rudnicke
Premium
join:2004-10-23
Rantoul, IL | Is XP-64bit or XP-32bit better for gaming?
I'm in the process of building a gaming system. Games are the only thing for which this system will be used. Is it better to run WinXP 64bit or 32bit?
Thanks. |
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knightry
I'm Not Fat, I'm Festively Plump
join:2002-05-06
Oviedo, FL
| At this point, save yourself driver headaches and stick w/ 32-bit Windows. I don't think there are really any games out as of now that really take advantage of the performance boost you could theoretically get from running a game in a 64-bit OS. Perhaps in a year or so it might be worth it, but, IMO, right now, it'll be easier to just use 32-bit.
I also say this because I tried 64-bit Windows a while back and ended up pulling my hair out because of lack of driver support. I couldn't find any drivers for my Audigy 2, and although ATI had drivers for my card, they refused to install. In addition, my chipset drivers, although installed, didn't seem to let me use USB half the time. But this was about 6 months back, so I'm sure it's gotten a bit better since then, but still...
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It takes two to lie, Marge. One to lie, and one to listen. |
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BA
The Old Man's Gonna Roll the Hard Six
Premium,MVM
join:2001-05-24
Vancouver, BC
clubs: 
| reply to rudnicke
»www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content···4&page=8
The review was done in late May, so things may have changed, but probably not much.
The Vista beta though shows some minor improvements with AMD64 systems. |
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chevyss85
join:2005-07-13
Snyder, TX
| I have to agree, I just built a new system and I used Win 64-Bit and I have run into that some games will not even load. I am sure that there will be an advantage one day but as for now not really. More of a dissadvantage. I have also read were all 32 apps will run in 64 bit, it would just use 32 bits of the 64. Not true, Realplayer, AVG, and many others will not load on a 64 bit machine. So the choice is yours, just though I would throw my 2 cents in.
Happy building.:)
PS - on the games that run in true 64 bit, FarCry is about the only one I have seen but I am a little behind on games. FarCry is awesome in 64 bit though. |
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B777300
join:2002-01-02
2 edits | reply to rudnicke
Stay with 32bit for now..
Anyway at the moment most 64bit compilers don't take full advantage of the extra 8 general purpose registers(x86 has 8,x86-64 has 16) and this an important reason why 64bit doesn't give us a signifact performance increase over 32bit.
And in fact its not easy to take advantage of those extra 8 registers, cause compilers after all are just machines\programs, they don't know what are you trying to do.. they're just translating your instructions into a working binary code.
Obviously, complied code isn't going to be as fast as assembly code anytime soon, but compilers will improve over the time and will utilize those 8 extra instructions x86-64 has to offer better. |
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BonezX
Basement Dweller
Premium
join:2004-04-13
Canada
| reply to chevyss85
said by chevyss85  :PS - on the games that run in true 64 bit, FarCry is about the only one I have seen but I am a little behind on games. FarCry is awesome in 64 bit though. farcry, soldner, jointops are the ones i can pull off the top of my head. |
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vliktor
join:2005-07-27
Philippines
 ·SmartBro
| reply to chevyss85
Yeah, a 1 GB patch for 64 bit FC is pretty awesome... 
Intel EM64T will actually run FarCry 64 bit, despite having the game marketed as "AMD 64" optimized and all... just a thought. But I still think AMD rocks. |
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BonezX
Basement Dweller
Premium
join:2004-04-13
Canada | intels chip is basically a duplicate of the AMD chip in the major sense of it. |
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salan
join:2004-10-04
Canada | reply to rudnicke
hardware- 64bit
software- 32bit
when u buy hardware for 64bit, it will save you costs when you upgrade ur OS to 64bit in the coming future |
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Somnambul33t
L33t.
Premium
join:2002-12-05
Mullica Hill, NJ
clubs:
 ·Comcast
| reply to rudnicke
im running x64 and while my overall experience is a tad bit crippled with some apps not liking it, i havent seen much of a difference in performance. only a few games even support 64bit extensions and those that do have shown little to no performance increases.
i'd stick with 32bit until games not only "support" 64bit CPUs but actually BENEFIT from them. i have not tried farcry with the 64bit patch but EVERY benchmark ive seen actually showed it performing worse than 32bit FC in 32bit XP, only with slihtly better graphics or something.
tbh, most of the bugs/incopatibilities ive had with x64 arent due to the 64bit instructions but are b/c of its base in Windows Server 2003
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Somnambulator - t3h 5133pw41k3r
The Common Grounds |
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