What Issues are there in Running GBPVR in Vista-64 and Windows7-64?

[pcostanza]

I'd be willing to try that but.... How can I do that in my PC (a Dell Dimension 3000 with a 2.8GHz Pentium 4) that I use for day to day use?

I see a lot of mention about dual boot but how do I do that? Don't I need to repartition my C: drive to make the extra partition? How do I do that without wiping out everything currently on the c: drive?

UPDATE: Since your post, I've been doing some research about what it would take to partition my c: drive without losing what's on it. Once I work up the courage and set aside several days to recover from any mishap, I will try partitioning and running Win7 in the second partition. I'll also have to move a bunch of files fromthe c: drive to make enough room. RIght now, that seems to be the biggest hurdle.

I tri-boot in one system and dual boot another. I have XP/Vista/W732 on one and W7,64 and Ubuntu on another. I personally like to have each OS on a separate hard drive (they are VERY cheap now) and to be safe, I unplug the other drives while installing the new OS. Upon boot up, I hit the F8 key and choose which drive to boot to but also like EasyBCD to set the boot choice for me.
I'm getting away from this thread but another option I use is a rack drive. My home built system has enough room for another drive and this $40 drive bay connects to SATA and I can swap out hard drives in a jiffy and boot to them or use to backup. It's sweet and has worked well for me with all the beta testing I do.
Here's one not the one I have but close. Some have fancy lights on the front but mine has a fan on the back to help keep the drive cool.
See, they are as many options as opinions. Isn't this fun?

[LewE]

The only thing you need to do when running GBPVR with a 64 bit OS is to remember to install the 32 bit version of any decoders you want to use. Other than that, no issues.

Thanks for that.

Is that because GBPVR (or PVRX2.exe) is a 32 bit app so it needs 32 bit decoders?

[whurlston]

Yup. Which is fine by the way. I don't know that there would be much (if any) real benefit to making GBPVR 64 bit.

[LewE]

Yup. Which is fine by the way. I don't know that there would be much (if any) real benefit to making GBPVR 64 bit.

Thanks.

I just know that I am treading down a path that there must be a whole lot of others who are either in my footsteps or ahead of me on the same path of discovery.

[fbachofner]

Yup. Which is fine by the way. I don't know that there would be much (if any) real benefit to making GBPVR 64 bit.

At x64 GBPVR would be able to access vastly more ram than 4GB. This would probably open up a wealth of opportunities -- quicker and smoother fast forward and rewind (an entire recording could easily reside in ram, given enough ram) just to name one feature.

GBPVR is a .NET app. Wouldn't this architecture make it "trivial" to port to x64? [I don't know this to be true as the only (limited) experience I have with .NET is programming some very simple web apps.]

A more important issue, I would say is GBPVR's multithreadedness. Is it so? If not, this would probably make parallel tasks such as GBPVR and comskip much less troublesome [my MVPs frequently crash when comskip is running].

[fbachofner]

Hi LewE:

I would also like to avoid Vista and go straight to Windows 7 so I know that this means waiting until at least the Fall to buy the computer unless I can get one with a free upgrade to Windows7 once it is available.

Here's a perfect solution:

1. Consider building your own machine.
   
2. Do NOT buy an OS.
   
3. Download Windows 7 Release Candidate (32 or 64 bit) for FREE here
   
4. After July 1 2010 you will finally need to buy Windows 7 or an alternative as the RC will stop working.
   

Self-building a machine is truly simple and you will get a LOT more machine for your dollar. Today there are tons of online resources showing you how to do it.

[You're in SoCal -- I'll be in LA in July and could probably give you a an hour or two of hands-on help if you need it and are close to West LA.]

I am interested in a Core 2 duo (that's the best version I can figure from the information about the multi-core processors).

The current state of the art at Intel is the Core i7. These currently have 4 cores with 2 processors in each core. [see this]

Core i7s are proportionately much less expensive than the Core 2 Duos when they were first released.

It seems that when a multi-core processor is included, the computer makers automatically include 64-bit Windows since the processor can support 64-bit.

Assuming the processor is 64bit (and they pretty much ALL are today . . . except the Intel "Atom" and processors in handheld systems) the amount of RAM is actually what triggers the choice of OS.

32bit Windows natively supports 3.2 GB [and with some tricks (i.e. PAE) a "full" 4GB]. 64bit Windows theoretically supports 16 exabytes of RAM! -- but will (in initial versions) likely be "limited"to 128 GB.

