Windows XP 64-Bit Preview: First Look at Athlon 64 Performance

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A few days ago Microsoft released a preview version of windows XP 64-Bit Edition and today AnandTech have thrown up the first Preview which looks at performance of the AMD Athlon 64 on the new 64-bit Operating System! Here's a byte.

Your first task after downloading and installing the OS will be finding drivers for some of the components in your system. Microsoft's new 64-bit Newsgroup is a great place to start your search. Drivers are part of the new 64-bit OS, but they are still spotty in many cases. We needed to find a 64-bit driver for the 3Com LAN on our Asus SK8V and better video drivers. XP64 installed a driver for our Radeon 9800 PRO, but it was really basic and not much in the performance department.

After we discovered ATI did not really have a 64-bit driver, but nVidia did have one on their web-site, we swapped in an Albatron FX5950 Ultra video card. We also found 64-bit drivers for our 3Com on-board LAN and SK8V Sound at PlanetAMD64. With the basic features taken care of we were ready to take our first stab at testing 64-bit performance.

Windows XP 64-Bit Preview: First Look at Athlon 64 Performance