Intel Core Duo "is" 64-bit compatible.

[steve_hill4]

The biggest regret I will have about going for the MBP now rather than waiting another 6 months will be 64-bitness. If it transpires that the Core Duo is 64-bit, then great, if not, I stand by by decision to buy now anyway, I didn't want to wait any longer, (even if I said I would wait for the first Intel PowerBook, whenever it was released).

I am not convinced of the chip being 64-bit though. Everywhere I have read Merom will introduce this and it seems quite odd that Intel would say this and then Yonah be essentially the same, albeit with a higher power consumption. Enabled, disabled, either way, I doubt this information is correct. If it is, I will be very happy though.

 

[jhu]

Unless your software is designed to address +4GB of memory space - the feature is useless. Besides the core-duo doesn't have EM64T support. In two, three years 99% of software won't be addressing memory as large as this, besides your hardware will be redundant.

no it is not useless. 64-bit mode adds a larger pool of registers. a simple recompile would improve performance.

 

[slb]

More registers improves performance in general applications, but SSE-optimized 32-bit code closes the gap a lot. It's not as important as it's currently being hyped to many consumers in the desktop and laptop market.

 

[AJBMatrix]

In all the benchmarks that I have ever done I have only seen a slight difference of late with the current generation 32-bit and 64-bit that the 64 is just faster at doing floating point calculations.

 

[cnakeitaro]

I think speed in this case is irrelevant. The question is: When will developers only make 64-bit apps? And that is what should make the decision.

 

[jhu]

More registers improves performance in general applications, but SSE-optimized 32-bit code closes the gap a lot. It's not as important as it's currently being hyped to many consumers in the desktop and laptop market.

64-bit mode also adds more xmm registers thus improving fp intensive applications as well. certainly it's not that important to the average joe, but it is a measurable improvement on applications such as graphics rendering.

 

[AJBMatrix]

What percentage of computers are out there that are 64-bit? That is a very low number compared to the number that are 32-bit. So if a company was to make an app that was only to support the 64-bit system then they would cut out a huge chunk of there market. What wise business is going to take out a large portion of the potential customers. Nothing good would come of that and it is a poor business model if they do. I know that there are an increasing number of 64-bit systems that are in production today but how long will it take to phase everything into 64-bit? It would take years. I am guessing in the range of 5 years. I personally do not plan to have my MBP in 5 years and if I do it will be my backup. Just the laws of economics makes this not correct to assume that everything will switch over soon. Supply and Demand: The Supply and Demand Curve sets the price point and the potential profit of an item. So if a company was going to go out there and sell a product to a limited market like this it would be in very short supply to keep the price high enough to make it profitable. So therefore you have to phase out the hardware and then phase in the software. Now what apps are there today that cannot be used on computers that are 2 years old. I am not talking about computers that were low end back then but rather the latest and greatest 2 years ago. Is there any software that cannot be used on it? As far as I know they are all still very capable machines. Just incase you were wondering that was about the time that the P4 with HyperThreading came out. The current High end games might have a problem but that is always the case and due to the gaming companies having a market of people upgrading every six months. But the average computer user upgrades on a few year cycle and this will cause the integration of 64-bit systems to take at least that long after the current high end systems stop using 32-bit chips.

 

[aquanutz]

hmm.... interesting. I'll have to look into this more.

 

[slb]

What percentage of computers are out there that are 64-bit?

There are 64-bit chips in the desktop market, but most of them are running in 32-bit mode (a lot of people tried Windows 64-bit Edition then switched back after driver and software incompatibilies and performance issues). The portable market is almost exclusively 32-bit.

 

[AJBMatrix]

Right so we have now about 3 to 5 years before the 64-bit can become a software standard. It could become a hardware standard "next tuesday" but software standards are much harder to come about. And you will see it coming a Mile Away.

 

[arcsbite]

ok, so what does this mean to us humble none-smart guys that own intel iMacs?

(I've tried looking into it but you'd need a PHD in computery-jiggy-things to understand)

 

[jhu]

ok, so what does this mean to us humble none-smart guys that own intel iMacs?

(I've tried looking into it but you'd need a PHD in computery-jiggy-things to understand)

practically nothing