Will Civ 5 have a 64-bit client?

[2K Greg]

People have already explained this a few times in the thread, but I just want to confirm for everyone:

32-bit applications work just fine in 64-bit operating systems. Most of the programs you run in your 64-but applications are (probably) 32-bit. Civilization V works perfectly in 32-bit and we've done all of our testing and presentations and everything in 32-bit.

 

[ValugaTheLord]

People have already explained this a few times in the thread, but I just want to confirm for everyone:

32-bit applications work just fine in 64-bit operating systems. Most of the programs you run in your 64-but applications are (probably) 32-bit. Civilization V works perfectly in 32-bit and we've done all of our testing and presentations and everything in 32-bit.

Yea.. But 64bit uses more RAM.. and games like CiV and especially Civ 4 could use that extra RAM.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

Civilization V works perfectly in 32-bit and we've done all of our testing and presentations and everything in 32-bit.

Which sort of begs the question why the development system wasn't set up to build both versions in parallel right from the beginning. Now somebody has to go back and do it the hard way. That sounds like serious non-fun.

Obviously I don't know enough of the history or background of the process here, but it seems that some of the early management decisions were not exactly visionary -- not developing for 64 bit at the same time, not developing a Mac version in parallel ... let's get all of that right for Civ VI, okay ?

 

[CurseUppl]

If by the time Civ VI comes out and we haven't migrated fully over to 64 bit, then I've lost hope in humanity.

 

[Larsenex]

Well I am going ask the same question again. I have an excellent system and I have Win 7 Pro (64bit). I have 6 gigs of ram. I will ask the above posters question. Will I have my games saved if I port over FROM a 32 bit OS TO a 64 bit OS?

Greg could you even teensie weensie leak an ETA on when the 64 bit version might be released?

Thanks!

 

[2K Greg]

Well I am going ask the same question again. I have an excellent system and I have Win 7 Pro (64bit). I have 6 gigs of ram. I will ask the above posters question. Will I have my games saved if I port over FROM a 32 bit OS TO a 64 bit OS?

Greg could you even teensie weensie leak an ETA on when the 64 bit version might be released?

Thanks!

I don't understand your question. You're already running a 64-bit OS?

If you reinstall Windows you typically lose all of your files that you haven't backed up, so you would need to do that. Are you asking if save games created in the 64-bit client will be compatible with the 32-bit client? I expect they would be.

 

[ZimbuTheMonkey]

Which sort of begs the question why the development system wasn't set up to build both versions in parallel right from the beginning. Now somebody has to go back and do it the hard way. That sounds like serious non-fun.

Obviously I don't know enough of the history or background of the process here, but it seems that some of the early management decisions were not exactly visionary -- not developing for 64 bit at the same time, not developing a Mac version in parallel ... let's get all of that right for Civ VI, okay ?

Translation: "I don't really know what I am talking about, but let me make suggestions anyway."

You go from not knowing what 64 bit applications are and how they work straight to criticizing a veteran game development company for not producing a 64 bit client... hmm...

Why would they work on a 64 bit edition of the game simultaneously instead of focusing all of the team for the 32 bit edition? At least wait and play the game first, and then comment on whether or not a 64 bit edition is needed (for super huge maps or whatever).

 

[silentknight111]

Generally the "benefits" for video games runnning in 64-bit mode are minimal. It might be more in a data heavy game like civ V, but not necessarily.

When Crysis came out I remember there being comparisons that actually showed it ran worse in the 64-bit version. (although that might have been bad porting).

So, if the benefits are very minor, it makes more sense for them to focus on making the 32-bit version optimized to the highest degree than split their resources on two different versions.

 

[Crustacean Soup]

There are some patchers, which can flag the game executable to use more memory than the normal 2 GB limit on a x64 system. Here's one:

http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php

When you link a 32-bit executable you can flip a header to mark it as "large address aware", which tells (64-bit) Windows to go ahead and give it a full 4GB address space instead of limiting it to the 2GB that 32-bit programs usually get. You can do that after the fact too, like with one of those patches, but it won't necessarily work if the program is assuming a 2GB addressing space.

It would be nice if it came like this out of the box, or was patched in, at least until 64-bit support arrives.

 

[Larsenex]

Sorry about that let me Clarify.

