vista32 vs vista64 for gaming

[konakona]

I am starting to think it **could be** vista64 holding back my CPU overclock. Since I don't have a whole lot installed on my gaming rig yet, it wouldn't be a huge setback to migrate to vista32. Only thing that worries me is reduction in available ram due to vista32 limitation, going from 4gb with vista64 now.

Would games run better with extra 0.85gb or so ram, or potential boost in CPU speed? Note that this computer is being used almost exclusively for games/video, I do browsing and most other stuff on another computer.

 

[taltamir]

i benchmarked 64bit 7z compression as 27% faster than 32bit compression. websites have been benching hash calculations as 3-4 times faster, with a theoretical 5x faster performance on 64bit, web browsers appear (measuring with stopwatch opening a saved session of hundreds of tabs, or just browsing) several times faster in 64bit mode.
And so on...

any overclocking benefit would be offset by massive decrease in speed due to running 32bit... (oh, windows boots faster too)... one last thing, the reson it Oces better is that parts of the CPU are powered down when in 32bit mode, thus it generates less heat per mhz and can go higher. but the performance benefit of 64bit is far too great to bother.

 

[konakona]

yeah but we are talking gaming and strictly gaming. I should have bolded the part that says the computer is not being used for anything other than gaming and video.

 

[taltamir]

mmm... depends on the game, a lot of games ship with a 64bit exe right now.

And video benefits a whole lot from 64bit AFAIK. HOWEVER, actually GETTING 64bit video to work is a pain, you need 64bit codecs, 64bit dlls, 64bit player, etc; everything, every piece of the chain has to be 64bit.

I found half life 2 was horrible slow and buggy in 64bit mode, it crashed, it had visual abberations, and it was very slow... 32bit exhibited none of these problems... so i run 32bit on exe on my 64bit machine...

err, why in the world would you actually NEED a 32bit OS? the difference in OC is practically nothing, no real difference in performance, and all the 32bit games can run in 32bit mode on a 64bit os...
It was nice when i upgraded from 4GB to 8GB of ram to not have to reinstall the os. (multi tabbed browsing + saved session = 3+GB of ram on browsers)

 

[konakona]

well there has been legit reports (one being from AT) of vista64 interfering with Phenom II overclock.
if h264/x264 encoded material runs butter smooth with stuff running in the background, how much better can it get, really?
video was not the performance-critical consideration for overclocking, unless I am missing something.

I get a feeling any increase I get (if any), it would be quite small. P II @ 3.2 is probably plenty fast for most games anyway. IIRC, there used to be a huge thread on 32bit vs 64bit gaming a while back. What was the conclusion from that anyway?

 

[alcoholbob]

You would want to run 64bit if you can IMO because some new games on Very High modes will go above 3GB. DoW2 goes up to nearly 4GB RAM used on my machine. Otherwise you're going to page file, and even RAID 0 a dozen X25-Es is still gonna feel sluggish compared to RAM.

 

[pjkenned]

What's a Page File? 12GB of ram in x64 right now so I turned mine off.

I think we need to stop talking about web browsers. I don't think konakona uses one as the rig is only for gaming/video as was stated. So there's no chance of having a 3GB browser session.

Really though, the question is, why does one need a faster overclock for a game? If you go from 3ghz to 3.2ghz by moving to x32 that's still only 7.5% theoretical. Plus, if you have decent video cards, that can handle high resolution gaming where you need more CPU speed, these days they are going to have maybe 1GB each like my GTX 285s. Multiply that by two (SLI) and you then have 1.5GB left over for your game. That's nothing. On the other hand, you can go x64, run whatever you want in Vista's AWESOME 32-bit emulation, and not care about memory. Or of course you can run GPU bound with lower memory cards or a single card, have enough memory left over, and get almost no performance benefit from the extra CPU overclock as you will be... again... GPU bound not CPU.

These days, x64 is where it's at, especially with modern graphics cards that can have 1.5GB+ of onboard memory.

