theres really no speed boost to a 64bit OS. The only reason you would ever want to use 64bit is to address more than 4GB of memory. Anyone here that uses a 64bit OS actually sports 6, 8, 12, 16 GB of memory? 64bits programs are often larger than 32bits programs. FYI I am on my 2nd 64bit machine. I am in no hurry of getting 64bit OS, even linux. My older machine, AMD 64 3500+ is running Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 Server, 32bits. There are way too many hassles to deal with when it comes to running 64bit OS app, even in the open source world
Sure. I was using a 64 bit OS and sporting 8 GB of memory... 10 years ago. It's taken a long time, but 32 bit operating systems are on their last gasp. The 4 GB limit is to 2008 as the 640k limit was to 1986. Martin
For trading? Sun, IBM, Craig have 64bits stuff for years.. I'm specifically talking about the consumer space. You can address upto 128GB with PAE with some version of Windows 2003. Yes, 32 bits w/PAE. That license alone can cost more than a high end consumer PC
I won't answer for the OP, but it is quit true that 64 bit machines and operating systems have been around for quite a long time - and quite possibly used in trading applications. 64 bit SPARCs are not exactly new, for example. Microsoft has been retarded in their uptake of cheap 64 bit processors. It says something about Microsoft code that it takes so long to port it to anything other that 32bit x86. I'll admit I don't know anything about Win 2003, but I'll bet that individual processes are limited to less than 4Gbyte and the overall address space is achieved by using segment registers a bit like the horrible ds,cs,ss,es mess in the original 8086. There are plenty of uses for large memory spaces in trading - backtesting and optimizing trading systems over large numbers of instruments and/or processing large volumes of tick data being prime examples.
A hardware newbie question: does make any sense running a 32 bit application such as TT X_Trader under 64bit Windows OS ?!
Nope. However, there were definitely finance applications pushing for 64 bit addressing in the late 90s. I agree it has nothing to do with personal computing, but everything filters down eventually. And, we're there. This is precisely analogous to what Intel did to push the 64k limit of 16 bit processors to 640k. It's an ugly hack and there shouldn't be any need to go there when we have perfectly reasonable 64 bit processors and operating systems. Martin
Stick with 32bits everything. Because everything is made with that in mind. 64bit transition will be rough... Kinda like analog TV -> HD TV w/o the government deadline to switch over.
XP 32 bit does have problems managing 4 X 1 gig sticks of ram. So if you regularly need more than 2 gigs, XP 64bit is a better option. The main driver most traders need is the matrox driver for multiple monitors which are available in 64 bit versions. If you want to keep your system fast, choose XP64 instead of Vista. It has most of the benefits without the bloat. Runningbear
In adition to driver issues, 64 bit dll's and 32 bit dll's are incompatible. Whether or not this causes a conflict if you have 2 different programs using /installing the same dll but one in 32 and and one in 64 bit would be interesting to know about in advance.