Support of multiple core 64 bit processors and 4GB RAM

"babaloo" wrote in message
. net...
The OS is the limit.
32bit Windows does not see all the 4gb of RAM.
Although 64bit Windows technically can see all that RAM it has
problems with stability, program and driver compatibility. Win64 will
run Photoshop but many if not most users cannot use that much RAM
effectively.
Vista64 will not be any different, at least at outset, than Win64 and
probably have even less driver support for things like printers,
scanners and calibrators. In fact there will be inadequate driver
support when Vista 32 is released in a few weeks.

That depends on your hardware. Anything more than about six months old
should be fully compatible.

I've been running the release version of Vista 64-bit for a month now
and it's very stable and compatible with almost all of my software (the
exact same software the public can buy two weeks). The only thing it
doesn't like to run is a few very old programs and some new ones that
have weird programming requirements (like Capture NX which insists on
using dotNET 1.1) but that's not Vistas fault.

I've been using Vista beta versions for months, and by the time RC2 was
released, it was quite stable and compatible with the vast majority of
software. Companies are developing and updating software for Vista
compatibility as we speak, but it's up to them to get their software
ready for Vista, so any delay is not the fault of Micro$oft.

As for 64-bit issues, I have none of consequence (WinXP x64 sucked by
comparison). My computer is fully supported and it's even using a RAID
with 400gigs of capacity, and my printer, scanner, card reader, camera,
etc., are all supported by Vista - I haven't had to install anything
else, which is quite impressive really.

The truth is that users may think they need that much RAM but the
reality is somewhat different despite what some computer enthusiast
magazines/web sites tout.

I doubt I'm the average user, but I'm using an AMD dual-core with 4gigs
of memory, and yes I do need that 4gigs (Vista 64 needs 1.5gigs to work
smoothly). My next computer will be able to use 8gigs or more and by
then I'll probably need it.

"Alfred Molon" wrote:
In article , SimonLW says...

You must have a lot of images open or do a lot of stitching of many
smaller
files to need such a large amount of RAM.

The problem is that with typical panoramas even 2GB are sometimes not
enough, and the computer starts disk swapping.
For instance, with PTGUI a panorama with the layered output option with
ten 10MP images generates easily a 300MByte file. Open that in your
image processing software, with multiple undo levels and you quickly end
up filling up several GB of RAM

The first thing to do is to disable all but one undo level. One undo level
is necessary, since you need both the original image and the resultant image
in memory to apply a transformation (curves, USM, or what have you). At a
minimum, to avoid swapping, you need twice as much memory as the number of
bytes in the image plus 256MB or so for OS + Photoshop.

You can save intermediate states manually (in files). Saving intermediate
states manually also reduces the need for layers. It's harder, and you have
to think about what you are doing, but it's always been the case with
computers that thinking beforehand makes your machine capable of handling
much larger problems.

Rant
The vast majority of the layers-based operations are simply stacking
sequences of transformations that can be done one at a time, but that when
stacked allow you to see the total effect while you twiddle the intermediate
stages of the sequence. This is grossly wasteful of memory.
/Rant

If you can get away without layers, then you can deal comfortably with files
with up to pixel counts slightly less than 1/6 the available number of
bytes. For example, say you have 1GB of memory, the OS and Photoshop code
eats maybe 256MB, that leaves you capable of dealing with 128MP images.
That's a pretty big panorama. The stitch operation itself may be painfully
slow, but everything else will fly. And even there, if you stitch in
sections, then only the final stitch of the last two sections will be
painful.

To reiterate: it's always been the case with computers that thinking
beforehand makes your machine capable of handling much larger problems.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

"Bill" wrote:

I've been running the release version of Vista 64-bit for a month now
and it's very stable and compatible with almost all of my software...

Hi Bill,

Does Vista require a 'clean install' or can it be installed over XP Pro so
that I won't have to re-install all my programs? I have an HP XW6400
workstation with dual 3.6GHz Xeon processors and 5GB ram.

"Mardon" wrote in message
. 130...
"Bill" wrote:

I've been running the release version of Vista 64-bit for a month now
and it's very stable and compatible with almost all of my software...

Hi Bill,

Does Vista require a 'clean install' or can it be installed over XP
Pro so
that I won't have to re-install all my programs? I have an HP XW6400
workstation with dual 3.6GHz Xeon processors and 5GB ram.


