64 bit os on 32 bit hardware

onzlo

Hi
i was wondering if it is possible to run a 64 bit version of windows (vista or xp) on 32 bit hardware?

kaimera

32bit hardware?

like?

I tried to install x64 vista on a amd turion cpu and it failed cos it wasn't 64bit capable.

64-bit microprocessor architectures (as of 2008[update]) include:

* 64-bit extensions of the Intel x86 architecture, commonly known generically as "x86-64" or "x64":
o AMD's AMD64 extensions (used in Athlon 64, Opteron, Sempron, Turion 64 and Phenom processors)
o Intel's Intel 64 extensions (used in newer Celeron, Pentium 4, Pentium D, Xeon, Core 2, Core i7, and Atom processors)
o VIA Technologies' 64-bit extensions, used in the VIA Nano processors

Fysh

onzlo wrote: »

Hi
i was wondering if it is possible to run a 64 bit version of windows (vista or xp) on 32 bit hardware?

You won't be able to, because the entire point of having a 64-bit OS is to be able to deal with larger numbers, whether that's in the form of integers or memory addresses - allowing you to take advantage of more RAM for instance but also making it easier to deal with larger files. If your hardware doesn't support numbers greater than 32-bit, it won't be able to run (much less do anything useful with) an OS built around 64-bit numbers.


(There's a bit more about this on wikipedia, if you're interested).

Capt'n Midnight

even if you could there would be no point

you would not be able to address the extra memory above 4GB which is the main point of 64 bit

to actually run the 64 bit software you would need an emulator program which would be far slower than running the instructions native

onzlo

thanks for the info