I'm planning on buying Windows XP 64 next week, and was wondering if its actually any better than the 'normal' XP?

I built my computer last Xmas using an AMD Athlon 64 processor, but have only ever run it on standard XP, will i notice the difference?

I'm also thinking about fitting a second hard-drive. What benefits are there fore doing this? Should i just fit another normal HD, or a new pair of SATA drives that i no clue about what the difference are:confused:

Any other recommended mods wile its all in bits?

Sincerely confused, Bobz!

Has the normal Windows 64 come out yet? I could only find the business version last time I looked and it was VERY expensive

I've got XP64 on my main machine and to be honest there is very little difference in day to day use.

There is a very small improvement in performance over the 32 bit edition (about 5% as far as I can tell) but it does seem a little bit less stable for some applications and others won't run at all.

Still I got it for free (legit as well!) so I'm not complaining

Has the normal Windows 64 come out yet? I could only find the business version last time I looked and it was VERY expensive

there has been a 64 bit edition of XP pro (and server 2003) for some time now , but not an XP home.

Windows Vista will come in 32 and 64 bit home versions I believe

I tried to install XPPro64 on my latest PC - I gave up in the end, all of the stuff I was adding had no 64 drivers and after a while browsing the net to find them I gave up and installled XP home.

Running XP64, here on this PC that I am posting from. Its very simillar to XP 32 bit, but you may come across several problems.

1) Drivers, if you are running recent hardware you should have no problems. Before starting the install download the 64bit versions for all your hardware (graphics, sound, motherboard, printer etc.). I have a Soundblaster Live, Nvidia nforce4 mobo and Nvidia graphics card and had no problems getting drivers. Normal XP drivers wont install, so check and download first.

2) Make sure none of your apps are 16bit. This maybe a problem with older software, but new software should be fine. XP64 cannot run any 16bit applications at all, this includes the 16bit version of installshield. 32bit apps run fine, as do all recent games that I have tried. The pc is also folding away as we speak.

So there you have it, it does work well provided you are able to get drivers and dont plan to use any really old software.

Thanks for the advice guys:thumbup:

Think I'll stick with XP home, just to be safe:D

Will adding a second hard drive speed things up abit? Friends have said its a good idea, but non have done it themselves.

Adding a second hard drive may speed things up but just by a bit, not much more unless you go into a RAID solution.

I tried XP64 too, but when I discovered that there will never be driver support for my DVB-S card, I gave up and returned to XP Pro vanilla.