Benefits of 64bit version of video drivers?

[K.I.L.E.R]

Using a 32b OS and games are 32b, since the A64 can run 32b + 64b simultaneously without a performance hit what would be the benefit of using 64bit video card drivers?

 

[991060]

It looks cool.

 

[PowerK]

Isn't Windows XP 64-bit Edition needed to take advantage of 64-bit drivers ? According to Anandtech, ATI's 64-bit driver is slower than 32-bit. Well.. everything seems to be in beta stage when it comes to 64-bit computing at the moment.

 

[Tim]

Using a 32b OS and games are 32b, since the A64 can run 32b + 64b simultaneously without a performance hit what would be the benefit of using 64bit video card drivers?

You can not run 64bit applications on 32bit Windows and 32bit drivers can not be used with 64bit windows.

 

[Gubbi]

Currently Windows maps AGP memory twice, once as read-only and once as read-write. This means that a 256MB graphics card takes 512MB from your memory space. The kernel uses 1 or 2 GB (dependent on memory space model), so you're left with 1.5 or 2.5 GB for you applications.

Which might not be that big of a problem now, but when next generation graphics cards comes out with 512MB or 1GB ram (using 1 or 2GB of memory space), and system memory swells to 2GB (and we will see titles that use this amount of memory - see Unreal engine 3 demo) 64bit Windows will make a difference.

Cheers
Gubbi

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Using a 32b OS and games are 32b, since the A64 can run 32b + 64b simultaneously without a performance hit what would be the benefit of using 64bit video card drivers?

You can not run 64bit applications on 32bit Windows and 32bit drivers can not be used with 64bit windows.

DOH!
Time to upgrade to 64b XP.

 

[Quitch]

Ah, but the 64-bit version of Windows will only be available to OEMs or with OEM equipment. Neat, huh?

Time to buy that mouse you've been wanting.

 

[mono]

64 bit WinXP sucks at the moment, IMHO. I'm running my Opteron on 32bit until I see a big spike in 64 bit apps/drivers and the stability/featureset of WinXP.

I had SuSE 9.1 64bit running as a dual boot for a long while as well. SuSE is a great OS, and the 64 bit version was quite polished, but still too many apps that are problematic if you're running 64bit.

Back to 32bit in both OS'.

Edit: Typo.

 

[KimB]

It seems strange to me that there would be many linux applications that would have problems with a 64-bit OS. I mean, seriously, the OS is designed to work on a wide variety of platforms. No software for Linux should be written with assembly that is tied to x86.

 

[ERP]

The most common 64 bit app pronlem is

float *a;
int b;

b = a;
a = b;

Or something similar. Basially sizeof(void *) doesn't equal sizeof(int), the operating system is irrelevant if an app does that. And many do.

 

[KimB]

Well, one compiler switch should be able to fix that, by simply making the default "int" type into a 64-bit integer. I don't think much math code really depends upon a specific size of integer.

Of course, you'd definitely want it to be a compilers switch, as not all code would like that.

 

[mono]

Well, to be honest, my linux "64bit app" problems were really limited to a few games (Enemy Territory, Quake3) which CAN work fine on 64bit if you install manually instead of via the icculus installer.. I just didn't have the patience last month to sort it out.

 

[Tim]

Ah, but the 64-bit version of Windows will only be available to OEMs or with OEM equipment. Neat, huh?

Luckily the OEM equipment does not have to cost more than a couple of bucks, some people buys OEM versions instead of retail versions anyway.

I don’t think the fact that only OEM versions of XP64 will be available is big problem.

@Mono
Yes it currently sucks in many ways, but the current build is quite old and all the drivers are beta, I actually think it is a surprise that it don’t suck more. A new beta should be available very soon now anyway.

 

[Gubbi]

Ah, but the 64-bit version of Windows will only be available to OEMs or with OEM equipment. Neat, huh?

Luckily the OEM equipment does not have to cost more than a couple of bucks, some people buys OEM versions instead of retail versions anyway.

I don’t think the fact that only OEM versions of XP64 will be available is big problem.

Exactly, get a $2 USB cable and an OEM Windows. OEM version price are 1/3 the retail price anyway (here in Denmark anyway), so anybody with a brain will go for the OEM version.

Cheers
Gubbi

 

[Gubbi]

The most common 64 bit app pronlem is

float *a;
int b;

b = a;
a = b;

Or something similar. Basially sizeof(void *) doesn't equal sizeof(int), the operating system is irrelevant if an app does that. And many do.

It's not as much sizeof(int) but rather sizeof(long). long has traditionally been relied on to hold pointers. Not so with 64bit Windows which use an ILP32 data model where int and long both are 32bits, but pointers are 64 bits. 64bit Linux uses a LP64 data model where long and pointers both are 64bits (and int is 32bit).

This means that you have to use long long to store pointers, which in general means you have to manually go through your code a fix everytime you store a pointer to an integer type (PITA!).

Cheers
Gubbi

 

[Xmas]

Which is why you should never use those integer types directly when doing such a conversion.

 

[JohnH]

In fact pointer should be passed and manipulated as pointers, never as any other type that way the problem goes away, but there's an awful lot of bad code around that makes assumptions about the size of pointers!

John

 

[JohnH]

Currently Windows maps AGP memory twice, once as read-only and once as read-write. This means that a 256MB graphics card takes 512MB from your memory space. The kernel uses 1 or 2 GB (dependent on memory space model), so you're left with 1.5 or 2.5 GB for you applications.

Which might not be that big of a problem now, but when next generation graphics cards comes out with 512MB or 1GB ram (using 1 or 2GB of memory space), and system memory swells to 2GB (and we will see titles that use this amount of memory - see Unreal engine 3 demo) 64bit Windows will make a difference.

Cheers
Gubbi

Where do you get that from? I've only ever seen it get mapped as a single region accept on older machines/bios's which split the GART apperture in two with one marked as WC and other as UC for some odd reason, however it still only took the same space.

John.

 

[DeanoC]

As long as your using C99 standard the correct type for a pointer as an int is intptr_t.

It defined to get the correct bahaviour (which is nice). Unfortanately nobody supports C99, so I generally define it myself, which largely defeats the advantages.

 

[ERP]

We have a standard include file that defines all of the C99 standard types correctly on a variety of platforms.

The fundamental problem is that programmers have to actually use the correct type.

I have to admit that I have on occasion turned off 64 bit warnings because I'm sick of seeing that particular one.