Metro LL on WinXP x64 Edition: Works!

There was a user named iprodnano here (I am not allowed to post the link to his post here, as I have less than 15 posts, not allowed) asking whether Metro Last Light would actually run on Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (That's 64-Bit WinXP based on the NT 5.2 kernel of Server 2003 x64).

Professor Pew then confirmed the official statement from 4A, that only Windows XP 32-Bit would be supported, leaving a few XP x64 users out of the game.

However, as an XP x64 user I have seen games that don't support XP at all officially and still run smoothly (like "Dishonored") or others who could be hacked to get it to work (like XCOM, where only a few kernel32.dll function calls had to be remapped to MS' own filext.dll), as they were still DX9.0c titles with corresponding D3D9 rendering engines.

So I took the risk and bought Metro LL, assuming that 4A simply wanted to remove XP x64 from the picture, as investing in official support and quality assurance could obviously never have been profitable. Still, here is what you get, when you try to run the game on XP x64 (this is a resized screenshot, original was 2560x1600, but I can't post links on thumbnails due to <15 posts, so I'll just post a small version):



Winver:



So, while there are no guarantees whatsoever, it seems to work just fine. Now I only need to install the Metro LL game ready nVidia driver to get that SLI profile working, I haven't done that yet as I currently don't want to reboot my machine.

This is the system configuration that I ran this successful test on:

• Core i7 980X @ 4.0GHz
• ASUS P6T Deluxe
• 48GB DDR-III
• 2 x EVGA GeForce GTX 580 3GB Classified Ultra (SLI unused in this first test due to old driver version "314.07")
• 2560x1600 (it's quite slow lol)
• XP x64 SP2 with all the latest updates

Just fyi, in case anyone would be interested.

 

Actually it's exactly 48GB (or GiB). I make use of the memory in the form of largely blown-up NTFS file system cache (de-/multiplexing video container files) and for video transcoding itself, using 64-Bit x264.

Actually, that is something my chipset and CPU should NOT support officially either. 24GB is the official max. But 48GB still work (The CPU has a 36 bit address bus, so the "theoretical" max is 64GB, but I only have six slots).

Still, for Metro LL that doesn't matter at all.

I am actually very happy that the game works so flawlessly on XP x64, as it was quite a risk. I can only hope that iprodnano ever reads this so he may see that it would work on his OS. Unfortunately I am still not allowed to write private messages.

 

XP x64

Stable? Hm. I never had serious stability issues unless with nVidia drivers not fit for the task (=too old). Typically, my machine runs for 10-30 days 24/7 before I reboot because of security updates etc., and that includes lots of gaming.

For me personally - for my very own, subjective reasons - any Microsoft OS beyond this one feels more like a downgrade to me, aside from the obvious benefits of DX10/11.

I have not decided yet if I am ever willing to give Win7 a chance (Win8 is what I'd call the devil incarnate). I tried to make my Win7 test VM as classic as possible, but there are limits. I have also considered throwing away gaming as a whole and go Debian Squeeze + Gnome2 or Debian Wheezy + Mate (can't stand KDE or Gnome3, that abomination) instead, as i know those systems somewhat well.

So you may think that's stupid. I can understand that.

@Nod: XP x64 has been my main workstation (and gaming) OS for years now, following XP x86 because I needed more RAM and GPT for my data RAID.

I am what one might call a "Win 2000 and Gnome2 GUI/Usability Nazi". And as such, I am trying all in my power to give the OS as much lifetime as possible.

 

7

I would agree that Win7 is a very solid operating system, no doubts there. I do like its kernel and different other lower-level parts of the OS. Also, I am managing quite a few Win7 machines at work (additionally to *nix), and they're extremely reliable so far.

What I'd love would be "give me the Win7 or Win8 system core + the entire GUI and usability concept of Win2000/XP". But that's not gonna happen.