Hm. I run XP64 on an AMD64x2. No problems at all.
Driver support for XP64 isn't perfect, to say the least. My system is all out nVidia, which certainly helps - nVidia has good solid XP64 drivers for both their chipsets and graphics.

Quote - More I read, more bigger are my doubts if XP64 or Vista64 runs under 64 bit mode.

As much as I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to try something stupid like that, what you are talking about is not possible.

Quote - FACT #1
All the Wndows DLL function calls are performed by means of the instruction **CALL SEGMENT:ADDRESS
**

I am pretty sure that that is NOT the case, as far procedure calls are privileged instructions and cannot be executed in user mode.

Functions in a DLL are loaded into the process's address space at runtime, and are accessible just like any other.  call address works the same way whether or not what is located at address was loaded into memory when the program was loaded by the operating system, or later on as the result of loading a DLL.

The reason that a 64 bit program cannot link to a 32 bit DLL (and vice versa) is that you can't combine 32 and 64 bit code within the same process (as the processor can only be running in one mode at a time, and that mode can only be switched from ring 0.

Certain DLL's would have to exist in both 32 and 64 versions, but they can easily be compiled both from the same source code, changing only compiler options.

Pretty much the extent of 16 bit code still seen today is in installer stubs that inspect the operating system environment; and where it detects the operating system is only 16 bit (i.e., DOS or Windows 3.1, informs the user that the application requires a 32 bit version of windows, and exits).  Including 16 bit support as well would just make the operating system even larger, and for no appreciable benefit.  (People may cry "forced upgrade", but anyone who is still actually using 16 bit apps for anything probably isn't going to be upgrading to Vista, and probably isn't even using XP either).

Windows 95, 98 and ME used a trick called "thunking" to interoperate 16 bit and 32 bit code. 
But those operating systems were only partially 32 bit. Much if it was no more than a glorified graphical shell around MS-DOS 7.0

The NT derived operating systems, including Windows 2000 and XP, have always been true 32 bit and don't support thunking. I had to ditch or upgrade quite a few DOS and Windows 3.x applications when I switched to Windows 2000.

XP64 comes with a 32 bit emulator (WOW, Windows-on-Windows). Fairly efficient, 32 bits programs run only marginally slower under WOW than under native XP 32 bit. WOW itself is a 64 bit application.

*Certain DLLs would have to exist in both 32 and 64 versions

*They do. svchost and rundll for example.

Quote - Hm. I run XP64 on an AMD64x2. No problems at all.
Driver support for XP64 isn't perfect, to say the least. My system is all out nVidia, which certainly helps - nVidia has good solid XP64 drivers for both their chipsets and graphics.

I seem to remember something not working properly when I tried XP64 (the trial version).  It was awhile ago, and things might have improved.

Actually, if I remember correctly, the problem was with antivirus software.

Quote - I am pretty sure that that is NOT the case, as far procedure calls are privileged instructions and cannot be executed in user mode.

Far procedure calls aren't priviledged instructions, there are very few priviledged instructions such as that deal with the descriptor tables and mode switching.
All DLL function call are made by a far call.
Just compile the simple code
WinMain(......)
{
MessageBox(0,"","User32 DLL call",0);
return 0;
}
And take a look how the User32 DLL function MessageBox is called and you will find that is :
CALL 0000:0000
The 0000:0000 address will be relocated to the right segment:address once loaded into memory, if you want to see the real call address just take a memory dump of what is loaded in your Windows memory.

You can run Mac OS X  x86 on a pc. Follow the links to be Vista free on a pc. :)
www.uneasysilence.com/archive/2005/08/3937/ www.uneasysilence.com/os-x-proven-hacked-and-running-on-an-ordinary-pc
Buy the software btw !

*You can run Mac OSX on a PC

*Hardly surprising. Mac OSX was developed on PC. The BSD kernel has been available for PC for several years.

Apple doesn't WANT Mac OSX to run on PCs though, for several reasons. First of all, they want to sell the accompanying hardware too. Second, Apple has no control whatever over the configuration of a PC, while they have absolute control over Mac configurations. This control makes it much easier for Apple to make their OS work smoothly.

