HP sells a variety of laptops with the 64bit version of AMD's processor. They have been doing so for a few years. The problem is you need a 64bit Operating System (XP Pro 64) to take advantage of 64bit computing and HP has so far refused to release drivers for or support XP 64 - however, they continue (to this day) to sell 64bit processor equipped machines and charge a premium price for these processors.

After responding to repeated calls from consumers to provide drivers to support 64bit computing, the company has continued to delay their release or just plain lie about their intentions to support 64bit - all while continuing to charge a premium for these chips.

I have waited now for over two years and have had enough. A class action lawsuit was filed against HP over this very issue (I believe in Europe) - and I am considering demanding my money back (original purchase price) for this laptop. I bought the 64bit chip so I could experience faster performance while doing my photo and video editing and have been unable to utilize the capability of the machine they sold me - namely, I am unable to utilize the feature for which I paid a premium for.

Has anyone else purchased a 64bit machine from HP (or another vendor) and been unable to run XP Pro 64 or Vista 64 because the vendor refuses to release 64bit drivers?

I am really considering taking HP to small claims court and trying to get my money back for this laptop. It's been over 2 years now, and my last conversation with HP support promised a release of 64bit drivers in January 07 - it's now the end of the month and no such driver release is in sight.

Any others in the same situation or can anyone offer some advise on how to proceed against HP?

I've had a couple of 64 bit machines and had no problem finding the drivers for every component of the machine.

http://www.planetamd64.com/ has them pretty much all lined up for download.

As for the class action, was the machine SOLD as a 64bit machine? (was it even sold with XP64?)

Yes, the machine was sold (and marketed) as a 64bit machine - even tagged with the '64 bit for faster computing and better performance' angle. Of course without a 64 bit OS, the machine offers no better performance than a 32 bit computer. It was not sold with XP 64 - HP doesn't even support that OS at all. I think that fact alone makes the sale fraudulent.

I know of planetamd64, but these are third party drivers - why should I need to download and test third party drivers, many of which are written by hobbyists? If HP builds and sells this machine as 64 bit computers, they should provide drivers and software which they test, certify and support.

Good points.

FWIW; none of the drivers I got off planetAMD were "third party", they were all made (and many certified) by the original vendor. If you visit the site of these vendors you'll often find the drivers on their site too.

The whole 64bit thing was really poorly marketed, and I blame AMD for it, they introduced 64bit CPU's without any of the support behind them needed to get users to actually utilize 64bit. Then there is Microsoft, who made it near impossible to get your hands on XP64. Even Vista 64 is poorly available.

Pretty ironic considering how AMD started pushing everyone to write 64 bit drivers after the fact - but I still need to lay 98% of the blame in HP's lap since they were (and are) pretty much the only major big box computer manufactuer who pushes AMD 64 computers and touts their better performance while refusing to install and support the only OS that would yield the performance they speak of. As a matter of fact, none of their marketing materials (to this day) educate the consumer about how their 32 bit OS on this 64 bit machine will only yield 32 bit performance (buying 64 is a waste of money) and their intention not to support XP 64 or write/certify 64 bit drivers is buried in a document on their website that is only given out after you call support and ask them about 64 bit.

I work at a technology company closely aligned with MS - so we have access to all their software. The people on my team who installed Vista 64 - not the RC, but the RTM - ended up removing it after having oodles of problems with performance and stability. It is not close to being ready for prime time.

PlanetAMD doesn't have all the drivers I need - alot of components on my machine would be missing drivers, so that would be an issue.

I want my money back for this laptop so I can order an Intel Core Duo 2 - which should offer adequate performance to me in a 32bit footprint and not need a special OS.

They continue to sell them(and probably sell well) because there are operating systems OTHER than Windows that run fine on a 64-bit system and don't have any problems with the drivers. I currently work for a supercomputing company and we have a couple of them. They work great as a portable cluster w/ VMware loaded on them. The premium price is totally worth it if your work requires having that kind of computing power on hand. We use them because we don't actually MAKE a 32-bit version of our OS anymore and they're great as demo systems or in-the-field workstations.

I'm not trying to snark, and I'm sorry this is causing you such frustration, just trying to point out that there are good business reasons why they still might be selling them and people are buying them.

I understand what you're saying, but HP is marketing these machines to consumers - not the technical market. If they were only sold to business customers and they made it clear that the purchaser was on their own for the OS, drivers, etc., then it would be OK - but to sell these machines to consumers and not offer full disclosure on the limitations involved, is in my book, a fraudulent and deceptive marketing practice.

AMD is a processor company. They sell a complex device to anybody who will buy it and can understand how to make use of it. If they sell a billion units to somebody who builds computers for Boeing, Airbus, Glaxo, The Pentagon, NOAA and/or The NSA, they don't care that all those machines are running Linux or BSD or whatever. It's still a billion units.

They're by far, the least blameworthy party here. They make a processor that wipes the floor with the P4 in terms both performance and price and is the CPU of choice for anyone doing serious computation. They basically own the technical computing market at the moment and don't really HAVE to do any marketing. They're doing what they're supposed to be doing which is making a best-of-breed product and enhancing shareholder value.

