| Don't know how it works, but i was convinced it should give some extra speed as well. |
What does a 64 bit processor actually give the user??
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MikeD 10,063 posts
Seen 5 months ago
Registered 18 years ago -
Phattso 27,426 posts
Seen 27 minutes ago
Registered 17 years agoA brief summmary would be:
A 64 bit processor is capable of providing a significant speed bump over a 32 bit processor. However, an application will need to be updated to support the extra register sizes and so on.
What that means for developers is a bunch of hassle to support something that not very many people can currently run anyway. Therefore, until the number of 64 bit processors in the wild reaches critical mass it is unlikely that applications making use of a 64 bit processor will appear.
The only thing you get "for free" without having to make wholesale changes is the ability to address more RAM.
Notable persons making use of 64 bit processors and this extra address space are EPIC with their next generation Unreal toolset which is going to support (and possibly mandate) a 64 bit CPU. Not the game itself, but the tools to make the game.
Anyway - a bit quick and dirty, but without going into any real detail that's the issue as I see it. -
Wasn't there supposed to be a 64 bit version of Far Cry? -
MikeD 10,063 posts
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Registered 18 years agoYes, it should even have come free with amd cpu's.
I think it's MS's delay that stopped those plans. -
sam_spade 15,745 posts
Seen 1 week ago
Registered 20 years agoBasically, something to look forward to. -
mal 29,326 posts
Seen 3 years ago
Registered 20 years agoIt all depends what people mean when they say '64-bit'. Especially in terms of consoles in the old days, they'd attach the '64-bit' moniker if there was a 64-bit bus anywhere in the machine. I don't know if PC processors are as bad.
You can have 64-bit addressing. That just lets you access a bigger range of memory in one chunk. That could occasionally be faster, as programmers wouldn't have worry about a smaller limit.
You can have 64-bit instructions. Whether they're any faster is debatable. You could have many more instructions, and each of the new ones could be much more powerful. But on the other hand each new instruction just adds more silicon and heat to the chip, so it can't be clocked as high.
And finally you can have a 64-bit data bus. This is probably the most useful, since it's quite common that 32-bits doesn't give you big enough, or accurate enough numbers. So you'd load in two 32-bit numbers instead, and spend a few extra instructions doing long addition or multiplication. With a single 64-bit number you can load it twice as fast, and you don't have to bother with long maths.
When people are talking about 64 bit x86 and PowerPC processors, I don't know which of the above they mean, since I don't really keep up with home PC hardware.
Edited by mal at 21:27:39 20-01-2005 -
ssuellid 19,142 posts
Seen 2 days ago
Registered 20 years agoNice numpty guide -
brutal 883 posts
Seen 13 years ago
Registered 19 years agoi find windows is just that little bit snappier whenever you open a new window... makes all the difference for about the first week than you dont notice how fast it is until you see an old pc .gif)
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archonsod 208 posts
Seen 4 years ago
Registered 18 years agoBugger all unless the program is designed for it!
Essentially a 64 bit processor can do twice the work of a 32 bit one. I.e. a 2Ghz 64 bit processor will run slightly faster than a 32 bit processor at certain tasks.
Gaming wise it won't do a lot, yet. No matter how fast the processor is you are still limited by the access speeds of the media, graphics card, sound card and the bus the whole things connected with.
I doubt we'll see much advantage until they start putting them on graphics cards. -
fergal_oc 2,764 posts
Seen 5 days ago
Registered 17 years agoI'm very much a bit torn on this issue.
Example:
i've got a p4 2.8 HT at work and a AMD 64 2800+ (1.8Ghz) at home.
