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64-bit Computing in Theory and Practice

Fresh Investigation of 64-bit Code Benefit

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 10/27/2005 | 11:54 PM ]

Both Advanced Micro Devices and Intel Corp. have been shipping desktop microprocessors with 64-bit capability for some time now. Earlier investigations showed that most of computer games, at best, did not get any performance increase while running under 64-bit operating system (OS). Moreover, some reviewers found out that sometimes utilizing a 64-bit environment resulted in performance degradation.

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Now, with Windows XP x64 Edition OS and several revisions of 64-bit graphics drivers released, The Tech Report investigates performance of both AMD Athlon 64 and Intel Pentium 4 powered systems in 64-bit environment.

“For PC enthusiasts and gamers, moving to 64 bits may not present as many obvious advantages in the near term, but there’s also very little apparent penalty in going with Windows XP Pro x64, even if it’s only to run 32-bit applications. All of our gaming tests showed very little performance delta between WinXP and WinXP x64, and the same was generally true for other apps. Just make sure that 64-bit device drivers are available for your hardware. One question that our testing hasn’t answered is whether or not 64-bit versions of popular games will really bring notable performance gains. Judging by our experience with the Riddick game, it’s hard to be terribly optimistic on this front. 64-bit games do hold promise down the road, when really large textures and very complex worlds eat up more than 4GB of total RAM, but that day is still a long way off,” writes The Tech Report.

“As for the issue of whether the Athlon 64 or the Pentium 4 stands to gain more from 64-bit apps, well, I think the jury is still out. The applications we’ve tested have been all over the map on that question, and I’d hate to venture a guess. The best news, though, is that the typical scenario seems to involve solid performance increases on both architectures with 64-bit programs, if there is any performance increase at all. That makes sense, because both microarchitectures have dedicated transistors to the x86-64 ISA’s additional register space, and those new registers are the key to better performance,” concludes the author.