New Core 2 Duo Thinkpads - Do they come with 64-bit XP ?

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tselling · #1 Post by **tselling** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 10:45 am

I am wondering if the new Core-2 Duo Thinkpads come with 64-bit Windows XP Pro? Or just the old standard 32-bit.

christopher_wolf · #2 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 1:10 pm

The new Core 2 Duo Thinkpads are still 32-bit.

With the Santa Rosa Merom revision, which is expected sometime next year and supports EMT64, I really don't know. Probably, some preload of Vista will be placed on those systems instead of Windows XP 64-bit as that would seem to be a stop-gap measure.

#3 Post by **tomh009** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 2:02 pm

christopher_wolf wrote:The new Core 2 Duo Thinkpads are still 32-bit.

With the Santa Rosa Merom revision, which is expected sometime next year and supports EMT64, I really don't know. Probably, some preload of Vista will be placed on those systems instead of Windows XP 64-bit as that would seem to be a stop-gap measure.

What?!?

All Meroms (ie mobile Core 2 Duo) were supposed to have support for x64 (nee AMD64).

christopher_wolf · #4 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 2:07 pm

Only the 2007 Santa Rosa revision of the Core 2 Duo supports EMT64, not AMD64 although the two are quite closely related due to how they were developed.

#5 Post by **tomh009** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 2:22 pm

christopher_wolf wrote:Only the 2007 Santa Rosa revision of the Core 2 Duo supports EMT64, not AMD64 although the two are quite closely related due to how they were developed.

Checking into this some more, it looks like the Core 2 Duo CPU actually does support x64, but the current support chipset does not -- that's why we need the Santa Rosa chipset. Still, that's disappointing given how long AMD has been offering 64-bit processors and chipsets.

How they were developed? As in, when Intel decided to ditch the Itanic as a mainstream processor and implement AMD64 on their CPUs instead?

christopher_wolf · #6 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 2:33 pm

You got it.

Technically, the Merom is able to support 64-bit...but that is only necessay and not sufficient, so we have to wait until well into the Santa Rosa era in early 2007 to get 64-bit support. Betcha those roadmaps you read were confusing. Took me some time to finally figure it out awhile back as well.

[quote="tomh009]How they were developed? As in, when Intel decided to ditch the Itanic as a mainstream processor and implement AMD64 on their CPUs instead?[/quote]

Basically, yeah; AMD decided to go ahead and come up with AMD64 for 64-bit superset instruction support on their own for their own x86 chipsets. After which, Intel decided it would probably be a good idea to do the same and re-adpated many portionsof of AMD64 into EMT64, (Extended Memory Technology)64.

#7 Post by **tomh009** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 7:41 pm

christopher_wolf wrote:Technically, the Merom is able to support 64-bit...but that is only necessay and not sufficient, so we have to wait until well into the Santa Rosa era in early 2007 to get 64-bit support. Betcha those roadmaps you read were confusing. Took me some time to finally figure it out awhile back as well.

On that 64-bit chipset issue, do you have a URL with some details? The more reading I do, the more confusing it gets.

The Merom CPU is supposed to be intended for the Napa64 platform, which is an evolution of the Napa (as used with the older Core Duo CPUs), which in itself was 32-bit ... Santa Clara, on the other hand, is the all-new platform (Viiv?).

But does Napa64 not exist, or are the ThinkPads using the 64-bit Merom with a 32-but Napa32 platform?

christopher_wolf · #8 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 8:07 pm

Right now, we are in the second generation of the Napa line with the Core Duo processors and early Core 2 Duo, which is supposed to phase out Sonoma. With Merom, the CPU itself does support 64bit; thus far it is indicated that, without Crestline (the next revision of which is scheduled for Q1/Q2 2007), the Merom line won't have full 64bit support through EMT64 available to the host OS.

The best, and worst, place to look for that information is Intel's website and the roadmaps they have planned for it.

Here is the take that most have on the latest Intel roadmaps.

tselling · #9 Post by **tselling** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 9:50 pm

Sounds like bottom line is not to bother with Core 2 Duo until Santa Rosa is out since very minimal performance increase and I expect will still not support 4gb ram since not full 64-bit support.

While disappointing, I guess will save me some money. I never bothered with the T43 line since I didn't like the whole SATA/PATA bridge thing.

christopher_wolf · #10 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 9:58 pm

Well, that's the thing.

The Pentium Ms *can*, on their own, support more than 4GB of memory due to Physical Address Extension (PAE) which has been on Intel chips for awhile now, but the rest of the chipset and system cannot. Either way, Windows XP Professional, which is built primarily off of Windows 2000, can only efficiently address 3.24GB of memory with the 3GB boot switch. Windows 2003 can, however, support more.

I also haven't seen, err, rave reviews about the performance increase during the jump from PATA to SATA HDDs in laptops though.