So, if you choose a build with 4 or more GB of ram . . . a 64bit OS is the only ready way to take advantage of it all!

There is some good information here

Good luck and have fun deciding on a new system!

[sub]

At x64 GBPVR would be able to access vastly more ram than 4GB. This would probably open up a wealth of opportunities -- quicker and smoother fast forward and rewind (an entire recording could easily reside in ram, given enough ram) just to name one feature.

GBPVR is a .NET app. Wouldn't this architecture make it "trivial" to port to x64? [I don't know this to be true as the only (limited) experience I have with .NET is programming some very simple web apps.]

A more important issue, I would say is GBPVR's multithreadedness. Is it so? If not, this would probably make parallel tasks such as GBPVR and comskip much less troublesome [my MVPs frequently crash when comskip is running].

To be honest, I dont see any need for a x64 version of GB-PVR at this stage. It'd just make more hassle for me packaging and releasing two versions, and having to support them. The only real advantage is the ability to access more than 4GB of memory, but GBPVR doesnt need to do that. It'd make no difference to GB-PVRs multithreadedness.

Its pretty easy to build the main app for x64, but the various .ax files would be a lot of work. More work than I'd want to do.

[pcostanza]

I pretty much agree with fbachofner, there's never been a better time to build if you haven't been hit too hard. I've been saving and will build again soon. Hard drives have been cheap for a long while and the rest has followed. Don't know if this can last forever and there are stories that RAM is already on a slow rise but I think that most of the rest of 2009 will see sweet deals. Kinda wonder how long some of these companies can put out good quality hardware. Just wish MS wouldn't punish us with high prices on W7 after punishing us with Vista.

[LewE]

Here's a perfect solution:

1. Consider building your own machine.
   
2. Do NOT buy an OS.
   
3. Download Windows 7 Release Candidate (32 or 64 bit) for FREE here
   
4. After July 1 2010 you will finally need to buy Windows 7 or an alternative as the RC will stop working.
   

Self-building a machine is truly simple and you will get a LOT more machine for your dollar. Today there are tons of online resources showing you how to do it.

As I mentioned above the last computer I built from components was a 10 MHz 286 machine running DOS. At the time I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. You couldn't want a better place to live if you wanted to build your own PC. There was a huge cost benefit of building your own back then. Since then, I think the better value has tipped toward PCs from the big builders (Dell, Gateway, etc) especially with their sales. As an academic exercise, I do plan to see what it would cost me to build my own from the ground up.

Right now, the thing that factors most into not building my own is that buying a package from a company like Dell, etc will insure that the initial hardware all works with the OS, i.e. no 64-bit driver problems or if there are that there will be fixes developed pretty quickly.

I was thinking of buying a Vista machine once they start being sold with free upgrades to Win7 but my current thinking is to wait a couple more months until the Fall when machines with Win7 installed will be available. It will be the Holiday buying season and I expect to see a bunch of competitive sales for these systems.

Between now and then I will do my research/learning to decide exactly what to buy. One thing I have learned from this is to get a big enough c: drive to be able to partition it for multi-boot. My current PC has only a 80GB drive with 30GB free after I did heavy housecleaning. I was planning to install Win7 RC into a second partition on the c: drive (I've downloaded Easus' Partition Manager and the 3GB of 64-bit Win7) but the available space on c: is too minimal and I have decided that I wouldn't really learn that much from the exercise.

[tech_meister]

Hi LewE

I don't think it matters whether you use 32 or 64 bit Windows as far as GB-PVR goes as it is only a 32bit program and so can't use the extra ram 64bit has to offer, only 64bit apps can use the extra ram.
In order to run 32bit apps in 64bit OS Windows uses an app called WOW64 which is basically a 32bit emulation mode for 32bit apps run in. Microsoft did the same thing for
Xp for 16bit DOS apps called WOW32 (windows on windows) Microsoft made sure this
emulation worked very well and it does, to there credit.
The only issue as others have said is the drivers and codecs any software that has to
communicate direct with the OS must be 64bit.

More important is how multithreaded GB-PVR, is to be able to take advantage of the modern multi core CPU's and only sub can answer that question.

So 32bit or 64bit makes no difference, but my advise would to put 4GB of ram in the PC if you do go 64bit.