64bit computing, is it time?

[AMDPwred]

A lot of people are talking about getting 64bit AMD's around campus. Is it worth it to invest in early technology like that? If none of your applications are 64bit ready, do you get any benefit? What's the big deal with these new chips anyways?

 

[BiggityB]

i am wondering this too especially with the appealing notebook emachines put out with the mobile 64 bit athlon chip

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: AMDPwred
If none of your applications are 64bit ready, do you get any benefit?

The Athlon64's 32-bit performance is stronger than the AthlonXP's, and it also features SSE2, so the answer to your question is "heck yeah." Here's AnandTech's initial review of the A64 to help give you the picture: review I just bought an A64 3000+ and it may never get used with a 64-bit OS... *shrug*

The A64 also has the interesting Cool 'n Quiet feature, allowing it to idle at 800MHz and 1.3 volts when it has nothing to do. Cars don't run their engines at full throttle all the time, why should... yeah. According to Sandpile.org, the max thermal output of an A64 3200+ in this state is about 35 watts. You can turn off C&Q in either the BIOS or in Windows as desired, if you don't want it active.

Counterpoint: the $90 AthlonXP 2500+ routinely overclocks to ~3200+ levels and will do it on a $68 Shuttle AN35N Ultra mobo, and if you took the money saved and spent it on a faster video card, that could come out as an equally-strong gaming system due to the importance of the video card. An Intel-based OC setup might be able to do similarly.

When 64-bit-optomized software does begin to show up, we'll see what's what. Under 64-bit Linux, some performance gains of 30% to 100% have been seen with 64-on-64, although there will probably be apps that don't show much improvement too.

 

[AMDPwred]

Very interesting. Has there been word from companies on when we'll see applications in 64bit? Things like Office, chat clients, games, browsers, etc?

 

[mechBgon]

Gabe Newell said here that there will be AMD64 optomizations for HalfLife2, and Epic was planning on re-releasing UT2003 in a 64-bit version although the delay in WinXP 64-Bit Edition may have them rethinking it, unless it's something they can just release a patch for. There are already 64-bit versions of the apps that LinuxHardware was using in their testing here.

So it looks to me like SSE2 back when the first Pentium4 came out with SSE2. It took time, but it ended up getting used, and used effectively.

edit: by the way, I admit to being a closet AMD fanboy so don't listen just to me

 

[Duvie]

So basically as Mechbgon stated there is reasons to get an A64 but for your question unless you are or do run Linux 64bit OS don't count on Windows 64bit OS version yet and thus NO CLEAR REASON for 64 bit computing....

Read anandtech's review.....

Gamers right now will not be happy with it...Show some signs of encoding prowess but doing some research this 64bit divx codec has been around for awhile and is not necessarily or was designed for the MS64 OS....

The trial version has been floating around for a good part of a week and by the clear silence I imagine many of the AMD users who bought them for gaming are seeing no real advantage yet...plus many have ati cards and the support is not good out of that camp yet, as well as quite a few pieces of hardware....

Then ofcourse ultimately it comes down to the application being recompiled for 64bit....This is the real million dollar question of when this will happen and will it happen for your applications of choice....

Get an A64 cause you need the gaming power now in 32bit apps, but don't buy it was 64bit computing in a windows operation....


I like mechbgon may change CPUs twice more before the OS is available to the masses with full hardware support, and the reason is there to upgrade....Chipsets will be radically changing later this year with many adancements so unless it is absolutely necessaryy for a given reason other then 64bit and linux don't upgrade on that account alone....

 

[mechBgon]

Ooops, I think I was thinking of Ace's Hardware and not LinuxHardware: Ace's benchmarks

 

[sandorski]

Bring it on!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Get an A64 cause you need the gaming power now in 32bit apps, but don't buy it because of 64bit computing in a windows operation....

That's precisely how I feel as well, I bought for my gaming experience now, not for what it can offer me later. I'd be typing from a P4c system if gaming hadn't been my main upgrade concern

 

[klah]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
and Epic was planning on re-releasing UT2003 in a 64-bit version although the delay in WinXP 64-Bit Edition may have them rethinking it, unless it's something they can just release a patch for.

http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=44f9ceaea94614f7f5cfa01a3d63ecdc&threadid=320354

Q: So is this gonna just sense whether or not you have XP Pro 64-Bit and install the binaries it needs for that? Or do you have to run a seperate installer, or whatnot?

