AMD CPU and Win 7

[waco]

Although I have up to now been running XP SP3 32bit on the AMD computers I've built, I'm accumulating the parts for a 3-way SLI AMD computer and anticipate installing Win 7 64bit. I can't find the processor driver on the AMD site. There's an XP, Vista, and Linux driver but I don't see one for Win 7. Is it native to 7 now?

[Moparmike]

Yes, it's included with Win7. No more extra driver needed.

[waco]

OK, thanx. Is the dual core optimizer native to Win 7, also?

[Moparmike]

The AMD dual-core optimizer isn't needed any longer. As I understand by what I've read, Win7 has full support for the AMD (and Intel) 64-bit and multi-core processors.

Vista is supposed to have multi-core support out of the box...but it was still broken (like a few other things in Vista :) ). From what I've seen, Win7 has no problems utilizing multiple CPU cores/threads.

Just slap your hardware together and drop Win7-64bit onto the HDD and you should be good to go.

You might want to keep in mind that the 64-bit OS is going to have a hard time running most old 16-bit programs.
I haven't found any 32-bit ones that don't work because of their 32-bit code base.
If you've still got some old 8-bit DOS apps, you might want to check out the DOSbox emulator if the built-in PowerShell (or CMD.exe) won't run them.

[waco]

OK, I'll forget the driver and optimizer and forge on. Got the last of the parts yesterday from Newegg. The mobo I got has built in graphics, which I undestand I can dedicate to PhysiX. And with 3 video cards in SLI, gaming ought to be sweet. Thanx again.