88 replies to this topic

[ThisMachineKillsFascists]

Not a techie. I barely know what it means to switch from 32-64. So what can we expect from it performance wise?

[Angel of Annihilation]

Well for me it means my 16 GB of RAM actually finally won't be going to waste.

Honestly what it should mean is better performance if you have a good machine running lots of RAM and a 64-bit OS.

[cSand]

Should allow the client to use more RAM. For example, if you have 8GB of Ram in your computer, 32 bit Windows (any version) can only use up to 4GB so your other 4GB is useless. 64bit Windows can manage much more (Win 8.1 pro x64 can manage up to 512 GB RAM... Server 2012 STD can use... 2 TB of RAM )

I don't think you can expect a big performance boost or anything like that, in fact on a lower end machine it may even degrade performance a bit. But if you got a good computer with lots of RAM, you may as well go 64bit.

I doubt though that MWO by itself would even use 4GB. But hey, if you got all this RAM you may as well give MWO the option of using it

Edited by cSand, 18 December 2014 - 06:01 PM.

[ThisMachineKillsFascists]

And what about using the 4 cores in the cpu more efficent now? I heard that this comes along with 64 bit too

[Gyrok]

ThisMachineKillsFascists, on 18 December 2014 - 06:00 PM, said:

And what about using the 4 cores in the cpu more efficent now? I heard that this comes along with 64 bit too

It does to a lesser degree because you have access to 64 bit code. I know that may sound greek to you, but trust me...there is a difference between 32 bit and 64 bit code, and 64 bit code tends to be more efficient per string. Not by a huge margin in stuff like this, mind you, but enough you may pick up a few FPS out of the deal...

[Wintersdark]

Basically, if you can run 64 bit, you'll probably reap some performance benefits. How much depends entirely on your system however:

If you don't have more than 4gb of ram, any gains will be very minor.
If you're GPU bottlenecked (that is, it's a terrible GPU that's limiting fps) then it won't help much.
If you're CPU bottlenecked (more common in MWO than most games) it'll help some.

Biggest performance gains will come from 8gb+ systems (more than 8 is t going to matter much, depending on what else your system is doing while you game) with an adequate or better GPU.

It should help more in CW, which is substantially more resource intensive, but you should see some performance gains across the board.

[ShadowWolf Kell]

ThisMachineKillsFascists, on 18 December 2014 - 06:00 PM, said:

And what about using the 4 cores in the cpu more efficent now? I heard that this comes along with 64 bit too

Generally speaking, something has to be optimized specifically to use multiple cores. It's not inherent in a 64 bit EXE.

[Captain Stiffy]

A 64 bit PC can hold more in a s

[Monkey Lover]

I never get close to using 4gb of ram with this game. I dont think you will see anything but bugs

[AEgg]

Monkey Lover, on 18 December 2014 - 07:23 PM, said:

I never get close to using 4gb of ram with this game. I dont think you will see anything but bugs

It is kind of strange that the game can easily use 4GB of video memory, but doesn't use nearly as much physical memory. Just a few years ago (Edit: I mean in other games) it more more like five to one in the reverse, using way more physical memory.

But yeah, I don't expect any significant advantage to a 64 bit client. Not that it isn't useful progress. Every little bit helps, and there are probably minor stability gains from running a 64 bit client under a 64 bit OS.

Edited by AEgg, 18 December 2014 - 07:27 PM.

[Bill Lumbar]

Monkey Lover, on 18 December 2014 - 07:23 PM, said:

I never get close to using 4gb of ram with this game. I dont think you will see anything but bugs

That is the points of going 64-bit vs. 32 bit.... rigs that are made to take advantage of 64-bit should see some nice bumps in performance in game.

[Koda Shy]

soooooooooo... if I have i7-2600k cpu @ 3.40GHz - 16 GB RAM - 64 bit OS. with a 560 GTX - I should try this out?

[Bill Lumbar]

Koda Shy, on 18 December 2014 - 07:31 PM, said:

soooooooooo... if I have i7-2600k cpu @ 3.40GHz - 16 GB RAM - 64 bit OS. with a 560 GTX - I should try this out?

Yeah I would.....but your 560 might be a weak link in your rig......

Not to knock it, I have its intended rival in another of my gaming rigs, the 6870 2gb, and it does fair in this game, very playable. I believe yours only has 1gb? If so it is kinda light on the ram to take advantage, but you never know.

Edited by Bill Lumbar, 18 December 2014 - 07:48 PM.

[Monkey Lover]

AEgg, on 18 December 2014 - 07:27 PM, said:

It is kind of strange that the game can easily use 4GB of video memory, but doesn't use nearly as much physical memory. Just a few years ago (Edit: I mean in other games) it more more like five to one in the reverse, using way more physical memory.

But yeah, I don't expect any significant advantage to a 64 bit client. Not that it isn't useful progress. Every little bit helps, and there are probably minor stability gains from running a 64 bit client under a 64 bit OS.

I wonder how much of this game engine is from 2009 hehe.

Bill Lumbar, on 18 December 2014 - 07:30 PM, said:

That is the points of going 64-bit vs. 32 bit.... rigs that are made to take advantage of 64-bit should see some nice bumps in performance in game.