Mark Rein, VP Epic Games:
A:We have not decided for sure but I think what we'll do is have you install the normal 32-bit version and then run an update program, that comes on the CD, to update it to 64-bit. At the time we ship Windows XP 64-bit edition will most likely still be in beta so I think this is the safest way to handle it.

Far Cry was another game that had a 64-bit version running at the A64 launch in September. Both come out at the end of March so maybe we will see decent Win 64-bit drivers released at the same time as nv40/r420.

 

[AFB]

If I needed another mid to high range system, I would get one!!!!

 

[WackyDan]

Not worth the dough.....sorry. Save a bunch now and spend less later when you do get one.

Chances are you won't really be in a market for one until you are ready for your next system,,,,, that is if you buy another 32 today.

There is nothing compelling about the AMD 64 procs that would make me upgrade today.

 

[Mday]

There are two primary reasons I see in going 64bit. The first is more memory. 32bit has inherent limitations. if you do the math, you get 4 GB. this limit has been eliminated through half-assed and full-assed implementations. the second is precision. when you do scientific and engineering simulations and the like, you need precision. 32bit is fine, 64bit is better.

64bit does not lend itself to speed. when comparing equally designed 32bit and 64bit systems, 64bit systems will be slower due to the wider bus. of course there are things to be said about efficiency. there is nothing preventing use of 32bit and 64bit hybrid systems. this is one of the things MS is doing with win64 which is designed to run 32bit and 64bit programs. you do lose efficiency with a hybrid system.

with what we do as consumers widening in scope, the general purpose processor is getting huge. there are things to be said of instruction specific advancements such as mmx, sse, sse2, 3dnow, etc. i consider this independent of the 64bit advancement. as i said, 64bit is not about speed. it's about precision and capacity.

there are things that dont require 64bit. there are things that dont require 32 bit or 16 bit. yet we're on 32bit systems already. moving to the next step is significant today only because of how wide spread 32bit computing has become. the move to 32bit came before computers became so cheap.

 

[buleyb]

Originally posted by: Mday
There are two primary reasons I see in going 64bit. The first is more memory. 32bit has inherent limitations. if you do the math, you get 4 GB. this limit has been eliminated through half-assed and full-assed implementations. the second is precision. when you do scientific and engineering simulations and the like, you need precision. 32bit is fine, 64bit is better.

64bit does not lend itself to speed. when comparing equally designed 32bit and 64bit systems, 64bit systems will be slower due to the wider bus. of course there are things to be said about efficiency. there is nothing preventing use of 32bit and 64bit hybrid systems. this is one of the things MS is doing with win64 which is designed to run 32bit and 64bit programs. you do lose efficiency with a hybrid system.

with what we do as consumers widening in scope, the general purpose processor is getting huge. there are things to be said of instruction specific advancements such as mmx, sse, sse2, 3dnow, etc. i consider this independent of the 64bit advancement. as i said, 64bit is not about speed. it's about precision and capacity.

Well said. 64bits will be useful in some areas, but not some savorior of the chip market.

 

[arod]

By the timpe HL2 comes out everybody will want 64 bit as its supposed to be like 35% faster because it contains some 64bit optimizations.

 

[Regs]

A64 will be able to compute data with 16 registers instead of just 8 which all current days app's and CPUs calculate with. Registers store information in the CPU core in which the CPU then calculates. So 35% more is a pretty rough estimate. Theoretically, when A64 optimizations come out with mature and hardened 64-bit apps and drivers, the cpu should be able to process data twice as fast.

As of right now, even without 64-bit apps, the A64 does one hell of a job processing instructions. Out doing the 3200 barton by a great margin.The A64 is a power house full of surprises.

