Hi guys,

I run a small 3D visualisation business and need some more rendering power. I am going to upgrade my dell precision 670 from a 3.2 dual xeon to a a 2.8 dual quad core. I need to get a new motherboard aswell as the existing one will not take quads. Through this process i will also be going from 32bit XP, to 64bit vista but am worried about the functionality of some of my programs. As a backup i would like to have XP and Vista on the PC so that i can still work on XP if i need some time to sort out any new software updates for 64 or something more major.

So my questions are:-
1. is it possible to have both XP 32bit and Vista 64bit installed on the same PC?
2. If so how would I do this?
3. How do i switch between XP and vista when using my PC
4. Anything i should be aware of when using the same software on 32 bit and 64bit

my dad thinks that
To switch from Vista to XP and vice versa, you will have to reboot. (Or you can use a virtual PC and not have to worry about rebooting. any opinion?

Wrong forum, aqaing. You posted your question in the tutorial section.
In the tutorial section, you are supposed to teach things. So, people knowing this subject will not look inside the tutorial section.
So, if you want to ask a question, don't post your question in the tutorial section. Ask your question in a "tutorial request" if you want a tutorial, or in the "Windows" section if you want an answer concerning windows.
That's why I moved your topic here, where it should find an answer.
I'm not really familiar with xeon quad, however, I'm pretty sure concerning some facts.
a) A 32-bit machine needs a 32-bit operating system, a 64-bit machine needs a 64 bits operating system.
You must buy the Windows version suitable for your cpu. So, what about asking the guy who will sell you the software, if he guarantees that it will work ?
c) I know that vista/XP dual boot does not work well, maybe you should do a test on a test machine (a machine you can easily sacrify). I would try reformatting the hard disk of the test machine, then install XP on a partition, and install vista on a second partition, and see how the vista multi-boot will manage that. In my opinion this is the safest way to decide.

All quad cores are 64-bit processors so just install Windows Vista x64 for your system. You don't really need to install XP if you have Vista unless you need direct access for DirectX hardware like DirectSound.

Most software written for the passed 5 years should work on Windows Vista fine.

xboxrulz

I would like to add a little bit more info on top of yordan's reply.

1. As long as you have 64bit capable processor, it's most like possible to install both on the same PC. 64Bit processor are backward compatible with 32bit OS.
3. Like yordan said, the vista's multi-boot manager will handle this properly. If not, you can still resort to using those tools that handle BDC (Boot Device Configuration), such as VistaBootPRO. This is something new and less friendly compared to Xp's boot.ini
4. Not all 32bit software will run properly in 64bit environment. And not all software that runs on XP can run on Vista. It's safer to check in with your software vendor, or their website. Most of them mention their compatibility with Vista and 64Bit system. Some might require you to download and install minor update your copy of the software.

Side Note: Since your intention is to improve the performance of your 3d visualization rendering performance, make sure you check that your software supports or has a 64bit version. If your software is 32bit only, and running in 64bit OS, there won't be any improvement in terms of performance. Then, the only advantage left for using 64bit OS in this case is to able install more RAM. 32Bit OS and hardware has the maximum memory limit of 3GB. Also, Vista require slightly more resource than XP itself, so you might have loss a bit of performance when running in Vista.

faulty.lee, actually 32-bit software do run faster in 64-bit environments due to the larger memory mapping available to them. Also, most 32-bit and XP software do work on Windows Vista x64.

Not really xboxrulz. When you run 32bit (x86) application in 64bit (x64) OS, the software is running on an emulation layer provided either by the OS or by the CPU(AMD). The amount of memory the specific application can access is still with it's 32bit addressing capability, which is 4GB. The larger memory mapping is only available to 64bit software, and the other possible advantage is when you have more than 4GB of memory, the OS can keep much more program running in memory as possible.

Further more compatibility with Vista is another issue on top of x64. Take for example, say there 2% of XP 32bit software that won't run on Vista alone. Then there's another 2% of the software won't run on 64Bit OS (including XP 64). Thus you might ended up with compounded percentage equal to 4% of the software not able to run in Vista 64. If you're lucky enough, there's overlapped percentage in both the area, then it would be less than 4%.

To really take advantage of the 64bit OS/CPU, the application needs to be re-compiled for 64bit CPU.

There are further advantages and disadvantages of 64Bit OS/CPU as outline by these articles :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vista_64
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit#Pros_and_cons

There isn't any emulation required to run 32-bit software on top of Windows x64 since the processor executes both 64-bit and 32-bit software natively. For this reason, AMD64 was successful and IA64 wasn't. WOW64 is actually a compatibility layer like WINE for Linux. They're not emulators but compatibility layers.

I notice that 32-bit games generally run faster on 64-bit Windows than 32-bit Windows.

xboxrulz