Gaming In 64-Bit: Tom's Tests, Microsoft Weighs In

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Okay, so I see where people are distracted here. Let's get back on track and face fact straight up, WindowsXP x64 was a joke. Vista x64 (either Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate) is a great operating system. Windows 7 x64 should be an even better OS. DDR2 RAM is dirt cheap right now, DDR3 RAM is falling quickly. Any computer built in the past 2 years can natively run a 64-bit OS, whether it be Windows or Linux based. Anybody who complains about driver issues is obviously not aware that Windows Update is a GREAT place to find drivers in a 64-bit environment. Even if you don't see a "noticeable" improvement in frame rates or time taken to encode that bootleg DiVX file to a DVD, you will most certainly not see a drop in performance. 64-bit is just starting to get utilized and it will most certainly be more widely utilized in the future. Why not just install the 64-bit OS now and be ready when your favorite new game is "Optimized for Windows 7 x64"?
 
I'm using XP x64 edition and don't have that many problems. Since Vista's 64-bit version was released, XP x64 also got better drivers. Most of my hardware is AMD/ATI and nVidia, so that could have a few things to do with it. Still, my sound card (Auzentech) has been supported, and my brother used a Creative Labs card for a while on the same OS.

I have 4 gigs and RAM, and it has been nice. Games close really quickly since hardly anything gets swapped to disk. BSoDs are rare, and only tend to happen when I screw with the hardware.
 
Actually the reason for the slowdown in 64 bit vista on 3 gigabytes of RAM is because Vista will be more aggressive with services using RAM - mainly superfetching. Hell,even on 32 bit I saw use of all my RAM just for the game, I can't imagine that using 3 gigs which is cut by ~1 gig or so. Wait. I can. It sucked.
 
[citation][nom]jaragon13[/nom]Actually the reason for the slowdown in 64 bit vista on 3 gigabytes of RAM is because Vista will be more aggressive with services using RAM - mainly superfetching. Hell,even on 32 bit I saw use of all my RAM just for the game, I can't imagine that using 3 gigs which is cut by ~1 gig or so. Wait. I can. It sucked.[/citation]
crap, I just lost the game.
 
Hello, my name is Marc Diana and I work for Alienware. I loved the article, very well written and the MSFT interview was fantastic. I commented a while back on this same subject matter here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-9944700-64.html?tag=mncol;title .

I think an interesting point would have been to run multiple apps in the background during the testing. We here at Alienware see a significant improvement on 64 bit over 32 Vista while doing this. With folks moving to doing more and demanding more from their systems today and with future client type apps running on top of the games (Steam), this has to be factored into gaming performance (Maybe you’re running two or three screens at once and want to run thott while you WoW it up, or have your Facebook and Twitter open while your gaming ect…). There is also the stability point that was mentioned early in the article, this hits on a very important point especially for PC Gaming. I think we are at the final tipping point today in the industry were 64 bit driver/hardware support is finally being prioritized over 32 bit. As someone who is neck deep in the industry day-to-day I can tell you this is truely the case nowadays.

Anyway Chris, keep up the good work- I know I’ll be watching for the next article!

Marc
 
Thanks for all of the feedback, guys. Clearly there is interest in digging deeper into this topic.

I've scheduled a follow-up using AMD hardware to compare, in which I'll try loading the system down with a more typical app-load (not just our "clean" testing platforms) and test things like level load times, to evaluate more than just the effects on frame rates.
 
[citation][nom]truehighroller[/nom]@ apache_lives :Yeah, obviously you do not have a clue wtf I am talking about... I never even talked about Vista?? I have Windows 7 x64 Build 7057 and have Vista Ultimate sitting in my drawer at home so, wtf are you talking about exactly because I have no clue as I never said anything about Vista at all and I actually like it TY. You need to learn to read before you comment man seriously. The point is "again I am saying this to you and I'm not even talking about Vista here nor did I ever mention Vista, note to your self " that it only runs right on an 8800 series GPU and maybe another GPU that the development team tested this on before releasing it like the 1900 series maybe. I have noticed tha people with 8800 series GPUs have no issues.. not to sure about the other side of the fence though. The game is buggy as hell and they need to reolve the issues is has on every one elses PCs. End of rant sorry..[/citation]

I finnished GTA IV for PC in under 2 weeks - iv never had an issues, its been 100% - buggy my ass, its peoples crappy old hardware at fault.
 
[citation][nom]marcdiana12[/nom]Hello, my name is Marc Diana and I work for Alienware. [...] I commented a while back on this same subject matter here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3- [...][/citation]there says:
[... "If I was looking to invest in one component over another," Diana said, "I would probably invest in a really good motherboard," and after that, a dual-core processor and a midrange graphics card ...]

motherboards benchmarks do not show much performance advantage between mid range motherboards, and the most expensive ones, but there is a noticeable difference between mid range processors, and a world of difference between mid range video card, and good ones.

I totally disagree with you. The money should be spend first in video, then in processor, and then in motherboard, although a good SSD disk may be more important that the mother.

