When Windows 64-Bit Comes Out Will The AMD 64's See A Difference In Performance?

[arh2o]

When the 64-bit version of windows comes out will we with the amd 64's see a difference in performance? we games run better and programs run faster? like since windows xp is only 32 bit is the amd64 only using half it's potential? will stuff run twice as fast? i'm not really sure, so i'm just wondering will I have a better comp to play games and run programs better with the new OS?

 

[mechBgon]

XBit Labs has an article up showing some benchmark results for WinXP64 Release Candidate 1, that might interest you:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/x86-64-rc1.html

Note that straight 32-bit games aren't showing a benefit. Actual 64-bit programs could see some good boosts though, look at some of this: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/x86-64-rc1_10.html and the following page.

 

[OffTopic1]

Presently there aren't many applications/games that are writen to take advantage of 64x86. You will have to wait a few years, maybe a decade to see a large bulk of applications that are 64bit.

8-16bit took a decade to make the transition.
16-32bit also taken a decade before the arrival of 32bit software.
32-64bit might take less time on the enterprise & sciencetific level, but consumer might have to wait at least 1/2 decade to see something decent.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: OffTopic

Presently there aren't many applications/games that are writen to take advantage of 64x86. You will have to wait a few years, maybe a decade to see a large bulk of applications that are 64bit.

8-16bit took a decade to make the transition.
16-32bit also taken a decade before the arrival of 32bit software.
32-64bit might take less time on the enterprise & sciencetific level, but consumer might have to wait at least 1/2 decade to see something decent.

According to the article, McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i is 64-bit ready right now. And that's what we use at work. I'm planning to drag my A64 back to the office, install WinXP64 RC1 and do a little testing to see if it's got much improvement to offer... VSE 8.0i is a beast, and I'd be glad to see its performance improve.

I don't know if you keep up on the Windows gaming scene, but there have been positive comments from Valve and Id dudes about 64-bit optomization too.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Remember though, just because the OS supports 64bit code does not mean that the programs support it. Both must support it for the processor to take advantage of it.

To answer your question , when all is said and done and programs support it (yes i know some already do but the more common programs such as games) as well as drivers that are nice you will see performance gains.

-Kevin

 

[UzairH]

Right now the major tangible for desktop users (as oppposed to much larger memory address space for servers) is that the some instructions with long integers/floats are faster because of the larger 64 bit registers. At least this is true on the A64. But the real test of the pudding is in the eating and we'll see in a couple of years when quite a lot of desktop applications should be 64 bit. By that time nearly every processor should be 64 bit.

 

[Nothinman]

Sure, but they will be minimal and there may be some slowdown in some apps. The gains will almost all be from the hardware design points that have nothing to do with the fact that the CPU is 64-bit like the added registeres, the on-die memory controller, the added cache, etc. The only things that will really benefit from the 64-bit address space are odd things like huge database servers, 3D render farms, etc.

 

[Heisenberg]

I've got a semi-related question: In the gaming benchmarks that Anandtech does for games like HL2 and Doom 3, where the Athlon64's do really well, are they using XP 64-bit to do that, or are the A64's that much better running the standard 32-bit XP and games?

 

[Bytre]

Originally posted by: Heisenberg
I've got a semi-related question: In the gaming benchmarks that Anandtech does for games like HL2 and Doom 3, where the Athlon64's do really well, are they using XP 64-bit to do that, or are the A64's that much better running the standard 32-bit XP and games?

32-bit platforms usually.

 

[Link19]

Don't you need at least 4GB or more RAM to really benifit from 64-bit applications and a 64-bit CPU? That is what I have heard? Until computers start coming with 4GB or more RAM standard, what is the point of running 64-bit OS and applications?

 

[Nothinman]

Don't you need at least 4GB or more RAM to really benifit from 64-bit applications and a 64-bit CPU?

No. You can run a 32-bit system with up to 64G physical memory right now if you want. The 4G barrier that 64-bit breaks is VM, not phsyical.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Don't you need at least 4GB or more RAM to really benifit from 64-bit applications and a 64-bit CPU?

No. You can run a 32-bit system with up to 64G physical memory right now if you want. The 4G barrier that 64-bit breaks is VM, not phsyical.

Aren't 32 programs compiled with 32 bit pointers? Assuming they're not poorly written, compilation with a 64 bit compiler would be almost no work at all but current 32 bit binaries couldn't actually use more than 4gigs could they?

 

[Nothinman]

Aren't 32 programs compiled with 32 bit pointers?

Sure.

Assuming they're not poorly written, compilation with a 64 bit compiler would be almost no work at all but current 32 bit binaries couldn't actually use more than 4gigs could they?

Other than the fact that assuming that will get you into trouble more often that not, chances are much better the software is crap than not, yes you could just recompile to a 64-bit target and be mostly done with your 64-bit port.

But about 32-bit binaries using >2G VM, yes and no. Using PAE apps can get access to more than 2G of VM, but it's "windowed", meaning they only have access to so much of it at a time and they have to shuffle the window around to get to the memory they want, at least on Windows.

 

[kamper]

All fine and good but we're discussing the 4gb barrier, which I thought was physical (please correct me if I'm wrong).

 

[Nothinman]

All fine and good but we're discussing the 4gb barrier, which I thought was physical (please correct me if I'm wrong).

But it's not. As I said, with PAE you can use up to 64G physical in a IA32 box.

 

[Link19]

But with more than 4GB of RAM on 32-bit systems, it is useless if it can't use more than 4GB of RAM at once which is why it has to window in and out of RAM up to 64GB? So you would need 64-bit apps to address more than 4GB of physical RAM.

 

[Nothinman]

But with more than 4GB of RAM on 32-bit systems, it is useless if it can't use more than 4GB of RAM at once which is why it has to window in and out of RAM up to 64GB?

It's hardly useless. Most database servers have more than one database on them, so each instance would be able to have up to 2G memory each. File caching would be greatly improved.

So you would need 64-bit apps to address more than 4GB of physical RAM.

No, you need 64-bit apps to address more than 4G of VM, the amount of physical memory supported isn't related to the amount of VM supported.