Can Win XP Pro Support Core 2 Quad Processor ?

I am buying a Core 2 Quad System.

It comes with Vista Home Premium but many of my software will not be supported by Vista so I am thinking about installing Win XP Pro SP2 OS when I get the system.

But I am not sure if Win XP will support Core 2 Quad Processor or not.

Anyone knows the answer or alternate solution ?

I really like that system & I need the as much processing power as possible. My applications are very processor intensive so more the better.

Thanks in advance.

yes, so can XP home.

Which software doesnt work in vista, by the way?

Intel processors don't really need high quality RAM. Their massive cache resolve the bottleneck of slower/higher latency RAM (I'm not saying go with the cheapest around, but top of the line memory is generally not worth it on a price to performance ratio).

On the other hand, AMD architecture do rely on better memory to get max performance.

Also a decent P35 $120-140 motherboard from Gigabyte or Asus will performance on par to X38 $220. Main diff. is that the P35 boards have a few less features (which most don't use anyway), and the X38 are possibly a little better if you are crossfiring 2 high-end ATI video cards.

Because vista actually gets a few things right that XP, OSX and linux havnt.

Like making you sit at your computer longer, while waiting for files to transfer.

Oh and also making your in game performance generally 20%-30% less, for no reason at all.

It does that much better than XP.

IE 7 Protected mode and start menu searching to name two.

Will Vista allow a dual boot system? It was my understanding that it will not accept a second OS...stevenpchurch

I dislike vista, but I don't want to state my reasons in this thread, already expressed my opinions in the Vista section of the forum

XP will use Quad core's just fine and will also be able to use even more cores when Such processors exist for the home desktop market.

The only software I had big issues with was Sid Meier's Railroads. I did a lot of research on the web and they is an unsupported fix for it that worked for me. Dos games don't seem to work, but they actually work great if you run them inside of an emulator.

Where there's a will, there ususally seems to be a way.

For Vista don't forget the seperate Registries per user so people who screw up their login registry don't destroy the entire OS. Also Vista is like XP. If you have an old FAT32 based game(like the Die Hard Trilogy) you can run it by using the "run in compatability mode" just like in XP.

Vista seems faster in some things to me plus I don't need to look for a work around or edit some file and possibly corrupt it for a game to use DX10. Also I think SP1 will change a lot since it is performance based and MS wont release a SP that will make the OS slower. Hell even with how big SP2 was for XP it ran much faster and smoother.

And yea XP can support Quad cores. I'm not sure about Octo cores though. I have seen Vista running 8+ cores but not XP. But maybe it can.

Maybe because the person doesnt like vista and the 6 year old OS works fine and gets better performance in games. Its also cheaper. I am never going to install vista. I have no need for it

Chances are, this fellow has never used or seen Vista, and is going off all the inane rambling of idiotic fanboys about how bad Vista sucks. When in fact none of the idiotic fanboys themselves have ever used or seen Vista.

Vista is good. It's fast, stable, and runs darn near anything out there. It's pretty to look at, and very functional at the same time.

I hate to bust in too but in the scientific community there is a lot of analysis software that will not run on Vista even in compatibility mode and, according to the software designers, it NEVER will. We buy Dell downgraded to XP Pro for this reason.

Vista Home is a huge pet peeve of mine. Every student who rotates through our lab has it and the Vista VPN doesn't work right. At least with XP Home and a VPN we could get them sufficiently connected to access the servers they needed to. This is impossible with Vista.

I hate Vista.