Sign In
Register
Help
http://www.iexbeta.com/images/news/icons/view.gif View: Full Article
http://www.iexbeta.com/images/news/icons/globe.gif News source: Steam News
Page 1 of 1
Valve Unveils 64-bit Source™ Gaming Technology
Rate Topic:
MultiQuote
#4
- Royal Family Member
-
- Group: Global Mods
- Posts: 7297
- Joined: 05-September 02
- Gender:Male
- Location:USA
- Interests:computers
Posted 23 December 2005 - 06:29 AM
Great! Another game takes advantage of x64 processors. I just tried this out on my computer. I didn't need to change any settings either. It just detects that I am using a 64-bit OS and starts the 64-bit version of HL2. You can see at the top of the main menu screen that it is the 64-bit version. Also the device manager shows that HL2.exe is running in 64-bit mode.
#8
- War Hulk
-
- Group: Global Mods
- Posts: 6953
- Joined: 04-September 02
- Gender:Male
- Location:Iowa, USA
- Interests:Computers, Networks, Pen-and-Paper RPGs, Home Theater, Movies, Music
Posted 23 December 2005 - 09:36 PM
You'll definately see a performance gain on an x64 platform because of the lack of needing the emulation layer. That alone can use up 250MB of RAM on some games. Native apps are always better :)
#9
- Royal Family Member
-
- Group: Global Mods
- Posts: 7297
- Joined: 05-September 02
- Gender:Male
- Location:USA
- Interests:computers
Posted 23 December 2005 - 09:47 PM
Illrigger, on Dec 23 2005, 15:36, said:
You'll definately see a performance gain on an x64 platform because of the lack of needing the emulation layer. That alone can use up 250MB of RAM on some games. Native apps are always better :)
32-bit game performance runs basically the same in x64 Windows as it does in 32-bit Windows. They have run benchmarks to show that. Keep in mind that the 32-bit software is not being emulated on the x64 platform.
As for the x64 HL2 performance, it may load slightly faster, but I haven't played the game in a while so it's hard to say. If I knew a command to force it to run in 32-bit mode, I would run a benchmark.
#10
- War Hulk
-
- Group: Global Mods
- Posts: 6953
- Joined: 04-September 02
- Gender:Male
- Location:Iowa, USA
- Interests:Computers, Networks, Pen-and-Paper RPGs, Home Theater, Movies, Music
Posted 24 December 2005 - 02:20 AM
Chugworth, on Dec 23 2005, 12:47, said:
Illrigger, on Dec 23 2005, 15:36, said:
You'll definately see a performance gain on an x64 platform because of the lack of needing the emulation layer. That alone can use up 250MB of RAM on some games. Native apps are always better :)
32-bit game performance runs basically the same in x64 Windows as it does in 32-bit Windows. They have run benchmarks to show that. Keep in mind that the 32-bit software is not being emulated on the x64 platform.
The apps run in native mode, but the OS loads a kernel mode emulator (WOW32) that can be a real system RAM hog. Monitor the system under x64 compared to under true x86 and you'll see up to a 25% difference in the amount of total system RAM usage when running x86 apps. It doesn't affect most things if you have enough RAM, but in MMOs (which can bring system RAM usage to above 90% on a box with a gig of RAM on an x86 native system) it causes all kinds of swap file hashing that brings the machine to its knees. X64 apparently isn't very good at handling things once RAM usage hits 100%. It got me killed in the new action-oriented SWG engine many times, and caused a few nasty instances in WoW and EQ2 as well. Until I can get another gig for my box, I've rolled back to x86 Windows.
#11
- Royal Family Member
-
- Group: Global Mods
- Posts: 7297
- Joined: 05-September 02
- Gender:Male
- Location:USA
- Interests:computers
Posted 24 December 2005 - 02:53 AM
Illrigger, on Dec 23 2005, 20:20, said:
Chugworth, on Dec 23 2005, 12:47, said:
Illrigger, on Dec 23 2005, 15:36, said:
You'll definately see a performance gain on an x64 platform because of the lack of needing the emulation layer. That alone can use up 250MB of RAM on some games. Native apps are always better :)
32-bit game performance runs basically the same in x64 Windows as it does in 32-bit Windows. They have run benchmarks to show that. Keep in mind that the 32-bit software is not being emulated on the x64 platform.
The apps run in native mode, but the OS loads a kernel mode emulator (WOW32) that can be a real system RAM hog. Monitor the system under x64 compared to under true x86 and you'll see up to a 25% difference in the amount of total system RAM usage when running x86 apps. It doesn't affect most things if you have enough RAM, but in MMOs (which can bring system RAM usage to above 90% on a box with a gig of RAM on an x86 native system) it causes all kinds of swap file hashing that brings the machine to its knees. X64 apparently isn't very good at handling things once RAM usage hits 100%. It got me killed in the new action-oriented SWG engine many times, and caused a few nasty instances in WoW and EQ2 as well. Until I can get another gig for my box, I've rolled back to x86 Windows.
Well I agree that an x64 system needs more memory, but for a game like Half Life 2, 1gb should be enough. Only on the absolute latest games like FEAR or Serious Sam 2 have I thought that more memory could improve it. I have been playing WoW lately and haven't noticed any problems like that with it.
#12
- Royal Family Member
-
- Group: Global Mods
- Posts: 7297
- Joined: 05-September 02
- Gender:Male
- Location:USA
- Interests:computers
Posted 25 December 2005 - 06:28 AM
Chugworth, on Dec 23 2005, 15:47, said:
If I knew a command to force it to run in 32-bit mode, I would run a benchmark.
Well I found that the switch to force the game to run in 32-bit mode is -32bit. I would benchmark it, but the timedemos seem to only run in the bit mode that they were created in. How interesting... :huh:
Page 1 of 1