#11 Post by **tomh009** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 5:47 am

christopher_wolf wrote:Right now, we are in the second generation of the Napa line with the Core Duo processors and early Core 2 Duo, which is supposed to phase out Sonoma. With Merom, the CPU itself does support 64bit; thus far it is indicated that, without Crestline (the next revision of which is scheduled for Q1/Q2 2007), the Merom line won't have full 64bit support through EMT64 available to the host OS.

The best, and worst, place to look for that information is Intel's website and the roadmaps they have planned for it.

Right ... which matches the "Napa32" and "Napa64" references I found earlier. But the question is whether the Napa64 has 64-bit support. So to search some more ...

There is precious little detailed roadmap stuff actually on Intel's site, as opposed to other sites speculating on some slideware that they have seen. But here is the Centrino Duo product brief that indicates it has support for "Intel 64" (yet another term for AMD64/EM64T)
http://www.intel.com/products/centrino/duo/310199.pdf

The full product description says the same:
http://www.intel.com/products/centrino/ ... iption.htm

christopher_wolf · #12 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 4:25 pm

They are making it vague on purpose, but those are some good links.

They have also come up with Intel64 as a new name to EMT64 which is mostly AMD64....sure, that makes it easier to remember.

They keep saying support for 64-bit then going back and not really mentioning anything else about it at all. Which is greatly confusing. Because they can say "We support it" then turn around and say "Ah, but the rest of the chipset doesn't" even though the CPU may already be ready in terms of its abilities and technology platforms they plan on using it on later.

#13 Post by **tomh009** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 4:48 pm

christopher_wolf wrote:They keep saying support for 64-bit then going back and not really mentioning anything else about it at all. Which is greatly confusing. Because they can say "We support it" then turn around and say "Ah, but the rest of the chipset doesn't" even though the CPU may already be ready in terms of its abilities and technology platforms they plan on using it on later.

Hmmm, I think what we really need a guinea pig -- someone with a new Thinkpad (with Core 2 Duo) who is willing to give 64-bit XP (or Vista) a try to see if it will actually work. You can always do a system recovery afterward ...

christopher_wolf · #14 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:19 pm

Right now, if they could truly support 64-bit on the new Meroms, I think all the OEMs would be tooting their horns that they, indeed, can now run 64-bit OSes and applications. At the very least, they would offer a 64-bit Windows OS to go along with it, but I haven't seen anything like that for any of the new Core 2 Duo offerings in laptops.

dfumento · #15 Post by **dfumento** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 12:16 am

This forum entry from Intel has some more info but is still ambiguous as to whether we can run Vista-64 on the Core 2 Duo (Merom) Thinkpad X60 and T60 or we cannot because of the Napa platform/chipset limitations. I sent an email and posted a entry in the forum that should resolve the ambiguity.

Note this article implies not:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ ... technology

Running Vista-64 has more than to do with extra memory addressability. There are more registers in 64-bit and double precision float point (used often in Matlab math program) works much more quickly.

dfumento · #16 Post by **dfumento** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 2:32 pm

I heard from Intel Tech Support. Now we know it is possible to have 64-bit software, now to find out if Lenovo used the right chipset or not.

From: Latscha, Denise [mailto:denise.xxxxx@intel.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2006 3:02 PM
To: David Fumento
Subject: RE: Thinkpad X60, T60 notebooks w/Core 2 Duo (Merom) run Vista-64?

Hi David,

I need to ask you to contact Lenovo on this one. There are different versions of the Napa chipset, some of which support 64-bit computing and some which don’t. They will need to confirm which is which. The processor is an Intel® 64 architecture-based processor, so that is covered. The other question you will need to ask Lenovo is which platforms have qualed on Vista (or when).

Thanks and ciao Denise

#17 Post by **tomh009** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 2:40 pm

dfumento wrote:I heard from Intel Tech Support. Now we know it is possible to have 64-bit software, now to find out if Lenovo used the right chipset or not.

Thanks, David -- that's great info! Appreciate you doing the footwork and sharing the results with everyone ...

dfumento · #18 Post by **dfumento** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 9:25 pm

The answer from Intel is that the chipsets do support the 64 bit. Read the email below.

I had contacted a couple of places within Intel as well as talking to Lenovo.
I got a call from one person who said that the 945G chipset runs 64 bit software and that is the chipset in the Lenovo T60, X60 Core 2 Duo products. He said he will send me an email to that effect since I like everything in writing.

I had also contacted presales and the person I spoke with didn't know, but then I wrote an email and received this reply:

Thinkpad X60, T60 notebooks w/Core 2 Duo (Merom) run Vista-64

Discussion Thread
---------------------------------------------------------------
Response (Brian Mecham) - 10/26/2006 03:28 PM Dear David,

Intel® Core™2 Duo mobile processors do include Intel 64-bit Technology and will support a 64-bit operating system. The current laptop chipsets will also support a 64-bit operating system.

If you have any further questions, please contact the Support Team at: 1-(866)-655-6565. Any representative at this number will be able to assist you.

Thank You,
Brian Mecham
Intel® Support Team

christopher_wolf · #19 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 12:27 am

Awesome; so that means I don't have to wait as long as I thought to get a 64-bit T6X Thinkpad.