It looks like, since Dell buyed Alienware, his quality has fall down.

Surely expensive motherboards are more profitable to Dell, (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1941376,00.asp), but dell PCs are a bad buy. And Dell is known for hiring people to write misleading propaganda in blogs and forums, hidding publicity as comments.
 
[citation][nom]apache_lives[/nom]I finnished GTA IV for PC in under 2 weeks - iv never had an issues, its been 100% - buggy my ass, its peoples crappy old hardware at fault.[/citation]


Have you checked my sig yet? If not then.. I have about $3000 invested in to my PC and like I said before just because you have an 8800 series video card and your's runs fine doesn't mean no one else has issues.

Here is a link to the forums that contain all the people having issues and R* support is there as well helping people out by telling them to do a memrestrict command on the game to try to bandaid the memory leak issue..... http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=404147

Check it out then read my specs then talk crap if you feel like trying because you will get no where with me. I make sure I have all grounds covered when I voice my opinions..
 
wow from the looks of those crysis results, it looks like I don't even need an i7, let alone a 64bit copy of vista running. I doubt anyone will believe me but I'm getting about the same frame rate from a single 9800 GTX+ and an E8400 with 4 gigs of ram..and i'm not even overclocking (and i'm talking about crysis and left 4 dead, those l4d benchmarks obviously have to be vysnc turned on because I get 220fps with it turned off). that's quite an expensive machine for those performance figures.
 
[citation][nom]rooket[/nom]...those l4d benchmarks obviously have to be vysnc turned on because I get 220fps with it turned off). that's quite an expensive machine for those performance figures.[/citation]

Consider that you probably run at different detail settings in order to get 220 frames per second. Of course vsync is disabled.
 
I run at 1600x1200 with full details and full MSFAA and I forgot what the other setting was called at the moment, I put that one at the maximum as well. But yeah I'm not running at 2240x1200 or whatever the real high resolutions some people benchmark games at.

I turn my vysnc on though, it makes it so the screen doesn't chop the graphics when you turn. Of course that cuts down the frame rate but to the eye it looks fast and smooth still.
 
There is a huge Flight Sim community out there. It would be nice to see some of these benchmarks included the testing of Flight Simulator X.
 
I went to 64bit vista because I wasn't happy with the stability of the 32bit version. And somehow I think I've made the right decision. Nothing I need stopped working, so all is fine.

Great article btw.
 
I never had a problem with the RTM version of vista 32bit on my old pentium 4 2.6ghz northwood system. Just that the computer is slow in general, XP wasn't that great deal faster.
 
What really needs to be done with PCs is to forget using the archaic x86 architecture altogether. x86 is a complex instruction set computer (CISC) architecture which was originally developed in 1978. That's 31 years ago! I do admit however that there have been a good deal of enhancements made to the x86 architecture during this time, but the fact is that there are far better more modern reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architectures out there. A RISC architecture is better for gaming because RISC uses simpler machine instructions in which more can be processed per clock cycle compared to x86. Additionally, RISC architectures are also known to process floating point calculations faster than x86 and games use the floating point calculations quite extensively. For example, consider the fact that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all chose to use the PowerPC/Cell RISC architecture for their gaming consoles. They most certainly did not choose this architecture becuase it is cheaper than x86, which it is not. I find it rather dissatisfying that I can not build my own PowerPC/Cell based PC, and that x86 is the only choice I have.

Here are some articles of interest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_instruction_set_computer
 
[citation][nom]tux9656[/nom]...
Additionally, RISC architectures are also known to process floating point calculations faster than x86 and games use the floating point calculations quite extensively
...[/citation]For that reason, in practice, X86 is being replaced by GPU.
 
Just switched to Visat64, running 6GB ram on c2d system

Only a few minor 'glitches' when compared to WinXP 32 but nothing extreme

Games run fine and all my most used apps load in a split second (guess I can thank superfetch or whatever its called for that)

looks like 64bit is the way to go if just to get use of more memory
 
I believe there is pro and con with using a 64 bit OS. As the article mentioned it can address more than 4 GB of memory and all running application can benefit, it it great news if you use your computer as a workstation and have many apps open at the same time;
on the other hand, for playing games and since most are 32 bit and they can still access memory space as before so it doesn't help much, also one thing the article fails to mention is there is something called WOW (window on window - a MS term), it means the 64 bit OS
will emulate a 32 bit OS so the cpu performance will suffer if the app/game is not written in native 64 bit since emulator will always slower than its native speed. So as now, the machine will become "more memory/slower cpu". depends on your need, go figure.
 
Happy to report that I tried the LAA thing on my 32-bit XP system with command and conquer generals zero hour and it worked. The system used more ram and I enjoyed smoother gameplay, particularly on a 8 player map fully loaded with armies going at each every which way (before it would freeze up for about eight seconds at a time) but I did experience lag, probably because my CPU is clocked at 2.5 GHz and the game probably isn't multi threaded. Just generic lag, the frames dipped beneath 10, but it didn't freeze up :)
As predicted, I couldn't play random matches over the internet though. Lan works though.
 
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