New HL:2 64-bit patch!!!!

[knifemyglitter]

also, is it worthy of an upgrade to a 64 bit OS...thats the big question. Anybody here wanna do some benchmarks, or perhaps take some screenies to see if it looks any different?

 

[secretanchitman]

well, i personally would stick to win xp 32bit. 64bit has too many driver issues and crap like that. i wouldnt go 64bit just for a game...or 2.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: secretanchitman
well, i personally would stick to win xp 32bit. 64bit has too many driver issues and crap like that. i wouldnt go 64bit just for a game...or 2.

Yeah, that kind of thinking will move us forward... Can you be a bit more specific in your "driver issues" claim? I installed XP x64 this past week and there weren't any driver issues. Don't get me wrong, I installed a few months back and wasn't really pleased enough to keep it. Things seem to have gotten better. Personally, I think games and a gaming rig are a great reason and choice to run XP x64 - it requires a fairly high performance system and it isn't mission critical.

As far as HL2 x64 goes, I played a bit, and the game looks and runs about the same. My main disappointment was that I couldn't get it to load my saved games from the 32-bit version, so I can't compare directly with my "testing" save point.

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: secretanchitman
well, i personally would stick to win xp 32bit. 64bit has too many driver issues and crap like that. i wouldnt go 64bit just for a game...or 2.

same here, 64-bit is not going to be useful for homeowners until Vista.

 

[Hacp]

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: secretanchitman
well, i personally would stick to win xp 32bit. 64bit has too many driver issues and crap like that. i wouldnt go 64bit just for a game...or 2.

Yeah, that kind of thinking will move us forward... Can you be a bit more specific in your "driver issues" claim? I installed XP x64 this past week and there weren't any driver issues. Don't get me wrong, I installed a few months back and wasn't really pleased enough to keep it. Things seem to have gotten better. Personally, I think games and a gaming rig are a great reason and choice to run XP x64 - it requires a fairly high performance system and it isn't mission critical.

As far as HL2 x64 goes, I played a bit, and the game looks and runs about the same. My main disappointment was that I couldn't get it to load my saved games from the 32-bit version, so I can't compare directly with my "testing" save point.

Want to use your webcam? Ow no! The webcam didn't come with 64 bit drivers.

Have a new PCI sound card? Ow no! The company was too lazy to come up with 64 bit drivers...

 

[Ackmed]

Originally posted by: Hacp
Want to use your webcam? Ow no! The webcam didn't come with 64 bit drivers.

Have a new PCI sound card? Ow no! The company was too lazy to come up with 64 bit drivers...

How do you know he has a webcam, and that it doesnt have drivers? Or sound card?

Several months ago, the driver support wasnt nearly as good as it is today. All of my hardware, currently has x64 driver support. Yes, even my 4 year old digi cam. And my new X-Fi sound card.

But to get back on topic.
http://home.comcast.net/~denverspictures/HL21920-2.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~denverspictures/HL21920.jpg

I dont think x64 makes it faster. But I dont recall the stress test being in Lost Coast before the update.

 

[KeepItRed]

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: secretanchitman
well, i personally would stick to win xp 32bit. 64bit has too many driver issues and crap like that. i wouldnt go 64bit just for a game...or 2.

Yeah, that kind of thinking will move us forward... Can you be a bit more specific in your "driver issues" claim? I installed XP x64 this past week and there weren't any driver issues. Don't get me wrong, I installed a few months back and wasn't really pleased enough to keep it. Things seem to have gotten better. Personally, I think games and a gaming rig are a great reason and choice to run XP x64 - it requires a fairly high performance system and it isn't mission critical.

As far as HL2 x64 goes, I played a bit, and the game looks and runs about the same. My main disappointment was that I couldn't get it to load my saved games from the 32-bit version, so I can't compare directly with my "testing" save point.

As for VALVe, I think the update just uses the second core maybe? This could be the start of multi-threading.... But I see your point, X64 has been great so far but I can't find X64 drivers for my Lexmark X74/X75. Only supports 32-bit. I E-mailed Lexmark about 2 weeks ago....nothing. Talk about terrible tech support.

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: Ackmed

Originally posted by: Hacp
Want to use your webcam? Ow no! The webcam didn't come with 64 bit drivers.

Have a new PCI sound card? Ow no! The company was too lazy to come up with 64 bit drivers...

How do you know he has a webcam, and that it doesnt have drivers? Or sound card?

Several months ago, the driver support wasnt nearly as good as it is today. All of my hardware, currently has x64 driver support. Yes, even my 4 year old digi cam. And my new X-Fi sound card.

But to get back on topic.
http://home.comcast.net/~denverspictures/HL21920-2.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~denverspictures/HL21920.jpg

I dont think x64 makes it faster. But I dont recall the stress test being in Lost Coast before the update.

i have that stress testing option all of a sudden too, i noticed it after i beat it a day or two ago.. and im running 32bit.
could you run that test though in 32bit mode for us? see if there is any performance increases.

oh, and that stress test is crappy though, theres no HDR.

edit: and whats your rig?

