Vista 32 or 64 bit edition?

[Rodéric]

is it too much trouble to make 32 bit games run on 64 bit drivers? any bang for the effort?

other than farcry 64bit patch, are there any 64 bit pc games around?

32bit games run on 64bit OS but are slower (I would say 10-50%, empirical observation).
I think Half-Life 2 also have a 64bit version, not many games are recompiled in 64bit, I don't know why, it shouldn't be too hard to do...

 

[Cartoon Corpse]

well i went for 32bit xp for my fx-60 rig.

just wondering if xp64 was even worth the trouble. sounds like no for now.

 

[KimB]

My opinion about 64bit windoze (whether XP, 2003 or Vista), don't care about them unless you want to have more than 2GB RAM.

You can get ~20% speedup in FP-intensive code just from recompiling to 64-bit on AMD processors (Intel's procs don't seem to show a similar benefit, last I looked). The problem is that with XP x64, driver and software support aren't that great. Provided this is fixed with Vista, there would be no reason for anybody with a 64-bit CPU (particularly AMD) to install the 32-bit version of Vista.

 

[Guden Oden]

well i went for 32bit xp for my fx-60 rig.

just wondering if xp64 was even worth the trouble. sounds like no for now.

It's not worth it at the moment no. MS really dropped the ball on XP 64-bit, most certainly on purpose, and now the OS is too old for most hardware vendors to really care about making 64-bit drivers for their hardware.

I assume things will change radically with Vista, especially considering all three major CPU lines are x86-64 compatible by now; AMDs opteron derivates, P4-600 series and core solo/duo. Or at least I believe the core chips are compatible, I could be wrong on that account.

 

[Colourless]

I do all my development in x64 now. It's not really all that different from the old 32bit version, but I'm working under the assumption that if what I'm making works compiled to 64bit and 32bit under WoW64 then its going to work in normal 32bit Windows.

Only a couple of things so far have given me trouble... of course one of them is Mingw just not working. I've got an old version though, current versions might be fine. Shell integration between 32bit programs and 64bit explorer just doesn't work. Can't use 32bit ODBC drivers with 64bit apps (opposite is also true).

Of course you can't 'normally' run 32bit explorer. You need to set the 'launch folder windows in a sperate process' option and then you can manually run %systemroot%\syswow64\explorer.exe. Setting that version of explorer as your default shell of course is not an option... it doesn't display the control panel properly.

 

[Graham]

UT2k4 showed us there can be significant speedups from running 64-bit code in a game. Many other apps also like the extra on-chip registers in 64-bit mode.

I was under the impression that the only real reason you got a significant speed bump on a 64 bit processor was due to the significantly larger register space to accomodate 64bit pointers? Not because of the significantly larger memory space....? (ie, when using those registers for things other than 64bit pointers...)

or maybe my brain has exploded

 

[KimB]

I was under the impression that the only real reason you got a significant speed bump on a 64 bit processor was due to the significantly larger register space to accomodate 64bit pointers? Not because of the significantly larger memory space....? (ie, when using those registers for things other than 64bit pointers...)

That's correct. There is a ~20% performance boost for FP intensive code on AMD 64-bit processors (from the benches I've seen so far, Intel hasn't shown the same improvement). The larger memory space isn't an improvement until either you go above 2GB memory usage, or if you want to allocate arrays around 500-800MB+ in size.

 

[mito]

Installation failed miserably.

Vista wouldn't accept the cd that has the nforce4 drivers. It's a no go.

hints?

 

[Deathlike2]

Vista needs Vista drivers.. not 2K/XP drivers... check if NVidia's website has any Vista beta drivers for your mobo. If your mobo has any sort of separate SATA controller.. you're gonna have to go to your manufacturer's website and see if they have any Vista beta drivers for them...

 

[Rodéric]

Vista needs Vista drivers.. not 2K/XP drivers... check if NVidia's website has any Vista beta drivers for your mobo. If your mobo has any sort of separate SATA controller.. you're gonna have to go to your manufacturer's website and see if they have any Vista beta drivers for them...

Better than Beta drivers, nVidia released Vista 32&64 drivers on its website at least a month ago.

 

[mito]

Better than Beta drivers, nVidia released Vista 32&64 drivers on its website at least a month ago.

And here I go again.....

 

[mito]

Better than Beta drivers, nVidia released Vista 32&64 drivers on its website at least a month ago.

I've been there and there's only the network drivers for vista 64bit...

 

[AlNom]

I've been there and there's only the network drivers for vista 64bit...

Not true, they also have audio drivers. (scroll further down)

Otherwise, it looks like you're out of luck.

 

[KimB]

I've been there and there's only the network drivers for vista 64bit...

You're using an Asus A8N-E? Download the nForce4 AMD drivers. The full set is there.

 

[Cartoon Corpse]

so anyone know who much richer the 64bit micro instruction set will be? or is it mainly going to be just more addressable space and more info/detail carried by the 64bit word?

i assume 16bit -32bit graphics type of improvements will happen in 64...what else?

 

[KimB]

There are two primary improvements of the 64-bit instruction set:
1. Larger address space.
2. More temporary registers.

The added address space's benefit is obvious (more RAM, virtual memory). The additional temporary registers allow for more optimal FP processing code.

 

[Cartoon Corpse]

probably a few new instructions at least to handle more registers? i suppose it isn't a complete rewrite of the entire instruction set (no real backwards compatability i'd guess.) but maybe there would be 2 sets of instructions (maybe integrated to some degree on each for 32 and 64?)...to handle both 32 bit and 64 bit apps...at least for now? isn't that doable? not like they won't have the headroom for both in a 64 bit word right?

 

[KimB]

Right, so it has to switch between 32-bit and 64-bit mode. I believe a switch requires a flush of the pipelines, which is a relatively small performance cost.

 

[thekey]

each vista copy will contain 32 and 64 bit versions. You will be prompted at install to select which you would like (if you have a 64 bit CPU) otherwise it will default to 32bit. There are not really 10 versions since the versions will be identicle and in this case not sold seperatly. And for those that complain about support. 64-bit vista software is in full swing. (drivers)

Would 32-bit programs run in a 64 bit OS? If they dont I dont see to many people using 64 bits any time soon. Perhaps you could install the two versions and use the one you prefer selecting at boottime.

 

[Deathlike2]

Would 32-bit programs run in a 64 bit OS? If they dont I dont see to many people using 64 bits any time soon. Perhaps you could install the two versions and use the one you prefer selecting at boottime.

Uh, yes.. of course 32-bit programs run on a 64-bit OS. Have you done any sort of reading on XP64?

XP 64-bit mainly needs driver support.. which is very much what every new OS needs.. the irony is that Vista is more likely to have better driver support.