Ignore my frothing at the mouth for the next little while. I'm finally going for the gold....or at least X86-64... :P I'm starting a new main box (the case arrived today, and yes forester, it is =that= case....and it is even more scrumptious than advertised. It can mount dual power supplies, and the included fans are 3 speed with switching to select your airflow), and not quite being ready for the socket 940-939 mess coming, am settling for a sedate little Gigabyte GA-K8VNXP mainboard for a socket 754 chip (probably a 64-3200+...although that may change with prices. There are versions slated up to at least 4000+, so there's an upgrade path for a couple of years, at least). One nice thing is that this board has dual gigabit Ethernet ports, so I can put the garden on a dedicated port away from the router. Now we'll see how VuePro handles the bandwidth on that memory architecture. And SATA access speeds. I don't suppose that E-on has any plans to recompile the Vue application to take advantage of the 64bit extensions, by any chance? From the reports and a couple of contacts, the process for other applicatiions (databases and such) has proven to be fairly straight forward. I know we have to wait for M$ to get their thumb out (Ghod I do so =not= want to have to upgrade to XP to get a 64 bit Windows, but....), but having that kind of power in VuePro... (drool....) While I'm babbling, is there any news on Mover 5? Pretty Please?

Well, i am the Mac man here. Anyway. I know E-on optimized VuePro for the new Apple G5 generation already so i think it is only a question of time when they will do that for 64 bit Windows versions as well. Pretty Mover 5 news? It will come! lol, Walther

Hi Dale, I've just read a review of a 64bit machine in 3dWorld. It uses the Gigabyte K8NPro board they also used windows 64 and I have to say they were less than enthusiastic, to quote... "We were disturbed to note that the operating system is highly optimised for the ultra expensive Intel Itanium processors, with no mention whatsoever of any support for AMD processors. Worse still the FX-51 {AMD's chip} is not compatible with the Itanium instruction set, so it derives no benefits from those optimisations." There were a load more issues, like not being able to install 3dsMax on windows XP64. They have a site, http://www.3dworldmag.com but I'm unsure wether the reviews on it. If you need anything else from the review just say.

Hmmm... Was that 'Win64' or 'XP-64'? There -is- a version of Server 2003, I believe, that -has- been heavily optimized for the Itanium...and if they used =that= for benchmarking a 64 bit AMD chip, they are complete fools. Not only is X86-64 not compatible with SSE-2, you have to run an emulator with the Itanium to even get =any= X86 code to execute; an SSE-2 optimized OS would probably not even boot on a Hammer chip, unless there was a secondary executable for X86 32 bit. XP-64 is a new version of WinXP that is in beta at the moment, and is =supposed= to be built around full support for X86-64 in native mode...as well as an on the fly interpreter (not emulator) to allow X86-32 to also run natively. And Max -couldn't be installed on the Itanium optimized Server 2003; it may have the SSE2 extensions in the rendering pipeline, but it is still good old X86-32 code. I think I'll see if I can find that article; something just ain't right there... I don't suppose that 3D World is a Ziff-Davis publication, by any chance....? I don't have a copy handy...

Hi Dale, If you stick this quote in front of the last one you have the exact text from the mag "Our review system comes with a beta of windows XP 64bit." The magazine is a future publication, but I'm pretty sure that it's printed in the states under license by someone else, but I dunno who.

Definitely something not right there; that beta has been having so many issues that it isn't even funny (the current conspiracy theory is that MS is dragging its heels, as Intel has its 'It does not exist' Project Yamhill, which is an X86-64 chip, and they want to get support for both chips...or give Intel some kind of advantage), and I know that it is only available legally to MS Developer subscribers. The only OS that is actually halfway stable right now is the Linux 64 distro, and that's just the OS. Oh well, I can run Win2kpro on the new box until they get things sorted out. I still get most of the benefit of the memory bandwidth...

BTW forester. I just got into the box for the Lian-Li case, and there was a few goodies they didn't advertise (if you need any tempting bait for your S.O. ). The case comes with 2 of the solid aluminum front covers for CD units (the door folds down), and a faceplate for a 3.5" FDD.

I'm listening, Dale....... The idea of two power supplies is great!!!! I'm a die-hard SCSI person, ... five or six hard drives do slurp up the electrons, even with these nice new tiny little drive forms. Also, my video card is always wanting its own power supply nowdays. BTW...Some of this stuff from 3dWorld is a little lame. Its been widely publicized in the trade for a year that the 64bit Microsoft Windows OS was not designed for the AMD chip. Why would they have bothered testing it on such a motherboard/cpu combo? (...and then commented that they "are disappointed in the performance?") 3DWorld is published by Future Publications, the same guys that do Computer Arts, and can be found at about any Borders or Barnes and Noble Bookstore. But, maybe not worth looking for the article. Sounds like their regular reviewer was on break. If you're not into the trade, a reliable hardware review for the kind of higher-end stuff Vue'er's need can always be had from "Computer Games" - which is available almost everywhere on the planet. Jason Cross is the reviewer there, and he is very careful and exacting. Alum CD covers and faceplates - yum! So Dale, have you set it up in the center of the front room yet? Here I am dying, trying to learn server-side web design (yuck!) for a client - on a deadline - an experience I hope to never repeat, and you are blowing (songs of seduction and diversion, of course) in my ear!

As a matter of fact, I have.... ;) More out of neccessity than anything else; I've got 3 older computers exhumed to try and get a DOS box going for my wife, so there isn't exactly any room in my office at the moment. This one is going to take a bit of time; if I don't do everything perfect, it would be...rude. Oh, did I mention that the removable motherboard tray is marked out to mount dual CPU motherboards? And that the fully internal HDD mounting frame has the option of mounting so the drives are either vertical or horizontal? I'll stop teasing and be good now..... >:) I also have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale. Cheap. And good luck on the server side stuff. I'm trying not to strangle my current system. Something has gotten corrupted, and VuePro is no longer importing textures from Poser...