benefit from 64 bit.

That's only with applications compiled for x64. The only benefit 32-bit apps get whatsoever from running in a 64-bit environment is from the available virtual memory addresses, and if the application isn't large address-aware, the Windows kernel will still limit the application to 2GB of virtual memory before killing it with an out-of-memory error. 32-bit applications that are large address-aware get the full 4GB (which they wouldn't get in a 32-bit environment unless PAE is enabled, and there's a clusterfuck most people won't want to get into).

I'd say CPU-wise, 64-bit applications only get about a 20-30% speed boost over 32-bit applications. However, there's no speed penalty whatsoever for running 32-bit apps in a 64-bit OS, at least as far as x64 is concerned. All you've got is an abstraction layer that switches the CPU back to 32-bit compatibility mode for the threads that need it, there's no "emulation" done on the software side at all.
--
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell
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TVisitor @ 7th Nov 07:48PM:
Re: [Need Info] 32 bit applications in a 64 bit environment

I work in a shop that does development. We're not testing any of our software on XP 64 bit, but we have done testing on Vista and Windows 7 64 bit. While the software works very well under the 32 bit versions of all of them, there are issues under 64 bit. Some of our software has been under the same codebase for many years (10 years or so), and many of the issues were not in our codebase, but the underlying Microsoft DLL's. If you're a C++ developer and using MFC, we've noticed the MFC that shipped w/Visual Studio 6 has vastly more problems than the MFC that ships with, say Visual Studio 2008. That seems to make perfect sense... It's really a try and see thing - there may be cases where software bombs only when you use certain features. It's really kind of a crapshoot in that regard.

From other experience, tools that used Cygwin didn't work well. Later, there was a new Cygwin1.dll that worked just great under 64 bit as well as 32 bit. So any application that used it, would not work either.

I haven't had tons of need, personally, to move to 64 bit OS's, but now that I've started using VM's for development, that would be a GREAT reason to go 64 bit. Load up your primary system with gobs of RAM, and then you can have each VM use the full amount of memory that it can (even on a 32 bit guest OS, you can at least then use maximum amount of RAM, assuming your base system has enough!)

A virtual machine would be a great way to get stuff to work that doesn't play nice under 64 bit OS's. However, I really don't know speedwise how some things would work (any games that really need horsepower, do a lot of heavy 3D graphics, etc.) I have played with games in VM's before I discovered DOS Box, but they were all old DOS games - they worked pretty good :)
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hroo772 @ 8th Nov 11:20PM:
Re: [Need Info] 32 bit applications in a 64 bit environment

said by TVisitor :

A virtual machine would be a great way to get stuff to work that doesn't play nice under 64 bit OS's. However, I really don't know speedwise how some things would work (any games that really need horsepower, do a lot of heavy 3D graphics, etc.) I have played with games in VM's before I discovered DOS Box, but they were all old DOS games - they worked pretty good :)

The newest vmware (6.5 - 7.x) support direct3d acceleration for the virtual machine image. So you can play modern games (counterstrike and others) inside of a virtual machine, since it just passes the info off to your graphics card. There is a small performance hit, but its not as bad as you'd think. The other part is that some games have problems, but it happens since this feature is still getting its kinks worked out by vmware.
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