Thinking about dual booting Vista x64 & XP

[Guest]

I was thinking about purchasing Vista x64 home premium to install on a 2nd
hard drive on my computer I am just worrying about hardware compatablity. We
have Windows Server x64 at work and I notice it pretty much detects
everything at the start. I have ran other x64 OS's on my computer and had no
problems with hardware compatability except for my sound card because Sound
Blaster apparently has a problem supporting 64bit. Also how should the
performance be compared to XP 32bit?

 

[Tiberius]

an idea to test it, is to download the 64 bit version of server2008 that is
a free download as it is a RC, and see if everything works.

a 64 bit OS can shine only when you have more than 4 gigs of ram..
for example if you had 16 gigs of ram, then the OS would use them..

while 32 bit could not..

other than that you wont see any improvment.. perhaps you will see a small
decrease in speed

 

[Guest]

Possiblity. The computer only has 2gb of ram (running dual channel mode)
because I have ddr 533 the really expensive overclocking type too. I am
pretty sure the board would support 4gb. I have a opteron x64 dual core in
it as well. I don't mind buying vista anyways considering I will eventually
have to move to it anyways. Now the 64bit is on the same dvd as the 32bit
version correct?

 

[Tiberius]

no.. I think only Vista Ultimate retail has 2 DVDs.. one for 32 and one for
64 bit

the rest of the Vista versions do not have the other DVD, but you can order
it from MS.

I think its totally free.. im not sure if you have to pay for the postage..

I think you should post another question on that specifically...