AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester is x86?

[mcqueene@gmail.com]

I was looking at a Vista upgrade from XP and I found something at the
MSFT site that said you should check the environment variable named
"processor_architecture" for a value of x64. If you have a value of
x86 then you do not have a Vista 64 compatible cpu. But looking at the
old notes at AMD for this cpu it sounds like it's 64 bit compatible.

Any ideas who is correct? Should I just go 32bit Vista?

 

[John Barnes]

Re: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester is x86?

Your cpu is 64-bit compatible. That said, there is still the decision on
whether it will provide you any value or just headaches going to Vista64. I
had that chip on my computer and Vista just hung a lot. Worked fine with XP
(both 32 and 64). Personally upgraded to a 6000+ X2 and it works fine
except that for my use Vista64 does not allocate properly between cores and
I get hangs with one core at 100% and the other one <20%. Works fine after
manually setting affinity for 6-10 running processes to balance things out,
but has to be done every time I logon.

<mcqueene@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:43a3b625-785d-4a75-9860-2dcbb3c01a3a@r60g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
>I was looking at a Vista upgrade from XP and I found something at the
> MSFT site that said you should check the environment variable named
> "processor_architecture" for a value of x64. If you have a value of
> x86 then you do not have a Vista 64 compatible cpu. But looking at the
> old notes at AMD for this cpu it sounds like it's 64 bit compatible.
>
> Any ideas who is correct? Should I just go 32bit Vista?

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Re: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester is x86?

That's what the "64" stands for in "AMD Athlon 64". Your cpu is backwards
compatible with the x86 instruction set and runs equally well with x86
(32-bit) and x64 (64-bit) operating systems. The "x64" is used by
convention because the AMD64 was the first 64-bit cpu that was backwards
compatible with the x86 instruction set. The convention is to give the
processor class a designation from the company that pioneers it. "x86" is
used by convention to describe 32-bit cpu's that are compatible with the
Intel 8086 family of cpu's.

You will see AMD64 used in drivers (.inf files). It does not mean that only
AMD cpu's can use it but that it is meant for that class of cpu. The Intel
64-bit cpu's like the Core 2 line thus belong to the AMD64 class as odd as
that may sound at first.

<mcqueene@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:43a3b625-785d-4a75-9860-2dcbb3c01a3a@r60g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
>I was looking at a Vista upgrade from XP and I found something at the
> MSFT site that said you should check the environment variable named
> "processor_architecture" for a value of x64. If you have a value of
> x86 then you do not have a Vista 64 compatible cpu. But looking at the
> old notes at AMD for this cpu it sounds like it's 64 bit compatible.
>
> Any ideas who is correct? Should I just go 32bit Vista?

 

[Steve Foster [SBS MVP]]

Re: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester is x86?

mcqueene@gmail.com wrote:

>I was looking at a Vista upgrade from XP and I found something at the
>MSFT site that said you should check the environment variable named
>"processor_architecture" for a value of x64. If you have a value of
>x86 then you do not have a Vista 64 compatible cpu. But looking at the
>old notes at AMD for this cpu it sounds like it's 64 bit compatible.
>
>Any ideas who is correct? Should I just go 32bit Vista?

The Processor_Architecture environment variable shows whether you're
running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows. It does not tell you what
the physical CPU is *capable* of doing.

I get values of x86 on 32-bit Windows and AMD64 on 64-bit versions, even
though both are running on the same processor (not at the same time!).

--
Steve Foster [SBS MVP]
---------------------------------------
MVPs do not work for Microsoft. Please reply only to the newsgroups.

 

[Gary Avrett]

Re: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester is x86?

I have Vista 64 on my AMD X2 6000+ and working fine for the stuff I can get
drivers too.

<mcqueene@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:43a3b625-785d-4a75-9860-2dcbb3c01a3a@r60g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
>I was looking at a Vista upgrade from XP and I found something at the
> MSFT site that said you should check the environment variable named
> "processor_architecture" for a value of x64. If you have a value of
> x86 then you do not have a Vista 64 compatible cpu. But looking at the
> old notes at AMD for this cpu it sounds like it's 64 bit compatible.
>
> Any ideas who is correct? Should I just go 32bit Vista?