64 bit & performance

[miahallen]

So, with Windows 64 coming soon, what are we expecting as far as performance goes. From what I've read, the only benefit's we'll see are with apps that are 64 bit (duh!). But, in what form will those benefits be? Are we talking about general all-round performance...or are specific types of apps going to benefit more than others? Will it be better at multitasking? Are games going to see huge FPS increases?

I mostly stick to THG & anandtech, so any article links from other sites would be appreciated.

 

[Crashman]

You know what we need? A "64-bit" processor that can handle 64-bit instructions in 128-bit chunks. I don't think 64-bit capability will ever give us a noticable performance increase, but would be handy in extremely long math problems, maybe some engineering applications.

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[endyen]

From what I recall, multitasking will be much faster, as the os will have access to the added registers.
Mutimedia seems to gain about 20%. That is without 64 bit progs. Progs that are native 64 should do even better. Games wont gane much, until they are coded for 64, but the big plus for games, will be the impact for developers.

 

[raretech]

I think the best indicator right now as to what you can look forward to are the tests that have been done on 64bit Linux. Here's one from Anandtech:
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2213" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2213</A>

If you go through the benchmark images listed, mouse over for more the results and where available, you'll see the 64bit results. Keep in mind that not every application was optimized for 64bit. From what I understand, some of them were simply recompiled for 64bit, without any substantial code change, which generally will not give a radical increase and in some cases, will give a decrease.

<i>Nemo me impune lacesset</i>

 

[trooper11]

64bit will help in many areas, the most mainstream applications would be 64bit coded games and for audio/video encoding. its hard to say just what will see a boost until we get more apps and a final win 64, but i think its a good bet we will see performance boosts in many areas.

 

[Mephistopheles]

I think it's pretty fair to suspect that once 64-bit windows is there, there will be very few conscious buyers who will still go for a non-64-bit processor. So this pretty much explains why Intel absolutely <i>must</i> get out the tejas-like enhanced P4 from the 6xx series: that thing has 64-bit and is faster than prescott (should, hopefully, be faster than northwood too and scratch a bit AMD's leadership, but that's still unknown)...

AMD has 64-bit processors from 2.8 to 4.0 (ratings), while Intel will only by early 2005 introduce a full 64-bit enabled desktop lineup: the 3.0, 3.2, 3.4, 3.6 and (hopefully) 3.8Ghz P4 6xx (2MB cache and 64-bit). This means that <b>all processors Intel is selling now will become obsolete within 2-3 months from now.</b> Not a strong selling point for them.

Hopefully, for competition's sake, Intel's implementation is as respectable as the early xeon numbers indicate. And hopefully, the 6xx series will give the LGA775 platform a boost! Finally.

 

[trooper11]

would it give it a boost? those are going to be the high end chips, if lg755 is to succeed, intel has to start at the low end, and 6xx is not the low end lol. same thing happened with s939, its only now starting to catch on with the 90nm part releases.

 

[ytoledano]

I can't imagine 3.0 or 3.2 GHZ 2MB Prescotts costing too much... After all, they're supposed to eventually replace all previous low end Pentiums.

<b>Behold, Mine anger and My fury shall be poured out upon this place upon man and upon beast and upon the trees of the field and upon the fruit of the land and it shall burn and shall not be quenched

 

[Mephistopheles]

Well, intel definitely should try to make the 6xx series as good as they can. The 2MB L2 cache alone will give a decent, albeit not revolutionary, boost in performance. I'm not sure if Intel managed to put any tejas-specific enhancements on them, but I heard that was the intention... so we might be seeing a greater boost. I'd expect the 6xx series to make P4EEs completely obsolete, since the only advantage the EEs would have would be the rather useless (at this point) 1066Mhz FSB.

It's not going to be easy, though, for the 6xx series to truly gain a lot of mindshare amongst enthusiasts. Plus, AMD has the PR ratings, which at this point kind of gives them an advantage - some customers are bound to like the idea of buying a 3500/4000 A64, but what about a P4 670?...

 

[Crashman]

This means that all processors Intel is selling now will become obsolete within 2-3 months from now.

That's a fairly retarded thing to say, considering it's completely opposite of the truth. And the truth is that 64-bit will be a nearly worthless feature for a long time to come. And the truth is that 64-bit does little to help performance for most types of applications. And the truth is that 32-bit programs will be more common than 64-bit for the forseable future.

<b>AND THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE</b>

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[peteroy]

And SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 all have 64bit and 128bit today instruction paths that many programs and games use.

===========================
<A HREF="http://www.intelreviews.com" target="_new">Intelreviews.com</A>

 

[Crashman]

64-bit will become increasingly important over the long term, but the only difference users will notice over the short term is increased instructions per second, ie AMD increasing clock speed and Intel releasing more efficient cores, then both going dual-core. Which is the same progression as we've seen for years, no need to panick in 3 months if you're still stuck with a super-fast P4.

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[endyen]

Just like the Williamette was.

 

[Crashman]

If you got a Willy 2.0 by accident when it was fairly new, it was competitave with the midrange for maybe a year, but the Willy 1.4 had the distinction of being slower than the PIII 1000EB in most applications, so try thinking instead of better examples.

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[Crashman]

I just realized the PIII 1000EB was one of those better examples!

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