I have a 64 bit OS now. I intend to purchase the game locally here in Ventura.

I know it will run fine but I would love to upgrade to a 64bit version of the game.

My two questions are...

Will my saved games in the 32 bit version work when I move over to 64 bit.

and.....

can you (Greg) give a teenie tiny expectation on when a 64bit version might be released?

Thanks again!

 

[Chaotic42]

Sorry, Greg. I didn't mean to stir up a hornet's nest.

If anyone is curious, here is Microsoft's little article about the difference in 32-bit and 64-bit Vista.

I haven't done any direct tests with games to see if any of them really benefit from their 64-bit clients (there aren't many out there that I know of), but I can tell you that the difference in the Photoshop clients is stunning.

 

[Auncien]

If by the time Civ VI comes out and we haven't migrated fully over to 64 bit, then I've lost hope in humanity.

I know right? 32bit is so 1995.

 

[Seven05]

Generally the "benefits" for video games runnning in 64-bit mode are minimal. It might be more in a data heavy game like civ V, but not necessarily.

There are far more benefits than simply more memory. In a 64-bit environment a 64-bit application can process almost double the amount of commands compared to a 32-bit application in a 32-bit environment when all other aspects (e.g. hardware) are identical.

The main reason most developers don't bother with 64-bit is that games we're getting now have been in development for some time. This means they started when most people were busy complaining about Vista and stuck on 32-bit XP. It also means they are likely still using a lot of 32-bit libraries in their application so while converting the executable alone would be reasonable, converting everything would likely cause some issues with their development schedules.

Sorry, Greg. I didn't mean to stir up a hornet's nest.

If anyone is curious, here is Microsoft's little article about the difference in 32-bit and 64-bit Vista.

I haven't done any direct tests with games to see if any of them really benefit from their 64-bit clients (there aren't many out there that I know of), but I can tell you that the difference in the Photoshop clients is stunning.

That's a bad example of a comparison between 32-bit and 64-bit as it only addresses what Vista offers and is written for the average consumer. If you want to learn more about 64-bit environments look to the Linux geeks but be prepared for a lot of technical language.

For a good example in a game get your hands on a copy of Far Cry (not Far Cry 2) it's old so it'll be dirt cheap and you can see for yourself the difference it makes. Basically on otherwise identical systems you can run the 64-bit version with substantially improved visuals and no performance degradation.

 

[rastak]

I know right? 32bit is so 1995.

I started with 8 bit operating systems.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

Why would they work on a 64 bit edition of the game simultaneously instead of focusing all of the team for the 32 bit edition?

Because if you set up your production system so that both versions are produced at the same time from the get-go, it's less work on the long run. Or as Microsoft itself recommends:

Start developing compliant code now. Developers can start writing (64-bit) compliant code by using the latest Windows header files and the new data types with no adverse effects on 32-bit product development.

And that's vanilla development for us little people.

Again, like producing a Mac version at the very same time as the windows version, you'd have to set up the tools at the very beginning, which is why I called this a bad management decision (admitting that I don't know the internal discussion of pros and cons at Firaxis). This is what Valve does -- heck, they have even released the Mac graphics code as part of Steamworks, which Civ V is using; Steamworks for Windows also has 64-bit parts installed now.

But this way, in both cases (we assume) they have to take the 32 bit Windows-only code, go back, figure out what needs to be changed for 64 bit code, and figure out what needs to be changed for OS X. it takes longer, people in the Civ Fanatics forums cry and moan, and you could be doing something fun and productive instead like adding the missing multiplayer functions. Or designing DLC. Or just sit around and tell yourself what a cool game you just released.

If there was a different reason why we have to wait for 64-bit and OS X versions, I'd be a happy be corrected by a 2K or Firaxis spox. Until then, the best assumption seems to be that they thought at the beginning this wouldn't be necessary.

To be fair, and I'd like to stress this, in, what, 2007, this would have been a defensible decision: Windows XP 64-bit had little market share, and Vista 64-bit wasn't attractive to the average user -- driver problems galore and it seems only the Ultimate version included the 64-bit DVD in the box with the 32-bit version anyway. We've discussed the development of Mac sales in other threads. It would have taken a bit of vision to say that Windows 7 64-bit would come out and be a hit (now used by 31 percent of Windows gamers, BTW, based on the Steam Hardware Survey of August 2010), and that Mac sales would go through the roof.