 

[dullard]

The 64-bit AMD chips are great chips. Great because they perform 32-bit functions quite fast. The chips have been out nearly a year and still I haven't seen anyone on this computer forum state that they really use the 64-bit part of their chips. I have not yet seen one person who said they have more than 4 GB of memory. I am probably the only person here really using scientific computing (warning large pdf file) and 32-bit performance is just fine for me. Etc. If the computer enthusiasts don't need it, then the general public certainly doesn't need it. When so many computers are still being sold with 128 MB or 256 MB of memory, these people don't care about the 4 GB limit. We have no programs that REQUIRE 64-bits. Until that day comes, it isn't yet time for 64-bit computing.

The chips are great since they are fast and not very expensive - not necessarilly since they have 64-bit capability. There is a clear benefit to the Hammer chips; it just doesn't happen to be the 64-bit part.

 

[menads]

Dullard,

have you personally interviewed all people on this board? Couse I am for sure one that can use more than 4GB ram - I am actually using 6GB now in a development 2 way Xeon Server (mind you this is a development machine I have at home not a production one!) with SQL server and unfortunately you can use only 3GB per process so the rest of the RAM stays only for cache but can not be used correctly by the SQL server.
Besides it is pretty much misconception that you need 4GB to get benefits from Win64.
May be you are forgetting that Win32 is limiting you process space to 2GB per process (unless you want to shell big bucks for Datacenter edition to be able to use /3 switch)?
That is one reason why people with 32bit programs can start seeing benefits even with 2.5GB ram - cause Win64 can give you full 2GB per process (or up to 4GB if you have the physical ram) and use the other 0.5GB for the kernel space.

Besides you says that nobody can benefit from 64bit int arithmetics - are you forgetting that encrypting is a popular application even for the end users that simply want to store their data in encrypted form?
May be you should check the speed increase of 64bit vs 32bit arithmetic on these encryption algorithms (page 36)?
Have a look here Amd 64bit benchmarks

And finally are you forgetting about the freelancer designers that has it as a given working with 1GB+ larger models ?

 

[Pistolero]

I don't see strong 64 bit windows support happening for a while, but who cares the A64 chips kick ass

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: menads
Dullard,

have you personally interviewed all people on this board? Couse I am for sure one that can use more than 4GB ram - I am actually using 6GB now in a development 2 way Xeon Server (mind you this is a development machine I have at home not a production one!) with SQL server and unfortunately you can use only 3GB per process so the rest of the RAM stays only for cache but can not be used correctly by the SQL server.
Besides it is pretty much misconception that you need 4GB to get benefits from Win64.
May be you are forgetting that Win32 is limiting you process space to 2GB per process (unless you want to shell big bucks for Datacenter edition to be able to use /3 switch)?
That is one reason why people with 32bit programs can start seeing benefits even with 2.5GB ram - cause Win64 can give you full 2GB per process (or up to 4GB if you have the physical ram) and use the other 0.5GB for the kernel space.

Besides you says that nobody can benefit from 64bit int arithmetics - are you forgetting that encrypting is a popular application even for the end users that simply want to store their data in encrypted form?
May be you should check the speed increase of 64bit vs 32bit arithmetic on these encryption algorithms (page 36)?
Have a look here Amd 64bit benchmarks

And finally are you forgetting about the freelancer designers that has it as a given working with 1GB+ larger models ?

1) No I haven't polled every single user. Like I said in my post, no one that I had seen has said they use more than 4 GB. You are now the first (of course it isn't a home computer and you didn't even need 64-bits to do it). From now on I'll say I've seen 1 person on this forum claim to use more than 4 GB.
2) The vast, vast majority of people actively using more than 2GB are using more than one process. Take me for example, all my scientific programs are all multi-threaded. Most serious programs that need that much memory are already breaking up the data to get around that problem.
3) Yes encrypting is used - but it is far from a widely used thing. Anyway's I'm not here to argue whether your grandparents encrypt all their data, I'm here to discuss performance. And from your link you save up to two full seconds! Wow. I'm not saying it isn't useful - I'm saying it really isn't NEEDED by the vast, vast majority of consumers. For those who DO need it, there are already other options (such as how you got around the 4 GB limit by switching to Xeon processors).

 

[NightCrawler]

The Athlon 64 3000+ is a lot of bang for your buck !!!!!!!