Originally posted by: apoppin
you *implied* that Vista32 and 2GB RAM were somehow "holding back" progress. it is not. Microsoft is holding back 64-bit because until recently intel didn't give a crap about it and MS didn't give a crap about AMD's Athlon 64 - that is all
32-bit is absolutely holding PC gaming back. Again, simple case in point. If everyone had 8-16GB of RAM in a 64-bit OS, you wouldn't have to stare at a loading screen for more than a few seconds after the first load because you could simply cache the entire game to memory. But instead, devs need to write code for the lowest common denominator, people with 32-bit OS and 2GB RAM or less (ie the minimum rec'd you see on boxes). End result is that even with more RAM and 64-bit OS a game may not take full advantage of it because devs don't see it as a big enough priority to optimize for the minority, but that doesn't mean there wouldn't be a benefit from 64-bit and more RAM. As more people move to 64-bit and more games support 64-bit/Large Address Aware natively you will see more games break current 32-bit stereotypes.
Where have i claimed that? i AM getting another 2GB of System RAM now that is is cheap.
Its inherent in your defense of 32-bit. As the article and many others have broken down, 32-bit memory allocation looks something like this due to the way 32-bit OS and apps are designed (they split 2GB user and 2GB for kernel/MMIO):
0-2GB [user-space: games, apps etc.]
2GB-3.25GB [kernel-space: OS, drivers, some peripherals etc.]
3.25-4GB [MMIO/ACPI: reserved for system components etc.]
As covered in the AT article, in order to benefit from more than 2GB of RAM you need to increase user-space at the expense of kernel-space and you need a game/app that is /largeaddressaware. As you can see there's actually very little room to "eek" out more RAM use even assuming all the software/drivers/OS handle everything efficiently. So again, knowing Vista typically eats up 1GB or so by itself, that effectively leaves you with ~250MB of additional user-space in a 32-bit OS even with 3.25GB.
In comparison, 64-bit would be able to map and address anywhere, although it probably maps everything similarly to 32-bit and compensates by remapping additonal user-space to 4GB+ addresses. So 64-bit with 4GB would maybe look like:
0-3GB [user-space]
3-4GB [kernel space]
4-4.75GB [MMIO/ACPI]
5GB-8TB [additional virtual offsets to user/kernel space]
Individual apps are still limited to 32-bit coding practices if they're 32-bit (~2GB limit) unless they're /largeaddressaware however the OS itself is free to map anywhere up to 8TB or 128GB or whatever current CPU/chipset limitations are now. This is why I say you won't really know how much RAM your system can use until you add more RAM and go to 64-bit....because programs/apps and a 32-bit OS are constrained to fit within 4GB (3.25GB actual) or your system will CRASH (sup page_fault_in_non-paged_area). Apps you thought only needed XYZ MB RAM will stretch their legs and use more RAM and the difference is noticeable. IE explorer is a pretty simple example, uses 200MB+ in Vista 64 and @50MB on my laptop for a single instance. You don't need an FPS counter or a stopwatch to understand this, otherwise you're arguing that paging/swapping is a better solution than caching to RAM.
No it isn't . you like to set up your own "strawman" arguments that i NEVER brought up.
How is it a strawman? You keep saying your Flash Drive is somehow the salvation of 32-bit Vista when more SDRAM and 64-bit serves the same purpose and is superior in every way. You're saying that there is a practical benefit from a Flash Drive and ReadyBoost but somehow there's no benefit from more RAM. Makes no sense at all.
More nonsense 'strawman' arguments. i AM getting another cheap +2.0 GB of system RAM. Now my *challenge* to you is to SHOW ME where i *need* more than 3.3GB in ANY games ...
stick to the subject and stop tell me what *you think* i am saying
And once again, its something you won't acknowledge until you see it first hand. You might not see very much difference at all actually, again because of the 32-bit address limitations I mentioned above. I could easily post a SS where my commit charge (actual, not virtual RAM use) exceeds 4GB with one or two IE windows and a few apps like FRAPs and RT open, but that happens in just about every game I play now. When I ran 4GB total commit charge never passed 3.5GB, again, probably because the OS/apps limited themselves to avoid any problems. For most games there's very little difference between 4GB and 8GB total (although LOTRO runs even better with 8GB), but the extra 4GB allows me to run more than 1 game at once or multiple apps without any hit in performance. Any additional unused RAM is used to cache data which again, is faster than a HDD or Flash Drive by far.
again *no one* is claiming that 2.0 GB is plenty RAM for gaming in Vista32 - *now* ... otoh i AM claiming that 3.3GB is plenty ...
i see .. 4.0 GB is "nice" ... awesome argument for upgrading over 3.3GB
:roll:
and for my very "average" system - and *most* gamers ... Vista32 and 2GB are usually "plenty" for today's games
Sure you qualified that statement and backed-off a bit, and it wasn't necessarily directed at you but you've repeatedly stated games/total RAM use in '07 won't push 3.25GB and 32-bit when that's clearly not true.
And no my 4.0GB extra "nice" comment wasn't about 4GB total, it was for the 4+4GB bringing it to 8GB total. The additional 4GB certainly isn't needed but it is nice to not have to shut everything down in order to run a game. Kinda like not having to mess around in DOS and tweak autoexec.bat and command.com to free up enough RAM to run a game.
Facebook
Twitter