 

[fffblackmage]

I've never even considered moving to a 64-bit OS. Are there really such significant benefits to using a 64-bit OS, besides being able to use more than 3.x GB of ram.?

 

[alcoholbob]

Originally posted by: fffblackmage
I've never even considered moving to a 64-bit OS. Are there really such significant benefits to using a 64-bit OS, besides being able to use more than 3.x GB of ram.?

Graphical work or games. Right now everything else is fine at 32bit.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: fffblackmage
I've never even considered moving to a 64-bit OS. Are there really such significant benefits to using a 64-bit OS, besides being able to use more than 3.x GB of ram.?

yes, performance increases are HUGE for 64bit software.
so big that some heavy software is ONLY available as 64bit, it simply doesn't perform well enough on 32bit. A 64bit OS can run both 32bit and 64bit software, and 32bit os can only run 32bit.

 

[zerocool84]

Originally posted by: pjkenned
What's a Page File? 12GB of ram in x64 right now so I turned mine off.

It's higly recommended to NOT turn off page-file no matter how much RAM you have cus some programs/games need it to run and will be unstable without it.

 

[taltamir]

some programs SPECIFICALLY try to put stuff on a pagefile, that can result in crashing (spellforce: the order of dawn for example will crash if pagefile is under 4GB, because it will randomly try to address a really high location in pagefile, despite only using 300MB out of 4GB of ram). if you have that much ram, section off 1GB as a ramdrive, and put your pagefile on it.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I have 2 machines both Vista Ultimate 64. The one is a Wolfdale 8400, the other is a Yorkfield 9650. The 9650 machines runs alot nicer with the extra 2 cores. Even when comparing at the same Ghz

 

[KoolDrew]

The extra RAM is reason enough for me to go 64-bit.

if you have that much ram, section off 1GB as a ramdrive, and put your pagefile on it.

Which completely defeats the purpose of even having one...

Leave the pagefile alone. If you really have that much RAM you won't be using it frequently anyway.

 

[taltamir]

Which completely defeats the purpose of even having one...

I and the guy before me CLEARLY stated that the purpose of having one when you have THIS MUCH ram is to prevent badly written programs from crashing, that is the ONLY purpose it servers for someone with an excess of ram... if you run out of ram though, it helps.
Considering he hates pagefile enough to completely DISABLE it to begin with (I don't, even though I have 8GB of ram), then I think this a better solution FOR HIM.

I am not about to try to explain to him why it is a good idea to have a pagefile in general.

 

[pjkenned]

Originally posted by: zerocool84
It's higly recommended to NOT turn off page-file no matter how much RAM you have cus some programs/games need it to run and will be unstable without it.

I haven't had a pagefile on my x64 box in about 18 months, you can run into problems if you try cutting it close so really its an 8GB+ minimum point at trying it. Then again, it depends upon the workload and applications on the box. I'm sure there are some that need the pagefile for whatever reason, I just don't use those applications... Keep in mind my Vista box only reboots for installing windows updates, and basically never sees application-errors (maybe 1 a month). Then again, even with 6GB these days, I would not feel comfortable turning it off.

Also, for the record, my main PC has three levels of hard drives, two raid 5 arrays, one raid 1 array, on two different raid controllers, all tiering backup, and then I have a server that holds a complete backup of the main box on its raid 6 array. So I'm not exactly the reckless "let me turn off the pagefile even if it gives me errors". I more look for complete stability, and reliability, yet with 12GB of ram, turning off the page file is a non-issue for me.

 

[alcoholbob]

Microsoft's support page recommends you not to turn off the page file regardless of RAM, instead, put the page file on a separate hard disk to speed up paging operations.

If you are a hardcore gamer, division of labor lowers paging to the RAM which eats into RAM latency (I'm talking specifically about paging to a seperate HD, not to the same HD where the OS and/or game is installed in). Hell if you are playing Crysis, every bit helps.

