Having setup a new 64 bit proccessor I thought I would give Windows XP 64 a look over.

XP 64 trial edition was downloaded from microsoft's site http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/evaluation/trial.mspx

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition looks just like the standard XP Prof. Edition.

Aside from the Evaluation Copy text and 64 edition logo XP 64 looks identical to the 32 bit version.

Having put the boot cd in and restarted the system, pressing the F6 to load Sata drivers. Unfortunately the disk I'd made was bad so i thought I'd try and go from there. To my suprise the Sata drive was picked up and installed without the need of the disk. I chose the satandard format on it and windows started its install process.

The system restarted to finish the install prossess. I put the cd key in and the intall continued with no stalls or lockups, pausing to ask the standard questions about timezones, network infomation and Administation password.

The system then restarted to XP 64. A look the device manager let me know that some of the drivers for the motherboard where not installed so I loaded up the cd that I had made before the install with the 64 bit drivers for the matherboard. Some of the drivers are still in bata for 64 bit so xp displayed the standard not recamended driver screen a few times and I continued with them anyway.

I loaded the install files for my creative sound card and nvidia graphics card since they had 64 bit drivers ready, then went on to check the rest of the hardware.

I did not think my Nikon coolpix 2100 camra would be supported but it plugged in and downloaded pictures fine without installing additanal drivers.

Next was the USB WB hard drive it also installed fine without the need of any additenal drivers.

My logitech Cam however did not have 64 bit drivers ready for it so it's not going to work, as well as the Samsung ML-1430 printer.

 Since 32 bit drivers are not supported on XP 64 they will be unusable untill 64 bit drivers are redy.

XP 64 seems to run just fine, like the 32 ver. but is missing support for hardware.

Programs utilizing 32 bit drivers like WinDVD  lock up the system since they rely on 32 bit drivers.

Norton Anti Virus is not supported in XP 64 unless you purchuse the corporate edition. Most of the common Anti Anti-Virus programs dont apear to support XP 64 but there are altenatives out there like: Avast! Antivirus http://www.avast.com/eng/x64.html  supports & runs fine on XP 64

Windows Media player brings the system to a crawl for some reason I had to press the reset button and reboot the system to get the system back to normal.

Gaming is slower in XP 64 since most games are 32 bits, untill games are built for 64 bits they will run in compatability mode reducing the fps and overall speed of the game.

Benchmark Testing & compairison:

3d-Marks 03 & 05 Tests

Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better

As you can see, 32 bit gaming is faster in XP 32.

SiSoftware Sandra

Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.

The testing shows an improvment in Multimeada apps. XP 64 has slightly better RAM management.

Unless you have a another system, don't have a lot of unsupported hardware, or are willing to dual boot I would not recommend XP 64 because 64 bit driver support simply isn't out there yet.

There is also no support for legacy MS-DOS and 16-bit applications. If you have an older application that runs in MS-DOS mode or is a 16-bit application It will not run, or if the 32 bit program has a 16 bit installer the program will not install.

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition doesn't support 32-bit drivers! So unless your hardware has 64 bit drivers they will not work in XP 64. From what I can tell, most vendors are not working on 64 bit drivers for older hardware and some of the newer hardware still doesn't have 64 bit drivers.

XP 64 seams to run alot of aps ok, However, with the lack of drivers and the problem with playing media files/dvd's as well as gaming running slower,  I would not recommend XP 64 at this time.