Not really you will only see the bump if the game is programmed to use more ram. It would require them to say preload maps into memory. For what i can tell they don't do this or i would be pushing close to 4gb when playing.

[Hawk819]

for me, it'll mean the same as everyone else: no wasting memory. Hopefully this will help with all the crashes as of late and memory allocation errors as well.

[Axeface]

Im not a 'techie' either, but the game doesnt use anywhere near 3gb of memory anyway - even on maximum graphics. I dont think we will see any difference honestly. GPU memory never goes over about 1.5gb and the process usually sits around 700-900mb of ram.

Rather than messing around with this 64 bit they should be sorting out the particles lag. Set max graphics, heat up your mech and walk backwards.... anyone's machine will tank.

Edited by Axeface, 18 December 2014 - 07:41 PM.

[Monkey Lover]

Koda Shy, on 18 December 2014 - 07:31 PM, said:

soooooooooo... if I have i7-2600k cpu @ 3.40GHz - 16 GB RAM - 64 bit OS. with a 560 GTX - I should try this out?

Might as well play around with it. Just remember its not going to increase your fps. Where you might see something is from load times.

Hawk819, on 18 December 2014 - 07:37 PM, said:

for me, it'll mean the same as everyone else: no wasting memory. Hopefully this will help with all the crashes as of late and memory allocation errors as well.

Most of these are video card errors not system memory errors.

[MrMadguy]

Pros:
1) No 2GB address space limit. No matter how much RAM your system has - each 32-bit application can have 4GB address space only, half of which is reserved for system use. 64-bit application can consume all of your available memory. So if you have more then 4GB RAM, 64-bit client will have access to more memory, then 32-bit.
2) Up to 10% performance boost. 64-bit code is faster itself, due to 64-bit architecture being more effective on 64-bit processor. And 32-bit apps are working through 32->64 wrapper at 64-bit OS, which causes some performance loss vs 32-bit OS, running on the same system.

Cons:
1) 64-bit data types are 2x wider, which may cause up to 2x increase of memory consumption. I.e. if MWO consumes up to 2GB of RAM now, there is possibility that it will consume 3-4GB with 64-bit client. That's why 64-bit OSs have 2x greater system RAM requirements.
2) New client - new bugs in addition to elder ones.

Conclusion: People with more then 4GB RAM will have insufficient memory problem solved and some performance boost.

Edited by MrMadguy, 18 December 2014 - 07:50 PM.

[Piney II]

8GB RAM here..............and I'll take any performance boost I can get.

[Scratx]

Hmm. Okay, I'm going to get technical. THIS IS GOING TO GET REAL!!!!

(if I make a mistake, forgive me)

First of all, a reference point. Every "position" in memory has an address, like every house. This address tells the computer where to look for what you want, just like you'd use an address to find where you need to drive to.

The main difference between 32 bit and 64 bit is that, in 32 bits, all addresses are a value between zero and (2^32)-1, which is exactly 4,294,967,295. In 64 bits, it's a value between zero and (2^64)-1, which is, if I didn't break windows calculator, 18,446,744,073,709,551,616.

This is why it's said that 32bit computers can't benefit from having more than 4GB. Though as it turns out, due to shenanigans in Windows, you can only use 2GB in an application, or 3GB with tricks that are not always safe (read: WILL crash your computer sometimes). Windows itself CAN use the 4GB and even more than that, but that is not relevant here.

In MWO's case, what this means is that instead of being stuck to around 2-3GB tops in memory use, by going 64 bits you can effectively use all the memory you have. This means you can load data to memory and not throw it away just because it's not being used right now, for example. Or use more memory hungry storage techniques which end up being faster to actually use due to details of how it's used.

There are other benefits, though. By going 64 bit, you're also ditching the 32 bit instruction set and going into the 64 bit instruction set on the CPU. While I haven't studied it in-depth, I'm told the 64bit instruction set is a LOT better in many ways, having access to more registers, removing cruft and other nice things that make common operations a lot faster. The more registers thing in particular is very important because operations that involve just registers are ultra-fast, but if you need to handle move values than you have registers for, you have to store stuff in memory, which automatically hits your speed. Accessing cache is several times slower than a register... and you really don't want to know how much slower main memory is.

There are drawbacks as well, though... going 64 bit does have one big penalty. By increasing data size in memory, it also reduces the efficiency of your CPU cache (less actual data can fit in at the same time), which means you'll be paying the cache miss penalties more frequently. Cache miss meaning that the data you want isn't in the (relatively fast) cache, so it has to go fetch it from the OMGSLOW main memory. This is in fact one of the main reasons why going 64 bit isn't a "no brainer" decision to any software engineer. What you gain with the instruction set can be lost with cache misses, depending on your algorithms. (other major reasons include "64 bit executables won't run on part of our potential player base", "we have to support TWO different executables, that's a lot of additional work")

I'm happy to see MWO supporting a 64 bit client because, honestly, 64 bit is the future and it removes a lot of limitations that otherwise need technical work-arounds to do. Wish more games did it, but when it comes down to it, if your game doesn't really need 64 bit, going 64 bit isn't likely to give you much of anything... except a smaller customer base.

One day we'll all have 64 bit OS's. Not much longer, now, I think...