Originally posted by: apoppin
the downside for you is lack of DX10 ..
You're right, but I failed to mention that my video card isn't DX10 capable anyways. I own Vista and have used it for a while, the problem is it did everything with extra overhead that hurt my performance in games. While Crysis is playable at my settings on XP x64, it is not on Vista x64. After I update my hardware, I'll move back to Vista, but that's a bit besides the point here - which is 64-bit VS 32-bit. I'll get back to performance in XP x64 later...
IF you are talking about 3 badly written games that MS had to rescue with their hotfix ... please add CoH to the list ... take Hellgate off -
Badly written? Before Vista, every game had a copy of video memory in it's own user space in order to manage it. The hotfix was necessary, seeing as how games written before Vista came out or to be compatible with Windows XP would have two copies of video memory in user space no matter what... If anything was badly written, it was Vista's WDDM that always made a copy of video memory regardless of what the application was doing - hence that's why Microsoft themselves made a hotfix.
Great Anandtech
article about the situation (read all three if you have time).
and Don't forget Gothic3 with the PoS "genome" engine that will eventually crash no matter how much RAM it is fed
it doesn't matter if you are playing 64-bit or 32-bit as they will ALL eventually crash ... your 64bit OS will play play games slower but last a bit longer before crashing.
:roll:
Wrong about the three games I mentioned. They don't endlessly consume memory, they level off and stop growing. They happen to level off AFTER the 2GB mark, but before the 2.5GB mark. And in the future? Games will need even more, unless someone plans to force developers to stay 32-bit forever. The fact that there are even games TODAY that will run into the limits should tell us the limits are beginning to become a problem. Whether by memory mismanagement or not, once games start pushing the limits, there's really no argument. If The Witcher can do it, so can another new game, and we'll see more and more as new games are released.
Some people can look at it and say: "Well, these games are just clearly either ahead of their time, mismanage their memory, or both.". Others can say: "Pushing the limits is inevitable, but there exists a solution to alleviate the problem.". The difference between the viewpoints is one involves people not playing fun games or crashing in them, the other involves making the best of the situation. 32-bit OS = crash, 64-bit OS = No crash for these games... and if you love the games, the answer is simple. Ignoring any game that passes the limits, especially when we're at the point of transition, just seems silly.
As for performance, I haven't tested 32-bit Vista in my life, so I can't say what the performance difference between Vista versions are. However, I will tell you that 64-bit XP performs the same as 32-bit XP for me. The same. Not slower. In fact, I'm using all the same driver revisions (same dates too), just 64-bit versions. When is the last time you actually used the operating system? I already explained why I'm not using Vista right now earlier in the post, so you can be assured I'm very game-performance oriented, I need to make the most of my hardware since it's aging. Why would I gimp myself and love it if XP x64 was truly slower than 32-bit XP? I wouldn't. When I update my hardware, I'll try Vista x64 again, but for right now, XP x64 is the best operating system for me.[/quote]
