Better OS for Pentium D

[FireDK]

Hi there.

I currently have an Intel Pentium D 820 and I'm a little confused whether I should choose a 32 or 64 bit OS. As I know the Pentium D is not a native 64 bit processor, so far I have used only 32 bit OSs. Still, I am wondering whether a 64 bit OS would be more suited - would there be any changes in performance or other benefits?

Thanks!

Born from The Dark, in The Black Cloak of Night!
And please excuse my spelling...

 

[paparazi]

Quote, you say....
"As I know the Pentium D is not a native 64 bit processor"
And if you information is correct (I haven't researched it) Then if it doesn't support 64bit it won't run it, sorry.


Martin


On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep

 

[FireDK]

Actually, all Pentium D processors support Intel 64 (EM64T) technology, so they can run 64 bit instructions. However (and this is where I'm not entirely sure, hence my dilemma), they split the 64 bit instruction into two 32 bit ones and execute those.

Born from The Dark, in The Black Cloak of Night!
And please excuse my spelling...

 

[BadBigBen]

The Pentium D also supports Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology for 64-Bit computing, as well as Execute Disable Bit for added security features against certain virus attacks.

Source: mbreview.com

so to sum it up... the D820 will support 64bit OS, be it Windows or Linux or FreeBSD...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[cdogg]

FireDK,
The way I understand it is that any Intel processor that openly supports Intel 64 can run in one of the following modes:

[ul][li]32-bit O/S and 32-bit applications (Legacy Mode)[/li]
[li]64-bit O/S and 32-bit applications (Compatibility Mode)[/li]
[li]64-bit O/S and 64-bit applications (64-bit Mode)[/li][/ul]


This is the same model used on newer Intel processors like the Core 2 Duo as far as I know. The only limitations you could run into are possible flaws that were found in early revisions of Intel 64 (according to Wikipedia):

[ul][li]Early Intel CPUs with Intel 64 lacked LAHF and SAHF instructions supported by AMD64 until introduction of Pentium 4 G1 step in December 2005. LAHF and SAHF are load and store instructions, respectively, for certain status flags. These instructions are used for virtualization and floating-point condition handling.[/li]
[li]Early Intel CPUs with Intel 64 also lack the NX bit (No Execute bit) of the AMD64 architecture. The NX bit marks memory pages as non-executable, allowing protection against many types of malicious code.[/li]
[li]Original Intel 64 implementations allowed access only to 236 bytes (64 gibibytes) of physical memory, however, recent Intel 64 implementations now provide 240 bytes (1024 gibibytes) of physical address space.[/li][/ul]

Of course, that's assuming the Pentium D is considered an "early" revision. It might not be.


~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
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