XP x64 vs. Vista 64-bit - what future for vid editing?
 

I had some free time over the weekend, so for the heck of it I set up a dual boot of Windows XP x64. Somewhat to my surprise everything went VERY smoothly and I now have CS3 Production Premium, Cubase SX2, Soundforge and some other media creation stuff running happily on a 64-bit OS!

So ...... looking into a hypothetical future where the major bugs in Vista are fixed and drivers are readily available ... what arguments might Microsoft have for me to nevertheless upgrade to Vista 64 rather than sticking with XP x64?

In other words, XP x64 solves the 3GB memory limitation that can be a problem with big Premiere projects etc. Is Vista 64 going to offer anything additional that would actually be helpful in the context of video editing?

Thoughts?

The whole memory limitation thing is the same but Vista 64 will allow you to access much more RAM that XP x64 - only because of the limits hardwired into each OS.

The question shouldn't be what can Microsoft offer you in Vista 64 to make you change - it should be what can the software vendors offer to let you stay with XP x64.

Mainstream 64-bit applications are few and far between. Not many people use XP x64 since it isn't a retail product. Vista 64 is a retail product which opens wide the 64-bit market. There has been some increase in native 64-bit apps but not much. Vegas is slated to be available as 64-bit in September. Since its 32-bit stablemate works on XP, the 64-bit version will probably work on 64-bit XP. However, built-from-scratch new 64-bit applications may only support Vista and later (Windows 7 etc).

So it comes down to whether software vendors that have never released 64-bit products will develop new products that are backwards compatible with the (rarely used) XP x64.

Yes that's a v. good point - I was kinda coming to that thought myself after my initial post.

And ... what is the RAM limit of Xp x64, versus Vista 64, that you mention?

I can't remember off hand but I do know that it varies depending on which version of Vista. I'll try and dig up the info.

I went through this same thought process a few weeks ago, and I've settled on Vista 64, If you visit microsoft's website you can hardly find any info about XP64 anymore that's at all recent.

The major stumbling block I'm running into is drivers. Currently my M-Audio sound card and my contour shuttle, USB jog/shuttle editing wheel don't have drivers, but everything else I use seems to work fine. PPro CS3 with my Intensity Pro card works fine under Vista 64. Truth be told the screen refresh issues I was having in PPro under XP32 are gone, and I think it's because of the AERO glass stuff in Vista.