coljohnhannibalsmith
Member
Considering all the problems I've had waiting for XP x64 & finally Vista x64 Drivers to be released to take advantage of my dual core 64 bit hardware after XP x64 became orphaned by the hardware manufacturers it's occurred to me to ask; when will PC manufacturers finally ship new systems with Vista x64 or any 64 bit OS for that matter?
I've been looking at the specs for many of the High Power Gaming Laptops and not only are they still shipping with Vista x32 with no option to select Vista x64; their standard configuration is to ship with only 2GB of RAM. Why would this be? First of all Vista x32 only sees a maximum of 3.13GB to maintain "Driver Compatibility." This begs the question why would they need to hide an entire GB of RAM to do this? I'm guessing because Microsoft knows the PC manufacturers are mapping devices in that upper GB of RAM, causing all kinds of device incompatibilities even in a true 64 bit OS.
My particular problem is that my Media Reader causes BSODs with the upper 2GB of RAM installed. Forget about using ReadyBoost! Not only do I have this problem; but my system takes twice as long to boot and application windows take more time to load. If the additional symptoms were limited to just extra time to boot, I could explain them away, by telling myself that POST is taking longer, because of the extra memory it needs to test. If only this were the case! It appears that not only MS but the PC manufacturers know there are compatibility problems with the extra 2GB RAM.
So here's what I suggest: I suggest that none of us buys any new PC that we can put-off purchasing until the PC manufacturers start shipping new systems with Vista x64 installed. This would require the MFGs to have properly designed the hardware, BIOSs and Drivers to work together in harmony. While this exploration has been very enlightening, I need to be able to use my PC the way I intended to when I purchased it, instead of playing Alpha Tester for MS & the MFGs.
It appears that what many of us have who purchased 64 bit systems recently is "transitional hardware." My system, which is an Acer Laptop, was manufactured in November of 2006 and I purchased it in Feb 2007. Little did I know when I purchased it, that it used a PATA interface, which severely limits its upgrade capability; but that Acer never intended to support a 64 bit OS on this system. They conveniently left the PATA tid-bit off of the specs. Silly of me, for not noticing!
Here's what I'm waiting for: I'm waiting for the MFGs to ship new Laptops with 8GB RAM expandability and Vista x64 or any true 64 bit OS standard. Add to my wish list 2x 128GB Super Talent NAND SSD Solid State Drives configured in a "RAID 0" configuration to double the 50MBS read/write speed to 100MBS. They also use 85% less power. These drives are currently $4000.00 each and can be purchased at "NewEgg.com." So, if you've got an extra $8000.00 laying around gathering dust, I've got a suggestion for how to spend it! However; I think it'll be a while before we see 8GB Laptops since, they can't even get them to work properly with 4GB. Oh BTW, did I forget to mention I want a CORE 2 Extreme "Quad" processor @ 3Ghz and 2x NVDIA SLI Video Cards?!
I wonder if the engineers who designed our systems designed them to work correctly with the upper 2GB installed or simply made whatever compromises were necessary to get disparate hardware devices to work together. I'm hoping the hardware engineers did their jobs correctly the first time and we have only the SW geeks to blame. Then at least, I'll have some hope that my system will eventually work correctly.
I've investigated a couple of possibilities which have turned out to be dead ends, at least for the moment. A BIOS rewrite will take appx $1000/day from a BIOS distributor/integrator such as "Ircona." One of their engineers suggested another option, which is to write a program which intercepts the Windows load and modifies the Device Map in the "E820 Table," whatever the hell that is!
The third option and probably the most feasible is to wait for Acer to release a BIOS update that addresses this problem. I'll think I'll start holding my breath now...
-John
I've been looking at the specs for many of the High Power Gaming Laptops and not only are they still shipping with Vista x32 with no option to select Vista x64; their standard configuration is to ship with only 2GB of RAM. Why would this be? First of all Vista x32 only sees a maximum of 3.13GB to maintain "Driver Compatibility." This begs the question why would they need to hide an entire GB of RAM to do this? I'm guessing because Microsoft knows the PC manufacturers are mapping devices in that upper GB of RAM, causing all kinds of device incompatibilities even in a true 64 bit OS.
My particular problem is that my Media Reader causes BSODs with the upper 2GB of RAM installed. Forget about using ReadyBoost! Not only do I have this problem; but my system takes twice as long to boot and application windows take more time to load. If the additional symptoms were limited to just extra time to boot, I could explain them away, by telling myself that POST is taking longer, because of the extra memory it needs to test. If only this were the case! It appears that not only MS but the PC manufacturers know there are compatibility problems with the extra 2GB RAM.
So here's what I suggest: I suggest that none of us buys any new PC that we can put-off purchasing until the PC manufacturers start shipping new systems with Vista x64 installed. This would require the MFGs to have properly designed the hardware, BIOSs and Drivers to work together in harmony. While this exploration has been very enlightening, I need to be able to use my PC the way I intended to when I purchased it, instead of playing Alpha Tester for MS & the MFGs.
It appears that what many of us have who purchased 64 bit systems recently is "transitional hardware." My system, which is an Acer Laptop, was manufactured in November of 2006 and I purchased it in Feb 2007. Little did I know when I purchased it, that it used a PATA interface, which severely limits its upgrade capability; but that Acer never intended to support a 64 bit OS on this system. They conveniently left the PATA tid-bit off of the specs. Silly of me, for not noticing!
Here's what I'm waiting for: I'm waiting for the MFGs to ship new Laptops with 8GB RAM expandability and Vista x64 or any true 64 bit OS standard. Add to my wish list 2x 128GB Super Talent NAND SSD Solid State Drives configured in a "RAID 0" configuration to double the 50MBS read/write speed to 100MBS. They also use 85% less power. These drives are currently $4000.00 each and can be purchased at "NewEgg.com." So, if you've got an extra $8000.00 laying around gathering dust, I've got a suggestion for how to spend it! However; I think it'll be a while before we see 8GB Laptops since, they can't even get them to work properly with 4GB. Oh BTW, did I forget to mention I want a CORE 2 Extreme "Quad" processor @ 3Ghz and 2x NVDIA SLI Video Cards?!
I wonder if the engineers who designed our systems designed them to work correctly with the upper 2GB installed or simply made whatever compromises were necessary to get disparate hardware devices to work together. I'm hoping the hardware engineers did their jobs correctly the first time and we have only the SW geeks to blame. Then at least, I'll have some hope that my system will eventually work correctly.
I've investigated a couple of possibilities which have turned out to be dead ends, at least for the moment. A BIOS rewrite will take appx $1000/day from a BIOS distributor/integrator such as "Ircona." One of their engineers suggested another option, which is to write a program which intercepts the Windows load and modifies the Device Map in the "E820 Table," whatever the hell that is!
The third option and probably the most feasible is to wait for Acer to release a BIOS update that addresses this problem. I'll think I'll start holding my breath now...
-John
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