They've both had a 9700 pro in them at some stage and 512MB RAM and I find it hard to tell the difference in performance on HL2. -
eviltobz 2,609 posts
Registered 18 years agoto address otto's question specifically about the g4/g5, the o/s is already enhanced for 64bit processors unlike the windows world, so enhancements will be there to use. going from 32 to 64 bit won't give you twice the performance, as a few people stated already, any time you are doing stuff where the program can work on 64bit data rather than 32 bit it should be considerably faster, but plenty of work that computers do is handled fine with 32 bit data and instructions, so not everything will get a "free" boost from this.
a couple of simple examples of where 64 bit can give good performance boosts over 32 bit would be maths with really large numbers: a 64 bit processor could read two numbers, do a sum and output the third number, a 32 bit processor would have to load part of the numbers, do a sum, carry some data, do a few more loads and sums to use the rest of the two original numbers and the carried number to get the same result; or comparing 2 streams of data, the 64bit processor can compare twice as much per instruction as the 32 bit.
remember also that the g5 is a whole new step up from the g4 in general though, so a 1ghz g4 would likely be fairly outperformed by a 1ghz g5, and of course the g5s clock higher than the g4 anyway. -
eviltobz 2,609 posts
Registered 18 years agoif you hunt around a bit you should also be able to find some benchmarks for different spec'd g4 and g5 macs running various things to give you a better idea of if the performance boost would be noticeable for you. -
GrandTheftApu 6,117 posts
Seen 2 years ago
Registered 18 years agoIt's worth pointing out that workstations and servers by SGI and Sun etc. have had 64 bit processors and OSs for a while now, and even though they have relatively slow clockspeeds 400Mhz or so, they completely outperform faster x86 chips when it comes to heavy duty number crunching. -
ssuellid 19,142 posts
Seen 2 days ago
Registered 20 years agoGrandTheftApu wrote:
It's worth pointing out that workstations and servers by SGI and Sun etc. have had 64 bit processors and OSs for a while now, and even though they have relatively slow clockspeeds 400Mhz or so, they completely outperform faster x86 chips when it comes to heavy duty number crunching.
They don't now tho - thats why SGI/SUN/IBM etc are selling low and medium end x86 boxes now. SPARC and MIPS traditionally had much faster floating point performance than x86 but this has changed.
With a 64bit chip comes some new instructions and registers and increased addressable memory. Thats about it. Until they are supported by the OS these features are pretty useless.
AMD have managed to get some increase in 32bit performance from their current 64bit chip. -
eviltobz 2,609 posts
Registered 18 years agoGrandTheftApu wrote:
and i have one of each. aint never got around to using them, but i got em. and the sgi sure does looky purdy.
It's worth pointing out that workstations and servers by SGI and Sun etc. have had 64 bit processors and OSs for a while now. -
ssuellid 19,142 posts
Seen 2 days ago
Registered 20 years agoduncan wrote:
there should be a version of quake bouncing around for it. Played that on an R10K with 35 grands worth of graphics card in it... was rather tasty for the time.
What was the SGI FPS style demo with the rocket pack? Used to have a go on a super rack system Onyx with a huge widesreen sony CRT. Some idiot forgot to buy the optional boards for the project it was intended for so we just played games on it. -
eviltobz 2,609 posts
Registered 18 years agosweet
edit - that was to duncan, fucking sweet to ssue.
mine is just the crusty old low level indigo workstation, entry level 150mhz job, but the thing is just so gorgeously put together i can't help loving it. and the graphics card is the same size as the motherboard. and has risers with bits of extra layers it's great. and purple, don't forget the purple.
actually, i might have to look into the possibility of trying to fit a pc in it sometime. that would be pretty cool.
Edited by eviltobz at 14:47:44 21-01-2005 -
I was just reading this article about 64 bit applications and if I'm reading it properly it's saying that the only real advantage of having a 64 bit processor is that it can address more than 4 gigs of RAM. There was me naďvely thinking that a 64 bit processor will actually carry out twice as many operations as a 32 bit processor in the same period of time. So does it not have any intrinsic speed advantage at all? Is a G5 chip faster than a G4 *because* it's 64 bit, or is that nothing to do with it? Because if it's only the potential to address an exabyte of memory that's the selling point then I for one don't really need one for the foreseeable future. Anyone up for giving me an idiot's guide to how these things work? -
Cheers tobz. That last paragraph was what I was thinking, i.e. regardless of whether the G5 had been 64-bit or 32-bit it was still going to give you a speed bump. The bit number was kind of irrelevant. And as for addressing additional memory, it only helps if you're addressing more than 4 gigs of RAM right? And who seriously has more than 4 gigs of RAM? Anyway, mal, your post was very helpful. Now off to look at ssuellid's numpty guide. -
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