Over 10,000 drivers already ported to AMD64

[Yousuf Khan]

According to an interview with Bob Muglia of Microsoft, there are already
over 10,000 drivers that have been ported to the AMD64 platform!

===

Paul: Obviously, driver support is going to be the big problem.

BM: You know, the thing you have to realize is that, yes, that is the key
issue, but there are over 10,000 drivers now running on this new operating
system. So there are a lot of drivers out there.

Paul: This is like the "printing of the HCL [Hardware Compatibility List]"
days from NT 4, when you'd want to have the list with you when you went to
the store to see which hardware you could actually buy.

BM: Yeah, but it's not that bad, there are already 10,000 drivers converted
to 64-bits. So we should have a ton of driver support eventually. And of
course, there's more [drivers] than that that exist. Some drivers will never
get converted, too. That four year old printer might not work.

===

It's a pretty wide-ranging interview, covering everything from Linux,
Windows Server 2003, Longhorn, Blackcomb, as well as Microsoft's preference
vis-a-vis AMD vs. Intel's 64-bit technology (Microsoft thinks that Intel
still has some completion work to do to with EM64T).

Inquirer lead up: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16186

Winsupersite article:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/muglia_winserver.asp

Yousuf Khan

--
Humans: contact me at ykhan at rogers dot com
Spambots: just reply to this email address ;-)

[Rob Stow]

Yousuf Khan wrote:
According to an interview with Bob Muglia of Microsoft, there are already over 10,000 drivers that have been ported to the AMD64 platform! === Paul: Obviously, driver support is going to be the big problem. BM: You know, the thing you have to realize is that, yes, that is the key issue, but there are over 10,000 drivers now running on this new operating system. So there are a lot of drivers out there. Paul: This is like the "printing of the HCL [Hardware Compatibility List]" days from NT 4, when you'd want to have the list with you when you went to the store to see which hardware you could actually buy. BM: Yeah, but it's not that bad, there are already 10,000 drivers converted to 64-bits. So we should have a ton of driver support eventually. And of course, there's more [drivers] than that that exist. Some drivers will never get converted, too. That four year old printer might not work. === It's a pretty wide-ranging interview, covering everything from Linux, Windows Server 2003, Longhorn, Blackcomb, as well as Microsoft's preference vis-a-vis AMD vs. Intel's 64-bit technology (Microsoft thinks that Intel still has some completion work to do to with EM64T). Inquirer lead up: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16186 Winsupersite article: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/muglia_winserver.asp Yousuf Khan

Yet so many people are having trouble getting little things like
the LPT ports to work in 64 bit XP and 64 bit 2003 Server because
of (drum roll) ... no drivers. USB hard drives and USB optical
drives seem to perform rather erratically as well. As well, the
overwhelming majority of the drivers are in a pre-beta stage and
typically are both feature-limited and underperforming compared
to their 32 bit XP counterparts.

The driver situation seems to be a lot better for Linux.
Features might still be missing from things like video card drivers,
but at least the features that are there seem to work as advertised.

Nevertheless, it is getting better, slowly but surely.
It was especially nice to see the 64 bit version for ATI's Catalyst.

www.planetamd.com is a nice place to look for drivers.

[gibmeat]

Rob Stow wrote:
Nevertheless, it is getting better, slowly but surely. It was especially nice to see the 64 bit version for ATI's Catalyst.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=64bitgfx&page=1

interesting comparison from a gamers perspective on the 64 bit catalyst
and Forceware drivers.

i still think XP-64 for Extended Systems is a lemon in its current
state, its not much of a preview program when some high performance
applications it is targeted for are having stability problems or won't
even install.