32-bits vs 64-bits on new Intel Macs

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Intel is releasing the dual-core Pentium Ms early 2006 or late 2005 with Apple
rumored to start shipping products with Pentium Ms starting in April/May.

Intel will be coming out with 64-bit DC Pentium Ms in the second-half of 2006.
In general, would you wait for the 64-bit platform or go with the 32-bit platforms?

BTW, my guess is that the 17-inch PB will be 64-bit only which is why that
one is projected to ship a few months later than the 32-bit models.
 
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mynameis said:
Aren't the current mobile processors all 32bit?

Yes, the current ones are. But I was asking whether people would buy the
32-bit systems or wait a few months for the 64-bit systems in the Powerbook
line.
 
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mynameis said:
I wouldn't wait.

Even if you knew that the architecture could natively address more than 4 GB (maybe useful for video rendering) and that you get an 8 extra General Purpose Registers and an 8 extra multimedia registers?
 
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Your Mac's Specs
iMac G5
I thought PMG5's are 64-bit?
 
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mynameis said:
Its a laptop, you honestly going to have 4gb+ in it?

Yup. I have 2 GB in my laptop right now and use it. I also have
three operating systems on it and have a partition set aside for another operating system. What I'd like to do is run VMWare with Windows 64 and Linux 64 running at the same time.

Some of the builds that I run use up to 1.6 GB of memory.

Beyond that there are applications that benefit from the ability to address more than 4 GB of memory virtually; even if you have far less than 4 GB of memory.
 
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DCraver said:
I thought PMG5's are 64-bit?

And imacs now too. So would you go from a PMac G5 64 bits with 32 GPRs and 32 Multimedia registers to a Pentium M
32-bits with 8 GPRs and 8 Multimedia registers and no 64-bits?

I have a PowerMac G5 and do use those 64 bits even though
Panther is a 32-bit operating system. The PowerPC is great in
that you can do 64-bit arithmetic even while running in 32-bit
mode which is something that chips from Intel and AMD can't.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Black Colorware PowerBook 1.67 GHz G4, 2 GB DDR2, 100GB 7200 RPM
Two things. DCraver, key word is MOBILE processors. Current MOBILE processors are 32 bit. And mmoy, Intel and AMD CAN, however, take advantage of their 64-bitness in XP Pro, which, in all honesty, if you can afford a 64 bit processor, there's no reason to buy XP Home.

To answer the original question, I honestly would not recommend being an Intel beta tester on the Rev. A products anyway. If you want until Rev. B (or whenever the first 64 bits are released by Apple), by then a lot more software manufacturers will have caught up, and hopefully most/all of the major bugs will be worked out. Though normally you shouldn't wait for a system you need, I'd say in this case it's overwhelmingly worth it. For now just stick with PPC.
 
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First most important thing is Tiger or the next OSX release a 64Bit operating system?

Will you have more then 4 Gig Ram (4Gig is the maximum a 32bit machine can address)?

Will you be running 64Bit Apps on a 64 Bit OS?

For example the G5 is a 64Bit machine but everything that is made for it like apps or the OS, (Eg, photoshop or the OS Tiger) IS 32Bit, So in this case the only thing that give the G5 an advantage over a 32Bit CPU of the same speed (if one existed) would be that the G5 being 64Bit can have more then 4Gb memory.

Is there going to be a 64Bit OSX? (that will need 64bit drivers and so on)?

I know someone who has a Dual Opteron 64Bit with XP 64Bit, and he is using Softimage XSI 5 , 64Bit edition he says it kills the 32Bit one.
But he has 8Gig RAM and a 64Bit CPU,Drivers, OS and Application!!
this is the only way to have all the true power that 64Bit Brings.
He says easily 40% speed gain

So in short if you answer the first 3 questions NO, get the 32Bit now
 
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Meyvn said:
Two things. DCraver, key word is MOBILE processors. Current MOBILE processors are 32 bit. And mmoy, Intel and AMD CAN, however, take advantage of their 64-bitness in XP Pro, which, in all honesty, if you can afford a 64 bit processor, there's no reason to buy XP Home.