Wanna blame somebody?---blame WinTel. Microsoft has no incentive to provide anything but token support for Windows on anything other than Intel 32-bit systems because Word doesn't get any performance boost from a 64-bit CPU and Intel completely botched the Itanic^H^H^H^H^H^H Itanium.

I would actually say that it is a chicken/egg problem. Microsoft has made software for x64, but many hardware manufacturers will not spend the time/money to develop drivers since people running x64 is still a minority. So until more people are running x64, driver support will be hit or miss (unless you are using the in-box drivers).

That seems very unlikely for an AMD64 based system, since all the Athlon 64 chips DO offer much better performance (whether running 64-bit or 32-bit software) than their 32-bit Athlon XP predecessors... or as of their introduction several years ago, 32-bit-only Intel chips.

For that matter, even on a 64-bit processor unless you're dealing with a lot of memory or doing very specific tasks (encryption being a big one) given a choice of 32-bit or 64-bit code it's often going to get better performance with 32-bit code.

Where does this information come from? It contrasts with other data I read on the subject. 64 bit processors would offer the best performance running on a 64 bit OS. Even if "this" 64 bit processor offered better performance than a slower 32 bit counterpart, that is not how HP marketed the processor, so as far as I'm concerned, they are still on the hook and I am not even close to being the only person with this view.

I already placed HP on notice (via a ticket) that I intend on filing formal complaints against them for deceptive and fraudulent trade practices with the Florida Department of Consumer Affairs and the Federal Trade Commission - I will let those agencies call HP to the mat to answer for this. If HP can prove no wrongdoing (I doubt it, given their marketing claims), then the agencies will advise me of that finding and I will just get a new 32 bit laptop from another vendor.

I did say often, not always.

But don't take my word for it. Take a look at the benchmarks here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/08/23/windows_xp_x64/ (varies by benchmark)
or
http://www.linuxhardware.org/article...mode=nocomment (varies by benchmark)
or
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/74/ (also varies by benchmark)

Also notice that very few of the speed differences when on the same processor are terribly dramatic, whether they favor 32 bits or 64.

I work in the field and did 95% of a masters degree in computer science in 2002-2004 (long story) -- just as the AMD64 processors were coming out. It's something that people in the field have known for years; the ability to address more memory or manipulate data in bigger chunks doesn't necessarily gain you anything unless:
(A) you're using that much more memory, or
(B) you're using data that comes in those bigger chunks.

Oh, and odds are if you really wanted a 64-bit OS, you could have run an AMD64 Linux distro on it the day you bought it

I'm not blaming you for anything, but the fact is that a 64-bit OS is probably slightly slower than running the same 32-bit OS on the same processor. Both 32-bit and 64-bit OS and applications get to take advantage of the faster speed of the processor and fatter pipe to memory, if it is fatter. The only thing you really need 64-bit computing for is if you are dealing with huge data sets or files. Are you dealing with huge data sets and files that can't fit in a 32-bit address space (4GB) on a regular basis? If you are, your machine is probably a data base server or you are running huge scientific applications. Most consumer machines don't support more than 4G memory except for the most recent ones, and the Dimms you need to get that much memory are expensive at the moment. Do you have a machine that supports more than 4G memory? Do you have more than 4G memory? If not, the only way to fit those huge data sets in "memory" is to rely on a paging file which can get rather slow no matter which OS you are running.

On the other hand, I don't blame you for being pissed off at HP for not providing 64-bit drivers that work.

On the other other hand, I don't really believe the bit about the premium price. The Athlon 64's and X2's are generally cheaper than the corresponding Intel CPUs, and the notebooks and desktop machines they are sold in usually reflect those cheaper prices. I can't really remember seeing an Athlon 64 X2 based box priced higher than a similarly equipped Intel Core 2 Duo based box.

So, sure, if a vendor advertises a 64-bit computing experience, they really ought to support a 64-bit OS. But unless you need it, do you really need to get so bent out of shape over it? What do you think you're missing?

-David

The pricing issue is not an AMD vs Intel comparison, but an AMD 32 vs AMD 64 comparison. Back when I bought this laptop, HP was selling 32 bit AMD processors as well as 64 bit alongside their 32 bit Intel selection. This is two years ago, so well before the Intel Duo Core came out.

HP marketed the 64 bit option as faster and better because it was a "64 bit processor", implying that such technology would yield better performance because of that feature, while failing to advise customers that added performance of the 64 bit feature would be unavailable on a 32 bit operating system. That is the basis of my argument. At no time did their marketing material draw a distinction between 32 and 64 bit operating systems or disclose that no support or drivers were available for XP Pro 64. A regular, non-technical public customer would be led to believe that 64 was twice as good as 32, even though the inference derived from the marketing material was false. I believe this is one of the key basis for the lawsuit HP is facing in Europe over these chips.

So, a question for the experts - assuming I get my money back or an offer of a replacement machine, would I achieve the best performance from an Intel Core Duo 2 chip running 32 bit XP Pro when compared to an AMD 64 chip running 32 bit XP Pro? How would the Intel chip compare to an AMD 64 running XP Pro 64, assuming the computer is performing processor intensive photography layering tasks?

Currently the Core2Duo chips are faster than anything AMD has to offer.

AMD spent a long time perfecting their 64 bit chip lineup, but the market didn't jump for them.