Thanks for actually calling them up and asking.

#20 Post by **tomh009** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 3:23 am

Again -- thanks, David!!!

dfumento · #21 Post by **dfumento** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 9:55 am

I emailed the author of the Business Week article (link in an above post) and he emailed this back:

You and Intel are both right. There was an editing error in that item that I missed; it should have said that the 945 chipset prevents Merom from taking full advantage of its 64-bit nature. Specifically, Merom can handle 64-bit instructions and has a 64-bit data path. The 945 chipset, however, can only handle 32-bit addressing, meaning that the Core 2 Duo/945 pairing is still limited to 4 GB of RAM. This will be fixed in Santa Rosa.

Not long ago, I though the 4 GB ceiling didn’t mean much on anything but servers but I underestimated the memory appetite of apps, especially for image and sound processing. Apple is currently selling 3 GB Macbook Pros and will surely go above 4 GB max when Santa Rosa is available.

Steve Wildstrom Technology & You columnist
BusinessWeek
1200 G St NW
Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20005
www.businessweek.com/technology/wildstrom.htm

#22 Post by **tomh009** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:30 pm

dfumento wrote:I emailed the author of the Business Week article (link in an above post) and he emailed this back:

You and Intel are both right. There was an editing error in that item that I missed; it should have said that the 945 chipset prevents Merom from taking full advantage of its 64-bit nature. Specifically, Merom can handle 64-bit instructions and has a 64-bit data path. The 945 chipset, however, can only handle 32-bit addressing, meaning that the Core 2 Duo/945 pairing is still limited to 4 GB of RAM. This will be fixed in Santa Rosa.

I think that means a 4 GB physical memory limit -- but at least 64-bit Windows should be able to utilize the full 4 GB. That'll do me for the next three years!

dfumento wrote:Not long ago, I though the 4 GB ceiling didn’t mean much on anything but servers but I underestimated the memory appetite of apps, especially for image and sound processing. (...)

"640K ought to be enough for anybody?"

dfumento · #23 Post by **dfumento** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 7:05 pm

From a practical standpoint, since the Thinkpads and most other laptops only take to memory sticks then most people will be limited to 2 GB physical memory anyway (which I have read on www.tomshardware.com is what Dell recommends for Vista). Transcend is the only one to make 2 GB memory sticks and they cost about $400 or more a piece. One can get a 1 GB memory stick for about $110. Thus 2 GB total can cost about $200, 3 GB $500+ 4 GB 800+.

Perhaps because Dell is recommending 2 GB for Vista more vendors will come out with 2 GB memory but until then....

Because Dell recommends 2 GB for Vista and understanding that one often wants more RAM than the recommendation....and given the high cost of the 2 GB RAM sticks, this means that the swapping disk will be used a lot more, therefore people should consider buying 7200 RPM drives as well. They are really coming down in price.

Incidentally, I'd recommend most people to consider running 64 bit on the Core 2 Duo when Vista comes out because most 32 bit apps will run in the 64-bit OS. Certain apps run much better in 64 bit mode. More about this later....

christopher_wolf · #24 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 7:15 pm

Yeah, as I suspected. Some of the stuff I had read did indicate, vaguely, that the CPU was 64-bit enabled but that the chipset might have problems supporting it; apparently, that is what they tried to say, although in an extremely vague manner. So I guess that is the official version then. Cool.

dfumento · #25 Post by **dfumento** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 8:39 pm

This was written up in the Microsoft 64 bit newsgroup:

I have a new HP dv9000 notebook with a Core 2 Duo T5500. I have x64 on it
now and it runs great, aside from not having sound.

-Larry

Thus we have someone with a C2D actually reporting running 64-bit software.

#26 Post by **tomh009** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 11:16 pm

dfumento wrote:From a practical standpoint, since the Thinkpads and most other laptops only take t(w)o memory sticks then most people will be limited to 2 GB physical memory anyway (which I have read on www.tomshardware.com is what Dell recommends for Vista). Transcend is the only one to make 2 GB memory sticks and they cost about $400 or more a piece. One can get a 1 GB memory stick for about $110. Thus 2 GB total can cost about $200, 3 GB $500+ 4 GB 800+.

This is OK ... memory prices will drop. I will just be happy that if I drop good money on a X60 now, I will be able to run a 64-bit OS on it, even if I have a 4 GB physical memory limit (and need to deal with the memory cost).

P.S. Have people in the office running Vista on 512/768 MB without any performance issues, so I don't think 2 GB will be required.

kulivontot · #27 Post by **kulivontot** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:45 am

Vista chews up memory like it's its job. Not only is the kernel bigger and there's more stuff running in the background now, they attempt to prefetch your most used programs for a snappier response. Thus Microsoft puts whatever memory you put in your machine to good use. Just the fact that I have a 1.5 gig paging file without running any major applications right now is evidence of Vista's hunger for resources.

New Core 2 Duo Thinkpads - Do they come with 64-bit XP ?

New Core 2 Duo Thinkpads - Do they come with 64-bit XP ?

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