To answer the original question, I honestly would not recommend being an Intel beta tester on the Rev. A products anyway. If you want until Rev. B (or whenever the first 64 bits are released by Apple), by then a lot more software manufacturers will have caught up, and hopefully most/all of the major bugs will be worked out. Though normally you shouldn't wait for a system you need, I'd say in this case it's overwhelmingly worth it. For now just stick with PPC.

AMD is shipping a 64-bit mobile processor right now. They also had one of
these for sale in a $400 laptop on Black Friday. It was a low-end chip but it
had 64-bit support in it.

My notebook has a "mobile chip" (x64) though it uses a lot more power than
the current generation of mobile chips. And it's about 18 months old. Have been running Windows x64 since June 2004.
 
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macanal said:
First most important thing is Tiger or the next OSX release a 64Bit operating system?

Will you have more then 4 Gig Ram (4Gig is the maximum a 32bit machine can address)?

Will you be running 64Bit Apps on a 64 Bit OS?

For example the G5 is a 64Bit machine but everything that is made for it like apps or the OS, (Eg, photoshop or the OS Tiger) IS 32Bit, So in this case the only thing that give the G5 an advantage over a 32Bit CPU of the same speed (if one existed) would be that the G5 being 64Bit can have more then 4Gb memory.

Is there going to be a 64Bit OSX? (that will need 64bit drivers and so on)?

I know someone who has a Dual Opteron 64Bit with XP 64Bit, and he is using Softimage XSI 5 , 64Bit edition he says it kills the 32Bit one.
But he has 8Gig RAM and a 64Bit CPU,Drivers, OS and Application!!
this is the only way to have all the true power that 64Bit Brings.
He says easily 40% speed gain

So in short if you answer the first 3 questions NO, get the 32Bit now

Tiger would have to run 64-mode on G5s and 32-bit mode on G4s right now
to support 64-bit. Windows has done this for a while. I don't know for sure as to the level of 64-bit support in Tiger but would guess that they already have it or they'd be at a competitive and marketing disadvantage with Windows and Linux. Linux has had dual 32-bit/64-bit support since 2003.

PowerMac G5s can be ordered with up to 16 GB of memory right now. So I'm pretty sure that there is 64-bit addressing to use all of that memory. It may be that the OS remaps the additional memory to run 32-bit programs but there's something in at least the OS that would have to be 64-bits. I can't imagine them using some ancient form of bank-switching.

On Windows, you can only access 2 GB in User Space. Windows copies the old VMS convention where the upper 2 GB of address space is reserved.

As far as drivers go, you only need to recompile the sources for the drivers in 64-bit mode. Since there is much less third-party stuff compared to Windows, I'd think that this would be a lot easier for Apple to pull off.

I have a code and compiler optimized version of Firefox that will only run on the G5 as I use 64-bit arithmetic. I just have to add a compiler switch and I get hardware long longs. I know that there is portable open source software out there where you can select long long support and get the benefit of 64-bit arithmetic on G5s while you're running a 32-bit program. This isn't
available on x64.

Apple seems to be ahead of the curve on the OS stuff so I wouldn't be surprised if they already had Mac OSX on x64. The dev platform is a Pentium
4 I think and I think that all current Pentium 4s support x64.
 
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mmoy said:
Tiger would have to run 64-mode on G5s and 32-bit mode on G4s right now
to support 64-bit. Windows has done this for a while. I don't know for sure as to the level of 64-bit support in Tiger but would guess that they already have it or they'd be at a competitive and marketing disadvantage with Windows and Linux. Linux has had dual 32-bit/64-bit support since 2003.

PowerMac G5s can be ordered with up to 16 GB of memory right now. So I'm pretty sure that there is 64-bit addressing to use all of that memory. It may be that the OS remaps the additional memory to run 32-bit programs but there's something in at least the OS that would have to be 64-bits. I can't imagine them using some ancient form of bank-switching.

