I've bought a pair of 1GB OCZ DDR2 modules to add up to my 2GB of Corsair XMS2 RAM. Windows XP is the only OS from the NT family that has trouble dealing with PAE, so I had to move from an installtion of Windows XP Pro SP2 to WinXP Pro x64. Service Pack 2 came out recently, so I thought many problems that I faced a year ago would be gone. Indeed, SP2 for WinXP x64 is a good product that makes the system look like it was supposed to be (just like that joke-theory that Microsoft's Beta = Alpha; RC = Beta; Release = RC; SP1 = Release, making SP2 a product, ready for the market).
Among the problems I faced were HLDS (Half-Life Dedicated Server) that I have to run a CS 1.6 ameserver saw "-15Mb" of memory available (definitely unable to cope with 4Gbs of memory addressing space).
I have an ASUS P5B Deluxe motherboard with two Marvell Yukon-based NICs. The drivers that came on the motherboard's CD (V8.56.1.3) and the latest version available at ASUS's support site (V8.56.7.3) had an intersting bug. After a reboot, one of the NICs (the one recognised as Marvell Yukon 88R8001/8003/8010 PCI Gigabit Ethernet Controller) started randomly dropping out of work. It just stopped working after a short period of time, usually 5-15 mins, sometimes 30. There was no event that you could blame the problem on. My 100Mbit connection could be filled 100% or I could just be calmly surfing the web. The other Marvell NIC, recognised as Generic Marvell Yukon 88E8056 based Ethernet Controller, would just continue working as if nothing happened. This issue was discussed at Google Answers, with the last comments saying Seems like shitty drivers to me...
Indeed, the reason of all this trouble was a driver not mature enough to be used on a x64 Windows system. Version 10.14.6.3 of the drivers obtained through Marvell's site works fine.
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