They didn't have that vision, and so it's going to be Windows only, 32-bit only for a while. Too bad for everybody, them included.

 

[Pyrion]

I'm amazed how misinformed some people are with this 32-bit vs 64-bit issue. For what it's worth, here's my take on it:

Civ5 as it is right now is a large-address aware 32-bit application (I checked it with LaaTiDo), which is a good start. For those of us using 64-bit, that means it can address the full 32-bit virtual memory space of 4GB, regardless of the "practical" limits placed on 32-bit applications in 32-bit Windows. Still though, once it hits 4GB, it's done, even if you have plenty more physical memory to use up, never mind your total commit charge size.

Now to address the misinformation (I'm reading posts in reverse order here):

1. 64-bit as pertains to word size doesn't mean the processor can process "double" the amount of 32-bit applications. That's nonsense. 64-bit as pertains to word size (as far as XP/Vista/7 x64 is concerned) means the processor can handle 64-bit instructions as well as 32-bit instructions.

2. It's true that 64-bit uses more RAM, in both senses of that phrase. 64-bit as pertains to app memory usage, compared to 32-bit equivalents, means that a 64-bit application will use about twice as much memory as its 32-bit equivalent. This does not necessarily equate to a reduction in performance compared to 32-bit, so long as you have ample physical RAM to make up the difference. What I mean by this is, say, you have a 32-bit memory intensive application on a 64-bit OS on a system with only 2GB of RAM. Compare it to a 32-bit system with 2GB of RAM, and you'll find most 32-bit memory-intensive applications run faster on the 32-bit system, and on the 64-bit system, they run as fast as the 32-bit system would with only 1GB of RAM (I've done this). Up it to 4GB and it's back to running as fast as the 32-bit system would with 2GB. The point at which this becomes irrelevant is >6GB on 64-bit, as you generally can't get a 32-bit system to allow a large address-aware application to use more than 3GB, and normally you can't push them beyond 2GB anyways (you have to really know what you're doing to get around that insurmountable waist height fence).

3. As for 64-bit having access to more RAM, as far as x64 Vista/7 are concerned, the practical limit for 64-bit applications is not the theoretical maximum of 16 exabytes - Windows Vista x64 is limited by the OS to 128GB of RAM, and Windows 7 x64 is limited to 192GB, although as far as virtual memory is concerned, assuming the 64-bit application is flagged as large address-aware (yes, this still has to be done, it's not "assumed" for 64-bit applications), individual applications can use up to 8TB of virtual memory. Things like "memory leaks" become so much less of a problem until you start chewing through the hard drive for increasing the size of your pagefile (to accommodate a growing commit charge). I've tested this too, it's not hard, run a LZMA2 compression job in 7zip x64 using a dictionary size of 1GB and watch the system grind to a halt even if you have 12GB of RAM, when such a compression job actually needs closer to 48GB of RAM.

4. "Memory usage" in general is not something you can accurately gauge with Task Manager alone. That's why I find Process Explorer significantly more useful.

Yeah, I'd like to see a 64-bit binary, but I'd rather they prioritize fixing the bugs over the possibility of introducing a whole new set of them by porting to 64-bit.

 

[themoffster]

We are looking in to releasing a 64-bit version of the executable, but it won't be available at release.

Sorry to bump an old thread, but is the 64bit version out now? If so, is it a mac compatible version?

 

[Furiey]

Sorry to bump an old thread, but is the 64bit version out now? If so, is it a mac compatible version?

No it's out yet, and there's been no mention of it that I can remember since Civ 5 was released. It would be nice if the surprise mentioned for the next patch was a 64 bit version but I very much doubt it.

 

[civ_king]

Sorry to bump an old thread, but is the 64bit version out now? If so, is it a mac compatible version?

The whole Mac port is in 64 bit like pretty much everything requiring Snow Leopard (unfortunately this limits us to 16 terabytes of RAM)

 

[Revoran]

The whole Mac port is in 64 bit like pretty much everything requiring Snow Leopard (unfortunately this limits us to 16 terabytes of RAM)

Only 16 Terabytes? Whatever shall we do