AMD's "in box" windows 64 drivers

Question

I'm a little confused by the info in this link    http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/DevelopWithAMD/0,,30_2252_875_10454,00.html
First, are all the drivers in the list "64 bit drivers"?  Or does it just mean the drivers are compatible with the OS?  
ATI has "in box" drivers -- same question as above -- 64bit or merely compatible?
And VIA lists KT800 chipset drivers as in box -- is there any need to install the hyperion pro drivers?        
Thx,  mark

Answer 1

Quote
Originally posted by JLP
Well ATI is working on 64-bit drivers. It is just so that they decided not to offer beta drivers for download like nVidia. Official beta testers for ATI have access to them.
Also companies tend to send fully functional drivers to Microsoft to include them on Windows CDs and Windows Update page. So the drivers in this beta are some older build of Catalysts, in 64-bits.
ATI will release official 64-bit drivers when the final version of Windows XP 64 is out. And I think that only then the situation could be analyzed. It is now to early to base your buying decision on beta OS and beta or no drivers.
For sure a lot of users would like to se that ATI and Creative and others release their beta 64-bit drivers to public. I would also like to see them as I think it wouldn't hurt anybody and would make a lot of people happy. But if we have to wait for the final version, so be it.
I wouldnt rely on ATI releasing drivers when XP-64 is out of Beta.
In April 2003 they issued a press release detailing their support for AMD64 in both windows and linux.
There have been mainstream non-beta 64bit linux distributions in existance for ~4 months (ok, in reality there have been less general non-beta 64bit distributions for opteron around for nearly 8 months) and ATI have not even so much as announced a release date for their in-house binary drivers in 64bit (JFYI, porting a well written glibc program to 64bit involves adding -fpic -m64 as compiler options for the *SAME* source code; I imagine the effort for 64bit development in windows is equally trivial), so I am tempted to assume ATI have no clue.
Whilst we will no doubt see some future optimisations through making use of 64bit words and the additional registers; there is *NO* functional difference in assembler code between x86 and x86_64!!!, all the compiler needs to do is be aware of the linking methodologies, the different register count  and the use of 64bit words and addresses.  There should be no development time per-se to make equally functional software for the x86_64 platform.  Of course, it is rare to find windows kiddies who actually write clean code ;P
Further note : the in-box ati drivers for winXP64 beta do not appear to support DVI output on ati radeon 9600pro (I had to change to an old analog cable to get video out) and do not appear to support direct3D at all.
I feel it is safe at this stage to recommend nvidia as the card of choice for 64bit in the forseeable future; which is a shame since ATI are IMHO technically superior, but their driver development team have consistently been a let down throughout their entire history (the last two years of XP drivers notwithstanding).
I have just made the painful descision to ditch my powercolor 9600pro bravo edition (radeon 9600pro) for a leadtek a380 ultra TDH (5950) since I have not recieved a single indication from ATI after 38 emails over the past 4 months which would lead me to conclude that they have 64bit drivers under development, let alone intend to provide any at launch time.
btw, all of the drivers I have inspected to date that are included with winXP-64 report themselves to be windows ia32 executeables (all of the ati and soundblaster drivers and some of the wireless network drivers) when inspected with the "file" command under linux, so I suspect MS have some whacky means of piping drivers through their WoW subsystem.
err!
jak.