Depends on which edition you wish to run and which OS you upgrade. If
you have 32-bit XP and want 64-bit Vista, you must do a clean install.
But upgrading XP to 32-bit Vista works.

If that's not a typo and you have 5gigs of memory, I suggest you get the
64-bit edition since all 32-bit versions are limited to less than 4gigs
of addressing in memory (about 3.5gigs so the extra 1.5gig is unused and
wasted).

"Bill" wrote:

Depends on which edition you wish to run and which OS you upgrade. If
you have 32-bit XP and want 64-bit Vista, you must do a clean install.
But upgrading XP to 32-bit Vista works.

If that's not a typo and you have 5gigs of memory, I suggest you get the
64-bit edition since all 32-bit versions are limited to less than 4gigs
of addressing in memory (about 3.5gigs so the extra 1.5gig is unused and
wasted).

I've listed my PC's specs below. I'm thinking that I would get the 64 bit
edition of Vista Ultimate. Is that what you recommend? What kind of
problems can I expect with drivers for my scanners, Spyder colorimeter,
Canopus ADVC-300, etc.? I'm dissappointed that I'll have to do a clean
install but I kind of figured that would be the case.

Current OS:
32 bit XP Pro

Processors:
3.60 gigahertz Intel Xeon (2 installed)
16 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Display adapter:
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400 512MB

Memory:
'DIMM1' has 2048 MB
'DIMM2' has 2048 MB
'DIMM3' has 512 MB
DIMM4' has 512 MB

Disk Drives:
950.21 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
351.91 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
Maxtor 7Y250M0 250.06 GB dedicated to the OS

MoBo:
Board: Hewlett-Packard 08B8h
Bus Clock: 800 megahertz
BIOS: Hewlett-Packard 786B7 v2.02 06/02/2005

Hi,

I'm not trying to be a smart-ass. Your question is just very general
and I'm adding this for the sake of completenesss.

Just wondering if there is image processing software which can make full
use of 64 bit processors with more than one core (i.e. Core 2 Duo, Core
2 Quad or equivalents from AMD) and which can use more than 4GB RAM (I

Several open source operating systems have had 64-bit versions and
multiprocessor support for a long while. Notably linux and *bsds. You
do not specify what kind of image processing you're talking about, but
several image processing applications running on the aforementioned
platforms also can handle 64-bit and run in multiple threads (and so
utilize multiple processors). A few examples being GIMP (Gnu Image
Manipulation Program, a general image processing), hugin (panorama
application), bibble (raw photo processing tool, not free) and I'm sure
there are a lot others, but those I have used myself.

know for instance of mainboards which take 8GB RAM)? Intel is planning
to have a processor with 32 cores by 2009.

I don't doubt that, single cores seem to be hitting the megahertz
ceiling and the next route is to increase the core count. If the main
cpu players get core-crazy we'll easily see 32 cores in desktop
machines in the near future.

If only (other) programmers would realize this and move from too low
level languages (C, java etc) to more advanced languages which have
higher level abstractions about concurrency (and a lot of other things
too). Programming with low level threads IS hard and complicated, we
need to use better tools.

- Sampo

Lionel wrote:

You should never mix DIMMs types or capacities, because it greatly
reduces performance, & can cause reliability problems. I personally
run 4x 1024MB DIMMs, & would recommend that you do the same, or
upgrade the two 512MB DIMMs to match your 2048MB DIMMs.

Unfortunately, HP Canada (from whom I bought the system) does not offer
fully customizable workstations to their Canadian Customers. The XW6200
comes with 2 512 DIMMs regardless if you want them or not.. If you don't
want them, you pay for them and through them away. Very aggravating.
Anyway, when I bought the system I planed to upgrade to 4 2GB DIMMs after I
switched to 64 bit Vista. I did not go with XP 64 because it had just come
out and was too new with too few drivers. Thus, I bought the system
initially with 2 GB DIMMS to max out the memory under XP 32 and left the
512 DIMMs in place. HP left me little alternative.

Disk Drives:
950.21 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
351.91 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
Maxtor 7Y250M0 250.06 GB dedicated to the OS

That swap file is massive overkill, & very little of it will ever be
used. The usual rule of thumb would suggest that you use - at most -
6GB on each drive if you're not running Adobe Photoshop or Premiere.
If you are running any of the big Adobe app's, I'd advise a 6GB Xp
swap file on your boot drive, that you configure Adobe to put its
scratch file (I don't recall what Adobe calls its swap file) on the
other drive.

