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Question

Is the Intel Atom D2550 64-bit or is it not?

Jun 20, 2015 12:42PM PDT

Dear Tech Wizards,

I am trying to install Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit on a computer with a Intel Atom D2550 processor.

The manufacturer of the computer and the intel spec page for the processor both claim 64bit-capability.

In BIOS however, EMT64 is not supported and Windows Setup refuses to run saying something along the lines of "This 64bit application cannot run because your PC has a 32bit processor."

Is this due to improper BIOS or does the processor not support 64bit contrary to the maker's spec sheet?

Kind Regards from Germany,

Sebastian

Discussion is locked

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Answer
The CPU is, the system is not.
Jun 20, 2015 12:50PM PDT
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Answer
64 bit instruction set is missing on some
Jun 20, 2015 2:19PM PDT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Atom_(CPU)#Intel_64_software_support

"Those Atom systems not supporting all of these cannot enable Intel 64.[22] As a result, the ability of an Atom-based system to run 64-bit versions of operating systems such as Ubuntu or Debian GNU/Linux may vary from one motherboard to another. Online retailer mini-itx.com has tested Atom-based motherboards made by Intel and Jetway, and while they were able to install 64-bit versions of Linux on Intel-branded motherboards with D2700 (Cedarview) processors, Intel 64 support was not enabled on a Jetway-branded motherboard with a D2550 (Cedarview) processor.[23]

Even among Atom-based systems which have Intel 64 enabled, not all are able to run 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows. For those Pineview processors which support 64-bit operation, Intel Download Center currently provides 64-bit Windows 7 and Windows Vista drivers for Intel GMA 3150 graphics, found in Pineview processors.[24] However, no 64-bit Windows drivers are available for Intel Atom Cedarview processors, released Q3 2011.[25] However, Intel's Bay Trail-M processors, built on the Silvermont microarchitecture and released in the second half of 2013, regain 64-bit support, although driver support for Linux and Windows 7 is limited at launch.[26]

The lack of 64-bit Windows support for Cedarview processors appears to be due to a driver issue. A member of the Intel Enthusiast Team has stated in a series of posts on enthusiast site Tom's Hardware that while the Atom D2700 (Cedarview) was designed with Intel 64 support, due to a "limitation of the board" Intel had pulled their previously-available 64-bit drivers for Windows 7 and would not provide any further 64-bit support"

(more in the wiki)

So, go with a 32 bit version of windows, or try a 64 bit version of Linux. Some 64 bit Linux will run anyway if a "no pae" special line is added to the boot process.


Booting with non-PAE CPUs

"To boot Linux Mint 17.1 on CPU which do not officially support PAE (Pentium M processors for instance), please use the "Start Linux Mint with PAE forced" option from the boot menu."

If you boot from a 32 bit LIVE DVD version of a Linux distro and run the following commands in (konsole, terminal) you can find out a lot about the CPU. Free for download, need to burn to a DVD and boot to it.

lscpu

inxi -f


for example, here is mine.

~ $ inxi -f
CPU: Single core AMD Sempron 140 (-UP-) cache: 1024 KB clocked at 2712.384 MHz
CPU Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx
fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni monitor cx16
popcnt lahf_lm svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt hw_pstate npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save

$ lscpu
Architecture: i686
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 1
On-line CPU(s) list: 0
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 1
Socket(s): 1
Vendor ID: AuthenticAMD
CPU family: 16
Model: 6
Stepping: 2
CPU MHz: 2712.384
BogoMIPS: 5424.76
Virtualization: AMD-V
L1d cache: 64K
L1i cache: 64K
L2 cache: 1024K