 

[keidanny]

question: how do you even go about getting the 64-bit version.. steam updated (a very short one) but i don't think that was the x64 thing. Can someone point me in the right direction? when i load hl2, it's still running in 32-bit mode.

Thanks!

 

[Ackmed]

Originally posted by: destrekor

Originally posted by: Ackmed

But to get back on topic.
http://home.comcast.net/~denverspictures/HL21920-2.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~denverspictures/HL21920.jpg

I dont think x64 makes it faster. But I dont recall the stress test being in Lost Coast before the update.

i have that stress testing option all of a sudden too, i noticed it after i beat it a day or two ago.. and im running 32bit.
could you run that test though in 32bit mode for us? see if there is any performance increases.

oh, and that stress test is crappy though, theres no HDR.

edit: and whats your rig?

You cant switch back to x32, and I dont want to redownload it to try it, sorry. :/ I doubt there is any FPS difference though, but thats just a hunch.

No HDR? I didnt look at it much when it was testing. I did notice a lot of shimering in the grass though, with drivers set to Quality, and not High Quality. I ran the test at the "standard" 1600x1200 4x/8x, and Quality to see what the difference was. At those settings, as apposed to the other I posted, was like 103fps.

Rig is, 3700+@2.75gig, 2xGTX's, 2gigs of ram.

Originally posted by: keidanny
question: how do you even go about getting the 64-bit version.. steam updated (a very short one) but i don't think that was the x64 thing. Can someone point me in the right direction? when i load hl2, it's still running in 32-bit mode.

Thanks!

If I am not mistaken, you need x64 XP, not the x32 version.

 

[keidanny]

Originally posted by: Ackmed

If I am not mistaken, you need x64 XP, not the x32 version.

yep that's what i'm running on..

 

[Ackmed]

Then just look to see if it says x64 on the game screen, like mine in the pics. If not, I dont know why. All I did was let it update.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
Yeah, that kind of thinking will move us forward... Can you be a bit more specific in your "driver issues" claim? I installed XP x64 this past week and there weren't any driver issues.

You don't have the same hardware as everyone else either. There are still lots of devices unsupported in X64. Fortunately for you and me, most of our hardware works fine. But there are still PLENTY of (especially older) devices unsupported and they may still be for a long time. Plus a lot of the ones that are available are still in beta or unsupported state.

My ATI TV Wonder doesn't work in x64, so that's why I don't use x64 regularly. Additionally, PunkBuster on Wolfenstein crashes in 64-bit. Luckily Battlefield 2 works under 64-bit, even with PunkBuster. Either the 32-bit emulation layer is still not perfect, or some applications are coded too explicitly to run on x64.

You can't blame him because some of his hardware companies didn't release any 64-bit drivers.

 

[destrekor]

i was under the impression you would have to reinstall the game.. i guess not though, judging from the above posts

edit:
overall, is it worth upgrading to 64bit Windows? Or is 32bit emulation still funky for some programs? I do encode stuff at times, but I dont know if Nero has a 64bit version of Nero 7.

 

[xtknight]

The latest Nero 6.6 patch supports 64-bit, and Nero 7 does as well. I infer this from the release notes, and from other peoples' accounts of it working under x64.

 

[destrekor]

okay, that sounds sweet.. but working under x64 could still mean it uses WOW64... so, would it be worth it to upgrade? Would some games take a hit when using WOW64 instead of native 32bit support?

 

[Ackmed]

http://techgage.com/review.php?id=3889&page=2

Some numbers, not much, but a little.

Seems that x32 is faster, for the first few mins, then its even. While x64 loads up faster, but a little.

edit, also seems to be some graphical issues on their test NV card.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: nitromullet
Yeah, that kind of thinking will move us forward... Can you be a bit more specific in your "driver issues" claim? I installed XP x64 this past week and there weren't any driver issues.

You don't have the same hardware as everyone else either. There are still lots of devices unsupported in X64. Fortunately for you and me, most of our hardware works fine. But there are still PLENTY of (especially older) devices unsupported and they may still be for a long time. Plus a lot of the ones that are available are still in beta or unsupported state.

My ATI TV Wonder doesn't work in x64, so that's why I don't use x64 regularly. Additionally, PunkBuster on Wolfenstein crashes in 64-bit. Luckily Battlefield 2 works under 64-bit, even with PunkBuster. Either the 32-bit emulation layer is still not perfect, or some applications are coded too explicitly to run on x64.

You can't blame him because some of his hardware companies didn't release any 64-bit drivers.

Exactly. Driver support is undoubtedly better than it was maybe even six months ago, but for many users it's just not there yet for viability as a day-to-day OS. In my case, there aren't x64 drivers available for my HDTV tuner (nor any other HDTV tuners that I'm aware of), and there may never be. That alone makes x64 just about unusable for me. I do have it in a dual boot configuration, but I never really use it - having to spend several minutes rebooting just to watch some TV is too much trouble for very little if any gains (using x64).