Thinking of x64

[Stu1983]

Anyone else running XPx64 out there?

I'm giving my arcade/server pc a major upgrade and I'm thinking of sticking XPx64 on it?

Anyone had any problems with various emulators?

I know there's a problem flashing a mini ipac on XPx64 but I'm happy with the way I have my controls set and haven't had to flash it for over a year now so that's not a major issue.

Then the other thing is, is there any real advantages of running XPx64, does MAME run any better on 64 bit?

I got my hands on a very cheap 3.16ghz Wolfdale so I've just bought a motherboard and 4gigs of ram to go with it, so running x64 will give me all 4gigs rather than the 3gig limit of 32bit

I know this is all pretty much overkill for a machine running emulators but this machine also serves as my file server, ftp and download machine so it'll do a lot of extracting and stuff too

I'm thinking for the few gain that x64 offers, I could be creating myself a lot of problems in the long run.

Cheers

Stu

[headkaze]

I run XP 64 an I'm very happy with it. If you run Mame64 on a 64 bit OS you will see a substancial speed improvment. Mame is being optimized for Dual Core processors so it actually does make a big difference. The Mame developers themselves say people with 32 bit machines are already being left behind.

There is a thread on BYOAC here where people have posted benchmark results running 64-bit Mame.

I don't actually run emulators on my 64-bit machine (it's only for software dev at the moment) but I'm sure as more stuff moves to 64 bit and programmers get better at optimizing code for multi-core processors you will see great benefits.

[Canti]

If I understand right, for Windows it's only 16bit applications and 32bit drivers that don't work right?

[Stu1983]

Good man headkaze, that's a very interesting read by the sounds of it a vlite version of Vista64 might be a better choice, going by that thread there is an Arcade VGA problem with XPx64, must check with Andy at Ultimarc and see

Stu

[LB11]

I cant vouch for xp64 since I tried it when it was new and the audigy drivers would BSOD on boot everytime.....

I did recently switch to vista64 and am happy as well. It was a little tricky for me getting all the codecs working since you have 32bit and 64bit WMP and the same for codecs and blah blah blah. I can also vouch for mame being quite a bit faster!

[Stu1983]

Made a vlite version of Vista64 last night, got the initial install footprint down from 15 gigs 5 gigs.

I'm going to have to make it again though as I removed Media Player 11 from the install disk and it turns out GameEx requires it to run, thankfully it was 1 of the first things I tried to install so I hadn't wasted too much time getting everything else working.

The only other problem I've had is Andy's ArcadeVGA TriSync utility doesn't work on 64bit Vista so I'm stuck with an interlaced display for now but I emailed him he's says he'll update it.

As a side note Tom, your installer checks if media player is installed and if it doesn't find it it goes of and downloads it from Microsoft, the version it downloads is the XP version which won't install on Vista so you might want to add a check for which version of windows the user is installing GameEx on and warn them that they can't install Media Player on a Vista machine... I think this could only happen with people that are using a vlite version like me though so it's probably not a big deal.

Stu