[Hironori]

Currently my business is in the midst of researching the use of x64 bit windows in order to increase the capability of our PCs hardware. We are well aware that many art/graphic design firms consider XP x64 the standard and we were wondering if any digital artists out there had any feedback on how it may help your art work (Working on large scales such as 600 dpi or 60x60 inches in Photoshop, using complex brushes in PS or Corel Painter, or just working on super high poly models in Maya, etc).

If you have been using it and it hasn't caused any other inconveniences like program support issues or driver issues and its just been a charm to work with, please post that here.

If you simply abhor the use of it and it was absolutely not worthwhile, then we would sure like to know about that too.

Anything inbetween of course is also welcome, we just want feedback on how it affects professional commercial artists and whether or not its worth the investment of buying enough copies to supply all of our companies' computers.

Please take note that our company exclusively works on very large scale images for HD television commercials and extremely high poly 3d work, etc.

Thank you so very much for your feedback!

[Max]

I've been working with XP64 for half a year now. So far it works great! Some driver problems are annoying however the system itself seems to be pretty stable. Since I changed hardware at the same time I changed to XP64 I can't really tell if stuff works better because of XP64. The main reason I changed to 64 bit is the 4GB Ram support which definately is worth it.

[balistic]

For tasks like loading several uncompressed sequences in FrameCycler, 8 gigs of RAM is a pretty nice thing to have.

(the workstations here are ridiculous)
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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[Awetopsy]

Really, Balistic has it bang on.

We tried Winx 64 here at my office and we had notihing but problems. Constant crashes and serious issues.. but we only had 1 gig of ram. If you want to use XP64 I seriously recommend having the RAM to go along with it. Otherwise its kinda pointless.

[iandredd]

I don't really have anything bad to say about XP64. Having no limitations on RAM allowed me to render stuff that would be impossible on 32 bit XP.

The only issue I can think of that I have had is not having my Wacom work correctly in Cinema 4D 64 but I believe that issue may have been resolved in the latest update for Cinema.

The software I use primarily is Cinema 4D 10, After Effects, Photoshop and Mudbox.

[Hironori]

These are a couple other comments from other threads I've been checking:


I use a 64 bit machine with vista 64 on it - 4gb of ram to do lots of photoshop and 3dsmax for my freelance work.

My experience with it is this:

It's exactly the same in most ways.

Many companies don't make 64bit drivers for their scanners (though there are workarounds like VueScan).

Photoshop isn't available in a 64 bit addition so it still maxes out at 2gb of memory usage (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong), which means large scale images in photoshop still lag as much as they would on a 32 bit machine, even if you have 16gb of ram.

3dsmax and zbrush seem to run smoother with access to more RAM, but I haven't honeslty noticed a huge difference.

In my opinion, 64 bit is useful if you need access to heaps of ram and your programs can support 64bit (most 3d programs have a 64 bit version - but do you have to buy new licenses or can you just use your 32 bit license?). So unless you need it or you're about to spend up big on upgrading new hardware/software anway (in which case you might as well go 64) then I'd say that 32bit is still a very good platform to do most any graphics work today.


From what I've gathered 64bit is useless for regular users, regular users including us artists.
2D image processing doesn't need a hell of a lot of grunt most of the time.
In the case of 3D rendering, if you'd need a render farm for intense work anyway. 3D rendering is more CPU dependent anyway.

It is noticeably faster in general use, but not really enough to justify all the trouble it's causes, seen as software developers don't want to touch it.



Is anything missing? It seems like the only real problem is driver support but that is slowly going away...

[iandredd]

Regarding Photoshop, in CS3 you can put PS's RAM usage up to somewhere around 3.25 gigs. There is also the bigger tiles plug-in that Adobe recommend activating if you have more than 1 gig ram.

For 3d apps the main benefit I had with more ram was no longer having constraints where textures were concerned. I don't have a render farm!

[B0b]

i am now running V64Ultimate and don't have any troubles with any of my hardware (well appart from my logitech mouse, but thats getting long in the tooth and i'm looking at another)

my scanner is supported, so is my printer

everything is that little bit more zingy including Photoshop and i'm still on 2GB of RAM until Decemeber when i'm going 8GB for a job that i'm going to need it..

i don't do alot of painting, mostly editing 30x20in Photographs in 16bit and i'm sure having the extra RAM will help alot with that as well

adobe say for people with more than 4GB RAM to put the RAM usage for CS2+3 to 100% - they've also said that there is no benefit for them to code the app in 64bit.. (but i'm sure that some plug-ins would)

[Hironori]

Wouldn't the software support for Vista be different than with XP 64? THere seems to be a lot of different things to update once its installed and the problem is that nothing goes between XP 32 and Vista...

[Spectra]

If you�re planning to put more than 2 GB of RAM on your computer, it�s worth it.

I use 4 GB on win64, works great. There are a few minor inconveniences with drivers and not supporting some applications, but it�s no big deal.

Nevertheless some graphic cards do cause problems. I had an ATI x1600x and it is complete shit on win64, even with the latest drivers...

Constant graphic display glitches, fluo lines "corrupting" my files in Photoshop from simple task like free transform, resize, or most filters. And it only did that under win 64. When I boot win 32, from my other hard disk, there was no such bugs.

Stay away from ATI for graphic applications under win64... nVidia works like a charm for me on win64.
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http://www.letual.ca

[B0b]

ok i've hit a wall - had to buy a new motherboard (my old just gave me random BSoD all the time when working with more than 2GB) and also Vista requires this patch before you can go above 3GB of RAM or it will just BSoD all the time when booting..

will fill you guys in a little more when i've got my new mobo..

[B0b]

well it would seem that my old Mobo an Asus P5W DH Deluxe didn't like to be OC'd with the new RAM, so after some consultation with some poeple, ive bought a Gigabyte 965P-DS4, which is now happily running my 4GB of RAM and OC'd to 3.2GHz

[B0b]

CS3 is nearly double the speed now that i'm running on 4GB and have set the RAM usage to 100%

8GB in the new year, just waiting for my supplier to get stock of the 2GB sticks

[gugesbri]

I just switched to XP 64 bit last week.
Best thing I did.
Photoshop works better!
Gimp works better!

I have 4 gigs of memory on board and XP64 can address more if I decide to add more in the future.

My Wacom tablet runs smoothly on both PS3 and Gimp, and, I've been dying to do some painting in Gimp.

I recommend the switch, but, remember, use XP64 if you are serious about building a "workstation" for art and content creation, and not an everyday "web surfing and gaming machine" because hardware manufacturers have not written 64bit drivers for some of their products.

All the best,
Gustavo

Portfolio at:
http://www.newspagedesigner.com/portfolios/portfolio1.php?UserID=8368

[Affected]

Of course, anyone wishing to still play games and having trouble with xp64 could keep the 32-bit version of XP installed as well, and boot into whichever OS they need.

[B0b]

i can quite happily play CoD4 on my Vista64 install

[gugesbri]

[B0b]

you can in stall on the same drive, once you install more than 1 OS, you'll get a boot menu at the begining..

if you don't, right click on the MyComputer icon select the Advanced Tab, and in the Start up and Recovery section, click on the Settings button, then look at the system start up, you should have Time to display list of opertating systems ticked.. if it is ticked then you'll have to edit the startup options file manually..

[gugesbri]

[B0b]

oh and don't forget to install it in a different directory

[B0b]

well thats buggered my perfect install - XSI won't run on vista without troubles, so just putting xp64 on..