I thought I'd try it since I recently got a new Mac, and was very impressed with its speed. You wouldn't believe how fast the Pentium 4 pc I tested it on ran. It wasn't equal to the Mac of course, but it was certainly much faster than it was using Linux, or XP.
 

kawecki - Did you disassemble the resulting binary correctly?  Some disassemblers default to 16 bit unless you specify otherwise.  (also what operating system are you running under?)

There is no need for far procedure calls under Win32, as everything fits under the linear 4 GB address space in a single segment.  Segmentation doesn't even extend the address space because you are still limited to a 32 bit linear address.  (under 16 bit, segmentation was the only way to address memory past 64K, which was too small an amount even way back when.  8086 real mode calculated the linear address by segment * 16 + offset; the 80286 allowed up to 16 MB of physical RAM to be addressed, but only in segments of 64 K.  The 386 extended the address space up to 4 GB and added 32 bit mode as well.  From the 386 onward, the maximum segment size for 32 bit mode was the same as the linear address space).

Furthermore, in protected mode, the privilege level is determined by the code segment selector.  Being able to call into another segment could allow a process to elevate its privilege level, which is a clear no-no.

Besides, all this would result in a great increase in complexity which is simply not necessary.  Simply mapping a DLL into the address space of a process that wants to load it is all that is needed.

It is also not possible to extend the address space past 4GB under 32 bit mode, as linear addresses are 32 bits, period.  There is something called PAE (physical address extensions), which has existed for awhile that allows for up to 64 GB of physical RAM to be installed in a system, though any one process is still limited to addressing 4GB of that.

64 bit systems don't use the entire 64 bit address space (yet).  I think that Vista only uses 40 bits of it, for up to 1 TB of addressable memory per process (an amount unlikely to be exceeded in Vista's operational lifetime).

Ok.....I skipped SP2 because of the issues that their "security" mess was causing about half the people I know.  I use Zone Alarm, Trend Micros antivirus and Ad Aware SE Plus for spyware capture.  I am thinking of getting Vista at some point, but do want to hear from those who have Vista: Does Poser and Vue work on it or not?    I know DAZ Bryce 6 does.  Aside from the interesting UI, what are the benefits? I have an AMD Athlon 64; 2 gigs ram and an ATI Raedon 9800.

Benefits ? I guess the main one is DX 10 if you wanna play the latest games (none are out as yet tho) Also Vista does have a few tricks that will speed up performance over XP, esp if you have lots of RAM and multiple cores. Besides that, when they get around to fixing Vista 64, then that will also become a benefit.

Personally I wouldn't suggest changing to it as yet. Wait till they are up to SP1 or SP2 and Vista 64 has been worked on. I would say, probably an year.

You can read more about all this here:

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2917

Quote - kawecki - Did you disassemble the resulting binary correctly?  Some disassemblers default to 16 bit unless you specify otherwise. > Quote -

The opcode for a call segment:16bit is different from call segment:32bits.
The sample code can be so small that you can even can disassemble it by hand with a text editor. The only problem is to find where WinMain starts because the compiler adds a prolog and an epilog.
You will find that the function call in this case MessageBox is a two steps call, first is done a normal relative call to the end of the code where you find a list of far calls in the form segment:32 bit address.
All function calls of the same function points to the same far call, so it is only needed to relocate the values at the end of the code.
Not all the disassemblers generate this last part of the code, but you can find where it is and disassemble this fraction of code or just look at the hexadecimal values.

Quote -   (also what operating system are you running under?)

Depend on the disassembler that you use, they are many for DOS, Win16 or Win32. You can disassemble 32 bit code under DOS, the only problem is that DOS has problems with large size code, but for some few hundreds there's no problem.
Do you know some disassembler runing under Linux?

Quote - There is no need for far procedure calls under Win32, as everything fits under the linear 4 GB address space in a single segment.

Yes, I know that there's no need, but this is the way as Windows works!!!! as it was in the old Windows 3.0.
If Windows worked different there would be no needs for relocation!!!

