With the Alpha edition of Visual C++, breakpoints are set as they are for the x86 edition, but the effects of some breakpoints may differ.
Setting a breakpoint on a condition with no location specified can cause the debugger to execute code much more slowly with the Alpha edition. The breakpoint types that cause this situation are:
Alpha processors do not support trace mode, so when one of these breakpoints is set, the debugger must evaluate the expression after every (emulated) machine-level instruction, even inside function calls. In some cases, the slow execution may even give the impression that the program has failed. However, the debugger is simply taking a long time to execute the code.
To speed up debugging in these cases, set a breakpoint without location only when you have narrowed a problem area to a small section of code, or set a series of breakpoints at specific locations - for example when entering routines.