64 bit games

[CrimsonGhost]

With the launch of AMDs Athlon 64 and Opteron, and intels Itanium are any games companys going to release games which will take proper advantage of the extra processing power either out of the box, or with additional downloads from the web. I can only imagine how much better the current gen of games and ones to be released will perform when specifically compiled for 64 bit processors.

Anyone know anything more on this? Specifically with either Doom3 or HL2 have native support for 64 bit processors as an option?

astrofool

ut 2004 will

and i'd say hl2 will, at least hlds wise. Recompiling the counterstrike hlds for x86-64 brought a 30% or 70% improvement (one or the other, can't remember now :P)

Kali

On a daily basis we're running into the Windows 2GB barrier with our next-generation content development and preprocessing tools.

If cost-effective, backwards-compatible 64-bit CPU's were available today, we'd buy them today. We need them today. It looks like we'll get them in April.

Any claim that "4GB is enough" or that address windowing extensions are a viable solution are just plain nuts. Do people really think programmers will re-adopt early 1990's bank-swapping technology?

Many of these upcoming Opteron motherboards have 16 DIMM slots; you can fill them with 8GB of RAM for $800 at today's pricewatch.com prices. This platform is going to be a godsend for anybody running serious workstation apps. It will beat other 64-bit workstation platforms (SPARC/PA-RISC/Itanium) in price/performance by a factor of 4X or more. The days of $4000 workstation and server CPU's are over, and those of $1000 CPU's are numbered.

Regarding this "far off" application compatibility, we've been running the 64-bit SuSE Linux distribution on Hammer for over 3 months. We're going to ship the 64-bit version of UT2003 at or before the consumer Athlon64 launch. And our next-generation engine won't just support 64-bit, but will basically REQUIRE it on the content-authoring side.

We tell Intel this all the time, begging and pleading for a cost-effective 64-bit desktop solution. Intel should be listening to customers and taking the leadership role on the 64-bit desktop transition, not making these ridiculous "end of the decade" statements to the press.

If the aim of this PR strategy is to protect the non-existant [sic] market for $4000 Itaniums from the soon-to-be massive market for cost-effective desktop 64-bit, it will fail very quickly.

-Tim Sweeney, Epic Games

dave, you might find this an interesting read:
http://www.arstechnica.com/cpu/03q1/x86-64/x86-64-5.html
(ive just linked to the last page as it summarises with respect to games).

po0k

Originally posted by [CrimsonGhost]
AMDs Athlon 64 and Opteron

x86-64 - an extension of the x86 (IA-32) instruction set and architecture specification.
Athlon64 will become affordable and a viable consumer/prosumer option

intels Itanium

Some of the engineers working on the Itanium project were moved to it from the Alpha, because Compaq didin't think it was worth investing money in the development of a processor which sold in such small numbers.
Funny thing is, Itanium-based systems are selling just as slowly, if not slower than Alphas did.

Also, they use a different architecture (IA-64) to x86 platforms.
You will never see these chips in the hands of consumers/prosumers. More like university clusters for batch computing in scientific research projects.

[CALIBUR]

stupid question #5


well the the new althon 64-bit work with Socket A mortherboards?

Celt

Originally posted by #MEAT#
stupid question #5


well the the new althon 64-bit work with Socket A mortherboards?

no

Matt Simis

Originally posted by SyxPak
x86-64 - an extension of the x86 (IA-32) instruction set and architecture specification.
Athlon64 will become affordable and a viable consumer/prosumer option

Some of the engineers working on the Itanium project were moved to it from the Alpha, because Compaq didin't think it was worth investing money in the development of a processor which sold in such small numbers.
Funny thing is, Itanium-based systems are selling just as slowly, if not slower than Alphas did.

Also, they use a different architecture (IA-64) to x86 platforms.
You will never see these chips in the hands of consumers/prosumers. More like university clusters for batch computing in scientific research projects.

AMD also scooped up quite a lot of Alpha Engineers for the K7 and K8 projects. Its funny, you now have guys that were teammates competing against one another. With the brains of the Alpha behind Intel and AMDs CPUs, who can say Alpha really died!
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-826572.html


Ontopic: Americas Army has also been ported to 64Bit and AMDZone forums were looking for 50 Beta Testers with 64Bit CPUs to test a new big name game (could have been AA).


Matt