Quote -   Segmentation doesn't even extend the address space because you are still limited to a 32 bit linear address.

Yes it does, you can address with segmentation a 40 bit address space, but each segment can have only 4GB size maximum.
With CPU64 this 40 bit address space was extended to 48 bits and not to 64 bit as you think.
Probably in the next following years the new CPUs will extend this 48 bits to 64 bits.

Quote - (under 16 bit, segmentation was the only way to address memory past 64K, which was too small an amount even way back when.  8086 real mode calculated the linear address by segment * 16 + offset; the 80286 allowed up to 16 MB of physical RAM to be addressed, but only in segments of 64 K.

The Intel 8086 used a very primitive segmenting system without any kind of segment management, they only added addresses with the segment data shifted with a stupid 4 bit shift. 80286 added a more intelligent 8 bit shift.
Motorola 68000 was built from the begining with 32 bit registers and a 4GB address space, even it was a 16 bit processor!!
Zilog Z8000 used an intelligent segment management as used in the next decade 80386.
All these three CPU were built almost at the same time, I don't know if 8086 or 68000 was the first. IBM picked the worst processor of these three and it was even worst because they used 8088 that was a 8 bit bus version of the 8086 (16 bit bus).

Quote - Furthermore, in protected mode, the privilege level is determined by the code segment selector.  Being able to call into another segment could allow a process to elevate its privilege level, which is a clear no-no.

In Windows all your code and all the DLLs run at the same priviledge level. Only in Windows XP were added some functions that can run only in the supervisor mode, but if you login as supervisor your almost all run in the same level. The only thing that you cannot access are the descriptor table (I suppose, maybe it can be done too!).
The 30386 ++++++, provided a lot of security tools, but almost none is used by Windows and you can access all you want.

Quote - 64 bit systems don't use the entire 64 bit address space (yet)

Only it is 48 bits.

Quote - .  I think that Vista only uses 40 bits of it, for up to 1 TB of addressable memory per process (an amount unlikely to be exceeded in Vista's operational lifetime).

Exactly the same limit as for 32 bit processors!!!!

Quote - Exactly the same limit as for 32 bit processors!!!!

No it isn't.  The limit for 32 processors is 4GB.  Even a 16 bit segment and a 32 bit offset still translates to a 32 bit linear address.

Segment and offset was a scheme used before 80386. After 80386 the segment has no information of the linear address, it is used as pointer to the segment table where is stored the segment base address, the segment size and the segment properties.
For accessing memory the processor adds the memory offset to the segment base address.
The offset is 32 bit, but if the CPU segment descriptor has the base address as a 40 bit register you are able to access a maximum of 4 GB located anywhere in a 40 bit address space.
How do you think that Windows XP32 is able to use virtual memory beyond 4 GB????

Quote - Benefits ? I guess the main one is DX 10 if you wanna play the latest games

Want to play games?, buy a Sony Playstation 3 and forget all the Microsoft crap.
It will cost you less than the computer required to run Vista and you will be able to play real 3D games and not the crappy DX and no blue screens.......

Quote - I thought I'd try it since I recently got a new Mac, and was very impressed with its speed. You wouldn't believe how fast the Pentium 4 pc I tested it on ran. It wasn't equal to the Mac of course, but it was certainly much faster than it was using Linux, or XP.

