Reply 20 of 105, by mothergoose729
wrote:Well, but at that point you might as well just run Windows 7. But then again, the kind of machine we're talking about is better […]
wrote:XP does come in an x64 flavor as well. The x64 drivers are mature as well. There are also some games that have x64 executables which run a bit faster than their 32-bit counterparts,
Well, but at that point you might as well just run Windows 7. But then again, the kind of machine we're talking about is better for 7 anyway. Part of the whole reason for running XP to begin with is because of how well it works with 2001-2007-ish-era 32-bit hardware, pre-AMD64.
Perhaps a better question would be: what is the fastest XP setup that is still a 32-bit CPU? In which case the answer would probably be a dual-core Pentium 4 or Xeon, overclocked, with some kind of high-end Nvidia GPU.
As soon as you go 64-bit, you had better have a 64-bit OS to take full advantage of the system, and immediately your best option (depending on your RAM requirements) is either Windows 7 or some Linux distro.
For maximum compatibility XP 32 bit does make more sense. From a compatibility standpoint, 64bit capable CPUs perform identically to 32 bit only CPUs, just faster. There is definitely software in the later XP life time that benefits from core2duo or better IPC and clock speeds. The only CPU compatibility related issues I am aware of have to do with multiple cores or hypter threading. Some very early XP games can run too fast or unstable if they have access to a second thread. The easiest solution is to just force thread assignment through the task manager, or to use a fast single core CPU or disable cores and hyper threading in the bios.
Even for late XP games, having true hardware accelerated EAX, which is only supported on XP, makes it worth running some later era XP games that are also capable of running on windows 7 or later operating systems. Most of them do sound the same through alchemy, but not all of them are supported through software.