[inkhead]

Check it out, the Intel Duo Core Chips are actually 64bit, it's a feature Intel has been hiding.

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/intel...ers-153822.php

Anyway regardless they use the same socket as the 64bit ones coming out in may as well so you can upgrade then.

"It seems that the Intel Core Duo processors that are all the rage these days may be a little more powerful than Intel would have you know. Thanks to a little detective work, it’s been discovered that the processors, deep down inside, are actually 64-bit compatible. Yes, that Core Duo you have right now is a 64-bit chip. Intel openly admits that its Sossaman chips are 64-bit, but does not mention this fact about its consumer-targetted Yonah chips, despite the fact that the two are one in the same. What consumer (or geek) would not want to play around with a 64-bit Linux distribution, or Windows 64-bit for that matter? Intel may just have some explaining to do."

[mduell]

Intel did the same with the Prescott Pentium 4s... the chip was designed and fabbed with all the 64-bit circuitry, but it was disabled (in firmware or hardware, I'm not sure). Later when they were ready to release 64-bit chips they enabled it.

I don't see any explaining to do. Intel offered a 32-bit part, and you bought a 32-bit part. This sounds like when people realized that the GeForce cards were just Quadros with some features disabled (cheaper to fab them this way) and tried to hack their GeForces into Quadros (some worked, some didn't [i.e. there was a reason those features were disabled]).

[eightfive]

It doesn't really matter as 64-bit is wasted on consumers.

[Tomchu]

Originally Posted by eightfive

It doesn't really matter as 64-bit is wasted on consumers.

Not true. There's already been a discussion about this in another thread.

[hickey]

so what exactly does this mean for the pople who have theire Core Duos? Does it make a bigger difference for people who do more processor intensive work?

[harrisjamieh]

Originally Posted by inkhead

Anyway regardless they use the same socket as the 64bit ones coming out in may as well so you can upgrade then.
."

And as a result turn your iMac into a blazing inferno.... (yes, it is possible and everyone is shouting 'Whooppee', but imagine the heat problems this would cause!)

[ghporter]

There are valid reasons to disable extended functionalit on a production CPU. The best one I can think of is "It doesn't quite work right yet." That's one of the reasons Intel disabled 64bit functionality on the Prescotts-they had "issues." While the issues were fairly quickly corrected (can't remember if it was something with 32bit register incompatibility or something to do with some specialized 64 bit instructions...) Intel had to mess with their marketing plan to compensate.

There are also several ways to disable functionality. The chip can be physically altered to block certain functions, it can be externally jumpered (a la AMD's method of controlling Athlon speeds and cache sizes), or the chip's firmware, called "microcode" can simply ignore the "tell me if you're a 64bit chip" instructions, allowing OS and application code to treat it as a 32 bit chip. I'm betting the last one is what's been chosen.

[iMacfan]

Doesn't the chipset also have to be 64 bit as well for it to matter? Because the best thing I can think of that 64 bit brings is the possibility to upgrade to bigger amounts of ram.

David

[mduell]

Originally Posted by iMacfan

Doesn't the chipset also have to be 64 bit as well for it to matter? Because the best thing I can think of that 64 bit brings is the possibility to upgrade to bigger amounts of ram.

Intel says: Up to 10.7 GB/s of bandwith and up to 4GB memory addressability, for faster system responsiveness.
Even if the chipset could support more, I doubt we'll ever see 4GB DDR2-667 SO-DIMMs; by the time that density/speed combination could be done, we'll have moved on to DDR3.

[mavherzog]

If we get 2GB DDR2-667 so-dimm's, I'll be impressed. (and elated if they are, at some point, reasonably affordable)