Linux depend on the version and package. Linux is not something as Windows that you install an run (after several tries).
There exist many pre-made packages that you install and run, but I found some that are so slow that cannot be used, all depend on how the package was made and compiled.
Linux is the most versatile and can be the faster Operational System that exist, but it requires a lot of work and knowledge to build something efficient.
Linux is formed by several components. The Linux kernel is so small that it fits in one old 1.44M diskette!!
When you load the Linux kernel you have the operational system, but no grafic interface, only keyboard. Now you need a graffic package such as X11, X12 (don't know the latest one), you have different versions, different compilations and different machine specific optimization.
One loaded the graffic package you are able to run Linux programs, but you have no Windows, you run your application from the keyboard.
To have Windows to have to install a Windows package, but the Windows package is not as in Microsoft Windows or Mac, it is only a component and you can have any Windows that you like and switch between them in the act. You can have a Windows 98 style, a XP style, a Mac style, a Unix style and as many as you can find. (I liked KDE).
It remain to pickup the libs (Linux DLLs) needed to run applications, find them somewhere, install and put them to work.
The result can be something very fast or something very slow. Many Linux components are built using scripting language as Pearl, and many times a script call another script, you cannot expect that something that is a script can run fast. If you want something fast you need a compiled version of the component.
Many Linux components are written in C++ and C++ once compiled is something very slow compared to plain C. Also Linux components are built based on using othe Linux component that is built itself using other Linux component, so the result is something so slow that can be easily compared to Microsoft..
If you have time and patience you can built the faster and most reliable software and even you will able to run Poser on it!!!

Quote -
Want to play games?, buy a Sony Playstation 3 and forget all the Microsoft crap.
It will cost you less than the computer required to run Vista and you will be able to play real 3D games and not the crappy DX and no blue screens.......

Right.. and you think Sony is any better then MS why exactly ? If anything they are even worse, the way they keep trying to force their prop. formats down people's throats. Not to mention that rootkit fiasco a little while back or the viral marketing they are so fond of.

MS do lots of crappy things, but they are usually quite open about it all. They regularly release free betas and RCs of everything they dev so that people can rip it all apart and see exactly what is going on under the hood. Sony don't offer the same courtesy to even their paying customers.

Plus i have plenty of PC exclusive games i wanna play, and a high end gaming box. Why should i downgrade to a lousy PS3 ? Crysis, spore, dragon age to name just 3 are all 'must play' titles for me. I would never use Vista for my workstations, but i have no beef against it for my gaming.

Quote - Right.. and you think Sony is any better then MS why exactly ? If anything they are even worse, the way they keep trying to force their prop. formats down people's throats. Not to mention that rootkit fiasco a little while back or the viral marketing they are so fond of.

You are making confusion between Sony Japan and Sony BMG. Even Sony has adquired Columbia Pictures, Columbia Pictures preserve their autonomy and Sony Japan can do very little beside sufferering the damage caused to the reputation of the whole group.
Playstation is based on Linux, has nothing to do with RIAA , Hollywood or copyright paranoia.
My son has a Playstation 2 and the graffic performance and realism cannot be achieved by any newest PC game and it is an old playstation with only a 300 MHz CPU!!!
Playstation 3 is even much better, the only competitor that can have is Microsoft XBox but without tooo many success and general aceptance.

I forgot, Japanese are the masters of 3D, but very few of what they have and do arrive to us.

Quote - Sony Japan can do very little beside sufferering the damage caused to the reputation of the whole group.
Playstation is based on Linux, has nothing to do with RIAA , Hollywood or copyright paranoia.

I guess you never had the disk read issue because Sony shipped defective optical drives in the early PS2s. An issue which BTW Sony even refused to recognise, till a class action lawsuit was filed against them. All in all it took them till 2005, 3 years after the launch of their oh so amazing PS2, to finally do something. And don't even get me started on how they have shafted European customers of the PS3... I'm sorry to say this but, Sony are one the worst hardware companies in the world. They are over hyped, over bloated and very arrogant towards their customers. I don't care how bad MS is, Sony is in a league of their own.

Quote - My son has a Playstation 2 and the graffic performance and realism cannot be achieved by any newest PC game and it is an old playstation with only a 300 MHz CPU!!!
Playstation 3 is even much better, the only competitor that can have is Microsoft XBox but without tooo many success and general aceptance.

I'm not sure if you are kidding or not, but let me just point out that the PS3 is basically running a castrated nVIDIA 7800. A DX 9 card which is already 2 years old. Compare it to something like this:

http://www3.incrysis.com/screenshots/crysis-shack-ambush-alien-day.jpg

Which is Crysis, running under DX 10. Can you honesty say that any PS3 (much less PS2) game out there looks that good ?

