64 bit far cry offers whopping single digit % performance advantage

[Acanthus]

AT articale on Farcry-64

Looks like 64 bit gaming isnt going to make me jump ship. I was actually going to go X86-64 when this was released, but it looks VERY lackluster.

 

[MobiusPizza]

Yeah it makes me think whether the 64-bit code is properly compiled.

Some applications of initial 64-bit tests even show 70% improvenments.
Sicne games are so CPU intensive I have no idea why the improvement is only single digit.

Perhaps the most CPU is still decated to DirectX shadowing and driver handling, which is still at their infancies in 64-bit.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: AnnihilatorX
Yeah it makes me think whether the 64-bit code is properly compiled.

Some applications of initial 64-bit tests even show 70% improvenments.
Sicne games are so CPU intensive I have no idea why the improvement is only single digit.

Perhaps the most CPU is still decated to DirectX shadowing and driver handling, which is still at their infancies in 64-bit.

I guess it also depends on where the bottleneck is as well, i was certainly expecting a much more substantial gain.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Bleh, their programmers suck. UT 64bit shows *major* performance increases since the CPU now has the capability to control an AI for every single NPC in the game. Should technically be roughly ~2X the performance of current 32 bit power.

They need a new staff..

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I read the article, its smoke&mirrors, this stuff can all be done in 32bit "its artificial" they just did this to as Anand states

It's no surprise that none of the enhancements offered by the 64-bit patch have anything to do with a 64-bit CPU at all, but you have to add value somehow and this is how Ubisoft and AMD decided to do it.

 

[StormRider]

It depends on how the original application was written. If all the application used were longs and floats and didn't try to allocate more than 2 gigs of memory, then this application probably wouldn't show much improvement going to a 64-bit CPU.

 

[aka1nas]

I think at this stage, there is still some room for improvements at the driver level for additonal performance. How long has ATI had stable x86-64 drivers? I know Nvidia has been a little better about it but they still are usually wringing more performance even a year or more after they first start supporting an OS. Could there even be a possibility of a x86-64 optimized version of DirectX for XP-64? I think that the extra GPRs in x86-64 can give a decent amount of extra performance if the software is able to use them. The 64-bitness itself is pretty useless at this time.

 

[Chosonman]

I'm pretty sure those numbers have more to do with the software than the hardware.

 

[SonicIce]

so will the patches work with xp pro 32bit on an athlon 64?

 

[Concillian]

I dunno that much about Far Cry performance, but from the screenshots it seems like a pretty significant visual quality improvement.

I wish he would have tested performance with the exclusive visuals included to show it was video card bound as he claimed in the article, as well as quantify how much it hurts performance.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
so will the patches work with xp pro 32bit on an athlon 64?

Someone didn't even look at the pictures in the article, let alone read it.

No.

 

[exar333]

i think system drivers and GPU drivers have a long way to go, remember when 64 bit was LESS than 32 bit early in the game? these are by no means "mature" drivers...give it time...

 

[bluemax]

And there are other, more professional applucations (such as audio software) which is in experimental 64-bit right now, showing MUCH larger performance gains.

 

[SVT Cobra]

I'll wait for a game that was designed on a new engine specifically designed for x64 when the drivers and OS's can also back it up

 

[Bar81]

Considering that the performance is the same with significant visual improvements (just look at the damn rocks in the amdzone.com article. I thought those effects were going to be nvidia specific for 6x00 cards only to be pleasantly surprised) and only a simple recompile for x64 I would say that FarCry is a positive step forward that bodes well for performance and visual quality of native 64-bit games. Don't hate the 64 just because you don't get it.

 

[sandorski]

nm

 

[dawks]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
I read the article, its smoke&mirrors, this stuff can all be done in 32bit "its artificial" they just did this to as Anand states

It's no surprise that none of the enhancements offered by the 64-bit patch have anything to do with a 64-bit CPU at all, but you have to add value somehow and this is how Ubisoft and AMD decided to do it.

Precisely.. The idea is that since its a 64bit update, its limited to 64bit CPU's, which are, reguardless of the fact that they are 64bit, faster.. They start at what, 1.8Ghz at the low end, and all have at least 512kb L2.. My point is, this version is garanteed to be ran on a fast system, so they can inflate the games capabilities based on that..

And generally speaking, those running 64bit systems, are most likely going to have high end equipment accross the rest of their system. They are enthusiasts..

Really its sort of like designing for a console, you know the hardware is going to be fast, so you can crank up the settings, realizing someone is not going to try running it on a 800mhz system with a geforce2..

64bit means the game can address more system memory. 64bit does not, in itself, mean its going to look better.

 

[slpaulson]

There may be single digit performance increases, but this version also has different graphical settings. It would make a lot more sense to do a comparison between 64bit w/o the visual enhancements and the 32bit mode.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: cRazYdood
There may be single digit performance increases, but this version also has different graphical settings. It would make a lot more sense to do a comparison between 64bit w/o the visual enhancements and the 32bit mode.

Anand's comparison is w/o the visual enhancements.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: Concillian
I wish he would have tested performance with the exclusive visuals included to show it was video card bound as he claimed in the article, as well as quantify how much it hurts performance.

I agree.

Searching all CPU articles on AT for "Far Cry" yields no hits. I'm left with no impression of what this test is all about. What would the score be like on lower resolutions where the video card can hopefully be eliminated as the limiting factor?

Besides: 150.2 -> 157.7 fps, that's actually a 5% increase. Why compare to the 32-bit binary running under a 64-bit OS? If you already have a 64-bit OS, you've already taken the significant step and most users would only care about the 32-bit/32-bit vs 64-bit/64-bit performance. (whereas the article focuses on 32-bit/64-bit vs 64-bit/64-bit difference)

So, the game has added visuals and still manage to bump the fps up slightly? Good show.

OTOH, if they made optimizations that could've been done on the 32-bit executable as well, then we're back at square one. For this to be used as a benchmark, we really need to be able to compare apples to apples.

 

[Regs]

64 bit has a long way to go. AMD is the little engine that could trying to push 64 bit out the door. AMD would basically have to higher their own programming teams to develop software support for their hardware at this point.

There is no reason to jump to conclusions and their is no reason why not to jump on the A64 bandwagon.

 

[clange50]

So, the game has added visuals and still manage to bump the fps up slightly? Good show.

Doesnt sound like it. The article said the benches were without the added visuals.

 

[pm]

In my personal experience porting applications from 32 bits to 64 bits, I have mostly seen performance stay approximately the same, or reduce. My dataset is pretty small (4 applications), but intuitively, 64-bits is twice as large as 32-bits. This effectively halves caches sizes (since your 1MB cache now holds data that is twice as large), and reduces the effectiveness of speculative prefetches, among others. I have seen larger performance decreases when the code contains a lot of pointer references. There are some performance advantages to 64-bit ISA's - clearly any code that wants 64-bit integers naturally will be much happier with a 64-bit instruction set, but in general, Mark Rein's comments notwithstanding, I have seen performance stay about the same since they offset each other. I'm not sure what Epic was doing to see the increase that they cite, but when I did it, I was hard-pressed to keep performance neutral.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: BikeDude
Searching all CPU articles on AT for "Far Cry" yields no hits. I'm left with no impression of what this test is all about. What would the score be like on lower resolutions where the video card can hopefully be eliminated as the limiting factor?

Check Anand's comments for the article, he points out that the game is CPU limited at 1024 or below.