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: pjkenned

Originally posted by: zerocool84
It's higly recommended to NOT turn off page-file no matter how much RAM you have cus some programs/games need it to run and will be unstable without it.

I haven't had a pagefile on my x64 box in about 18 months, you can run into problems if you try cutting it close so really its an 8GB+ minimum point at trying it. Then again, it depends upon the workload and applications on the box. I'm sure there are some that need the pagefile for whatever reason, I just don't use those applications... Keep in mind my Vista box only reboots for installing windows updates, and basically never sees application-errors (maybe 1 a month). Then again, even with 6GB these days, I would not feel comfortable turning it off.

Also, for the record, my main PC has three levels of hard drives, two raid 5 arrays, one raid 1 array, on two different raid controllers, all tiering backup, and then I have a server that holds a complete backup of the main box on its raid 6 array. So I'm not exactly the reckless "let me turn off the pagefile even if it gives me errors". I more look for complete stability, and reliability, yet with 12GB of ram, turning off the page file is a non-issue for me.

What do you think you really accomplish by disabling the pagefile?

 

[alcoholbob]

Originally posted by: KoolDrew

What do you think you really accomplish by disabling the pagefile?[/quote]

Good question. Resource monitor shows Windows has numerous "SYSTEM" process writing to disc in a constant flurry anyway, removing page-file is only ONE of the virtual memory processes being eliminated. Removing a critical part of virtual memory system seems pointless to me.

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: taltamir

Which completely defeats the purpose of even having one...

I and the guy before me CLEARLY stated that the purpose of having one when you have THIS MUCH ram is to prevent badly written programs from crashing, that is the ONLY purpose it servers for someone with an excess of ram... if you run out of ram though, it helps.
Considering he hates pagefile enough to completely DISABLE it to begin with (I don't, even though I have 8GB of ram), then I think this a better solution FOR HIM.

I am not about to try to explain to him why it is a good idea to have a pagefile in general.

Putting a pagefile in a RAM drive is just as bad as disabling it. All it fixes is programs refusing to work without one. If you have enough RAM where you are able to do so you won't be hitting the pagefile often anyway, and are only increasing the amount of page faults by doing so. Yes, it'll be faster than if it were paged to disk, but the point should be to decrease pages to begin with, which is done by having more RAM. Also, the pagefile is not the only file involved with paging. By disabling or moving the pagefile to a RAM drive you are increasing paging to exe's and dll's, which the RAM drive won't do crap for speeding up.

Disabling the pagefile or using a RAM drive is an inefficient use of RAM, cripples the file cache, and results in more paging to exe's and dll's. Most would be best off just leaving the pagefile alone. The pagefile could be placed on a separate hard drive as stated above (separate from OS), which may help. However, that would depend on how often it is actually used.

 

[taltamir]

whoa whoa whoa.. page faults? are you claiming ram causes errors?

also, why the hell would it page exe and dll files more if he uses 1GB out of 12 free GB (he has 16GB) for page file?

It will only increase it if you had, say, 4GB of ram and decided to make 1GB of it into pagefile virtual HDD.

 

[konakona]

hehe looks like you guys hijacked my thread, but thats totally fine by me. I am kinda intrigued by the pagefile discussion myself. Good that Kooldrew ask that question, as I was going to ask that if he hadn't. It's good to know that you could get by with disabling pagefile these days (though most would recommend against it), are you actually gaining something by doing that? I thought vista's memory management is slick enough by now to negate all the cons of mandatory paging.

 

[taltamir]

i think so too konak, i let windows do its thing... but if you chose NOT to I say there is no HARM in that.

 

[KoolDrew]

whoa whoa whoa.. page faults? are you claiming ram causes errors?

...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_fault

also, why the hell would it page exe and dll files more if he uses 1GB out of 12 free GB (he has 16GB) for page file?

It will only increase it if you had, say, 4GB of ram and decided to make 1GB of it into pagefile virtual HDD.

Regardless of how much RAM you have, it is still an inefficient use of RAM and has absolutely no benefit.