Quote - I forgot, Japanese are the masters of 3D

That we can both agree on :)

DirectX is a total crap, OpenGL is only a good technical specification, but is oversized with a lot of useless things and lack of other important features. Remember that from a technical paper to the implementation is a giant step and the OpenGL implementation in Windows is another big crap.
The net result is that rendering is much slower and with restricted capabilities in the most advanced video card compared to pure software rendering without any hardware support.
Special hardware can make rendering faster, but never with the PC hardware that is very limited and not designed for this task. You need a special computer with a special hardware, no video cards, only a lot of chips with many busses, pipelines and data flow.

Speaking about games, how much PC games have evolved?
If you look carefully you will find that most of PC games instead of have been improved they have degenerated.
If you look at some old DOS games and compare to today games you will find that the actual games looks very much better and the DOS game looks very primitive so you arrive to the conclusion that it was a great improvement, but in most cases is only an illusion.
If it is an illusion why it looks much better?, well if you look in detail you will find that the old game is using a 320x200 resolution with 256 colors. You cannot expect an image 320x200 be very good compared to a 800x600 or 1024x768 24 bit colors image!
If old games used 320x200 resolution used was not  due a limit of the processor, game or rendering engine, it was due the fact that most computers had only a 256K VGA card!
You must remember that who makes a game must not design his game to be run in a top level computer (it would be a commercial fracass). He must design the game to be able to run in worst computer that is still common among users.
Most of who play games are teens or kids, you cannot expect them to have money to purchase a very expensive top level computer. Even the parents have money they will not purchase an expensive computer for  they kids play games. In the best case they will purchase a new and top computer for themselves and give their old computer to the kids play games.
So in the end, most of who play games use old or very old computers and if the game maker doesn't support old computers his sales will be very little limited to only some adults that play games or some priviledged kids.

With time, video cards improved and you have a 1M SVGA card able to run at 640x480 of course at only 256 colors. The game looked much better than at 320x200, but it was not a improvement of the game or rendering engine.
Today at 800x600 with 24 bit looks much better that at 640x480  with 8 bits.
Another important point are the textures, as games use a lot of textures you cannot expect that a computer with only 4M memory would be able to load a lot of high resolution textures. With very low amount of available memory the textures used were very small, you cannot expect that a mesh textured with 100x50 pixels texture can look good and if you zoom or get near the mesh it becomes horrible.
With larger amount of memory available for computer it was possible to increase the size of textures used and so it were able to be more detailed.
In resume, what you see as an improvement is only result of the better capabilities of the new computers and not due the game itself. Take an old DOS game, you can try with DOOM or other where's the source code is available, create new larger size textures and compile the game to be run at 800x600 24 bit and compare it to the newest games with DX10 and an hyperexpensive video card.
If you compensate for the difference of video resolution and texture size you will find that most games had degenerated and are very much slower, so they need to be run in a several times faster computer with a 3D card to achieve to same overall speed.
The main reason of this is Windows, $$$$$ and profit over profit. There are several points:

1- Games doesn't need Windows, XP, XP64 or Vista to run. DOS32 is enough, don't know if someone did DOS64.
Very bad for Microsoft, no XP, no Vista and DOS32 was not made by Microsoft!!!

2- Games need only a normal 8M VESA 2 video card to be run at any current resolution.
Very bad for video card makers and Microsoft with his DirectX.

3- Games can be better with faster CPUs.
Excellent for Intel and AMD.

4- In the past each game maker had his own 3D rendering engine with much better performance that the current DX or OpenGL + 3D video card, but it had its $$$ drawbacks.
As any game maker must release games all the time and create new games he need people for the job. If the game maker use proprietary rendering engines, he need to hire people for making the games. So there's no way to find a person that knows how to use their engine, even he had worked in other game comapanies the rendering engines were different.
So the game maker needs to hire anyone that has no idea, train him and only after one year he will become able to be useful for making games. Also then the programmer becomes a specialised person and so, much expensive.
Many times is difficult to find the required people and so many games are not able to be released.
Here came Microsoft with the help, one hand wash the other. With DX was killed the better proprietary rendering engines and was created a standart engine that can be used by any game fabricant..
It is a win-win-lose solution.

