February 10, 2004

Anandtech looks at the performance of the newly released Customer Preview of the Microsoft Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended System targeting AMD’s Athlon 64. Using an Athlon 64 FX51 as a testbed they found the 64-Bit preview edition to be faster than Windows XP Professional in the SiSoft Sandra 2004 benchmark, 15.5% faster in a media encoding benchmark but much slower in gaming benchmarks. One reason for the later is that the 64-Bit graphics drivers are all earlier preview releases. I’m surprised the EULA for the preview allows benchmarks. Comparing a preview edition to a production release seems somewhat unfair. 12:05:11 AM