I guess I wasn't clear. The 250Gig drive is dedicated to the OS and
programs. I meant that don't keep data on that drive.

MoBo:
Board: Hewlett-Packard 08B8h
Bus Clock: 800 megahertz
BIOS: Hewlett-Packard 786B7 v2.02 06/02/2005

Make sure you're running the latest BIOS on your motherboard, & on
your video card.

I don't know. If I'm not having any trouble, I'm reluctant to flash the
MoBo BIOS.

wrote:

I don't doubt that, single cores seem to be hitting the megahertz
ceiling and the next route is to increase the core count. If the main
cpu players get core-crazy we'll easily see 32 cores in desktop
machines in the near future.

Yes, and the funny thing (well, to me) is that most of this power will
be used to move windows around the screen! LOL!

"Mardon" wrote in message
. 130...
"Bill" wrote:

Depends on which edition you wish to run and which OS you upgrade. If
you have 32-bit XP and want 64-bit Vista, you must do a clean
install.
But upgrading XP to 32-bit Vista works.

If that's not a typo and you have 5gigs of memory, I suggest you get
the
64-bit edition since all 32-bit versions are limited to less than
4gigs
of addressing in memory (about 3.5gigs so the extra 1.5gig is unused
and
wasted).

I've listed my PC's specs below. I'm thinking that I would get the
64 bit
edition of Vista Ultimate. Is that what you recommend?

Again it depends on your needs regarding hardware and sofware
availability. I'm using 64-bit because it works with all of my hardware
and software, but you may not be so lucky and you might have to run the
32-bit version. Try this to help check:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvist...r/default.mspx

Also you may not have to spend the extra for Ultimate. The Home Premium
should have everything you need to run your hardware and has most of the
features. The Ultimate version just combines the Premium and Business
edition features for extreme or corporate users. See this page for
details:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvist...s/default.mspx

Either way, the last details I heard from MS suggest that when you buy
Vista in the store, you'll get the 32-bit version in the box and you'll
have to order the 64-bit version (for free) from Micro$oft. A download
option may be available too.

What kind of
problems can I expect with drivers for my scanners, Spyder
colorimeter,
Canopus ADVC-300, etc.? I'm dissappointed that I'll have to do a
clean
install but I kind of figured that would be the case.

With the 32-bit version you can upgrade. That might be a good idea at
first to see how everything works, and then later do the 64-bit clean
install.

MoBo:
Board: Hewlett-Packard 08B8h
Bus Clock: 800 megahertz
BIOS: Hewlett-Packard 786B7 v2.02 06/02/2005

Contrary to what Lionel says, if all of your hardware is supported and
functional, you should not have to flash your BIOS. Leave everything as
is, and just upgrade XP to Vista, then you can see if you need to make
any changes. There is no reason to make things more complicated than
necessary.

Little Green Eyed Dragon wrote:
In article ,
Alfred Molon wrote:

In article , John
McWilliams says...

No, it won't be until after CSIII. Lots of engineering/development
issues around this, and the "improvement" would be marginal, according
to some experts. I'd be among them, but for the fact that I'm not an
expert in that field.

There are some who've read the hype of the chip mfgs. who believe that
64 bits *NOW* is a panacea.

It ain't.

Sorry, but isn't an advantage of 64 bit processors, that they can
address more than 4GB of RAM, which should help with memory hungry
situations?

The dual core G5 could- can address 8GB of Ram.

The amount of memory that in principle can be addressed
depends on the CPU chip. Most address memory more or
less directly so that a 32 bit CPU could address 4,394,967,295
or 4 gigabytes of memory.

A 64 bit CPU can, in principle, address 1.8x10^(16) gigabytes
of memory.

However, the memory controller chips often do not implement
all the address lines needed. So while today almost any
machine will do 4 gigs, most will NOT do the full 64 bit
capacity of the CPU. If the G5 can only address 8 GB, it
has used only 33 bits of memory addressing.

Going to 36 bits would give 64 Gb, which would probably hold
most of us for a year or two.... ;-)

--
--- Paul J. Gans