On Windows, you can only access 2 GB in User Space. Windows copies the old VMS convention where the upper 2 GB of address space is reserved.

As far as drivers go, you only need to recompile the sources for the drivers in 64-bit mode. Since there is much less third-party stuff compared to Windows, I'd think that this would be a lot easier for Apple to pull off.

I have a code and compiler optimized version of Firefox that will only run on the G5 as I use 64-bit arithmetic. I just have to add a compiler switch and I get hardware long longs. I know that there is portable open source software out there where you can select long long support and get the benefit of 64-bit arithmetic on G5s while you're running a 32-bit program. This isn't
available on x64.

Apple seems to be ahead of the curve on the OS stuff so I wouldn't be surprised if they already had Mac OSX on x64. The dev platform is a Pentium
4 I think and I think that all current Pentium 4s support x64.

Hope the do bring out a full x64 OSX!!
I wont feel i am using all my G5s Juice until they have a x64 OSX and 64Bit Apps.
As for th intels they can be used with 64Bit OS (XP x64) but they are not a true 64Bit CPU as yet i believe they have a Full 32/64Bit CPU comming next year
 
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Pentium 4s and Pentium Ds have EM64T. Pentium Ms do not yet. Sometime in the second half of the year according to the current schedule.
 
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mmoy said:
Pentium 4s and Pentium Ds have EM64T. Pentium Ms do not yet. Sometime in the second half of the year according to the current schedule.

From what i have read EM64T are not 64Bit Cpu's but are capable of running on Windows x64 ????
I dont get it!?

"Intel produces no consumer 64 bit chips.
The Prescott "J" model with the EMT64 designator is a Pentium 4 chip. Like
all other P4 chips, it is 32 bit. The EMT64 stands for Extended Memory
Technology, and allows the processor to use the x64 core coding to address
more than 4GB of RAM. It will emulate running the 64 bit code in Windows Xp
x64, but will run it in 32 bit mode only."

"the EMT64 chips are still 32 bit
chips. Intel will not have any 64 bit consumer chips until next year
(hopefully). EMT64 (Extended Memory Technology 64) chips allow a P4 chip to
use the same registers that a 64 bit chip accesses, so that they can use
more than the 4GB that a non-EMT64 P4 can access. As a side advantage of
this, the chip can "execute" the x86 code, but it does so through emulation
using a 32 bit thunking layer. It does not run the 64 bit OS as a 64 bit
OS, but as a thunked OS. This is slow and clumsy at best. The point I am
trying to make is that the EMT64 bit chips *ARE NOT* 64 bit chips. They are
able to use certain functions of the x86 extensions that allow it to access
the same registers, but that is all. It is *NOT* a 64 bit chip, not will it
ever be. Intel has announced that it *WILL* produce 64 bit chips next year.
I want those who are considering buying a 64 bit computer to understand that
while the EMT64 can emulate execution of the code, it is *NOT* a 64 bit
chip. Never was, never will be."

So in short i would of liked it much better if Apple went with AMD their CPU line up now (AMDs) is far advanced over Intel.
 
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EM64T chips are 64-bit chips. Pentium 4s and Ds are now 64-bit. But they can run 32-bit operating systems and 32-bit programs under 64-bit operating systems. Just think of EM64T as being the same as AMD64.
 
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mmoy said:
EM64T chips are 64-bit chips. Pentium 4s and Ds are now 64-bit. But they can run 32-bit operating systems and 32-bit programs under 64-bit operating systems. Just think of EM64T as being the same as AMD64.

Not from what i read!? i dont know who to believe.
In anycase the single and dual core AMDs are far superior to the intels
 
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macanal said:
Not from what i read!? i dont know who to believe.
In anycase the single and dual core AMDs are far superior to the intels

But Apple is using Intel processors, and, unless they change their mind, won't be using AMD processors. The other thing is that many expect Intel's 64 bit DC Pentium M processors will catch up to AMD in the second half of 2006. Of course that's if AMD doesn't do anything which I think is unlikely.
 

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