• The game maker can hire a cheap and easy available DX programmer or OpenGL if you prefer, if he becomes to expensive then hire one in India. Now the fabricant can make and release as many games he wants and no need for wasting time and money improving their proprietary rendering engines.
• Video card makers can invent and release more video cards and you will be forced to purchase them.
• Microsoft will force you to use Windows and if has success with DX10 will force you to use Vista.
• As game becomes slower and much slower due the overall ineficiency, computer maker will force you to purchase a newer and faster computer for you be able to run the newes game.

And who lose?
Well....., the game player....

All of which is totally irrelevant to what you originally claimed... So i will post your quote again:

Quote - "My son has a Playstation 2 and the graffic performance and realism cannot be achieved by any newest PC game and it is an old playstation with only a 300 MHz CPU!!!
Playstation 3 is even much better,

How about backing up your old claim first, before you make new ones ? If you cant do that, then i question your credibility and refuse to discuss this any further with you.

BTW the whole Crysis gallery is here :

http://incrysis.com/crysis/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=221&Itemid=32

Don't like Playstation?, don't buy it!
You can play games with Vista and DX10, it's your problem and not mine.

Nothing wrong with PS2. A well designed game machine.

But it's not the uber-supergamecomputer kawecki is making it out to be. It's just a good one.

After all, a car with a 50 HP engine will never be able to outrun a car with a 1000 HP engine, no matter how well designed it is.

I'd like to point out an inaccuracy in your post:

Quote - Most of who play games are teens or kids, you cannot expect them to have money to purchase a very expensive top level computer.  So in the end, most of who play games use old or very old computers and if the game maker doesn't support old computers his sales will be very little limited to only some adults that play games or some priviledged kids.

This is from a 2005 ESA demographic study:

Heads of households that play video games: 75%

Average game player age: 30.
35.0% under 18 years
43.0% 18–49 years
19.0% 50+ years

Keep in mind this data is 2 years old.  The average gamer age has been increasing internationally since the study was conducted.  For example, in Australia 2005, the average gamer age was 24.  In just two years, it has risen to 28.   This type of increase is reflected in the U.S., U.K., Japan etc....

Since the average gamer is in their late twenties/early thirties, they have more buying power than kids and teens.   Because they come from a generation who has grown up with video games and is far more comfortable with utilizing sophisticated technology and adopting newer ones than any previous generation, they are capable of making informed decisions about hardware purchases.    They can afford to, and do purchase at least mid-range level hardware if not leading level hardware.

Your conclusion that "most of who play games use old or very old computers" because they're too young to afford anything better is inaccurate given the demographics.

Quote - After all, a car with a 50 HP engine will never be able to outrun a car with a 1000 HP engine, no matter how well designed it is.

I would like to see the face of the guy in his Audi when the light opens and my wife with her small car left him 100 meters behind.
I do the same, but she is a woman....
It's not a question how much something is powerful, it's a question how it is used.
You cannot compare computers with game machines, their design are very different.
Computers are general use machines, game machines are designed only to play games.
Game machines lack of the resources that computers have, but have a special hardware designed specifically for the task that makes them far superior for playing games.
You cannot compare a pinball machine to a PC, they don't use the top line Intel 64 bit quadcore, have no 250GB SATA drive, but their hardware is amazing in technical sophistication.
Even for 3D applications PC are not designed for this task, it lack of many resources, so any dedicated hardware will give far superior rendering performance and resources.

Quote - 43.0% 18–49 years

That's the problem with statistics, you cannot put 18 years old in the same group with who has 49 years.
At the age of 18 he/she is young, he is in school, probably not working and full of free time.
At the age of 35 he /she is adult, married, with children, working in a job , taking care of the family and very little time left free for playing games.
Games are very time consuming, I love RPG games, but they take a long time, so when I start playing a game I don't do anything else for some weeks!!!....
Not any adult person can do this. - Where is employee Joe? - He is at home playing games!