64-bit confirmed

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From the Podcast:

Dennis Shirk: And we think people, once they see the game in action – we had a little bit of this when we showed the game at PAX – is that people are generally unbelieving that that's possibly a Civilization game because it just looks amazing. The graphics team with Dan Baker, and Josh Barczak, John Kloetzli – they just went all out with driving everything that they could into this game while still keeping it as working as possible on older machines which is what I think is the most surprising. We've got a few versions of the game. For instance we have something for DX9 and DX11, they're working on deploying the 64-bit version so we're looking at it scaling extremely well whether you're on bleeding edge or whether you're on something older.

I love you Firaxis :mischief:
 
Ok, so what does this mean? I don't have the computer smarts. So what would the difference be between 32 and 64 bit versions? My laptop is running 64 bit, so what would I have using a 64 bit version over a 32 bit version?
 
Wait, does this mean it won't work on my 32 bit laptop and only my 64 bit desktop?
 
I am pretty sure it means 32 bit and 64 bit versions. It would be very bad to release 64 bit version only. If they want it to run with older systems (as they mentioned), there has to be a 32 bit version.

What gets me is: They are deploying a FEW versions of the game itself, but can't deploy a Non-Steam version? Blows that argument out of the water.
 
Ok, so what does this mean? I don't have the computer smarts. So what would the difference be between 32 and 64 bit versions? My laptop is running 64 bit, so what would I have using a 64 bit version over a 32 bit version?

The main difference is you can use more RAM (random access memory) if you have the 64 bit version. I think 32 bit limits you to 3 gigs, while 64 bit lets you take so much that you wont have to worry about the limit until years into the future.

Wait, does this mean it won't work on my 32 bit laptop and only my 64 bit desktop?

No, it means theres versions for 32 bit and 64 bit.
 
I am pretty sure it means 32 bit and 64 bit versions. It would be very bad to release 64 bit version only. If they want it to run with older systems (as they mentioned), there has to be a 32 bit version.

What gets me is: They are deploying a FEW versions of the game itself, but can't deploy a Non-Steam version? Blows that argument out of the water.

Of course they can deploy a version without Steam. Except for this here legal contract. ;)
 
I am pretty sure it means 32 bit and 64 bit versions. It would be very bad to release 64 bit version only. If they want it to run with older systems (as they mentioned), there has to be a 32 bit version.

What gets me is: They are deploying a FEW versions of the game itself, but can't deploy a Non-Steam version? Blows that argument out of the water.

aure except for a legal contract and a high probability of junky features (and six months)
 
I am pretty sure it means 32 bit and 64 bit versions. It would be very bad to release 64 bit version only. If they want it to run with older systems (as they mentioned), there has to be a 32 bit version.

What gets me is: They are deploying a FEW versions of the game itself, but can't deploy a Non-Steam version? Blows that argument out of the water.

Steam, the wave of the future. No need to apply... (it's mandatory :lol:)

Maybe in a couple hundred years, when Steam goes under (or valve, or what have you), they'll release a patch to make it non steamy? :goodjob:


on topic: versions for every flavor 32bit, 64bit, DX9 thru 11 ... so, you can play in a piss poor computer or in the shiny new "intel many cores"
 
The main difference is you can use more RAM (random access memory) if you have the 64 bit version. I think 32 bit limits you to 3 gigs, while 64 bit lets you take so much that you wont have to worry about the limit until years into the future.

Its actually a little complicated, but this is basically true; the main difference is the amount of addressable RAM. (There's also the downside about doubling your pointer size and the subsequent cache issues, but google Knuth's remarks about that)

32 bit systems can address 2^32 bytes of ram. This is 4 gigs. However, this address space applies to the entire system, not just system RAM. So this address space is shared by expansion cards, various RAM and ROM on the motherboard, addressable bits on peripherals, etc. So while the system can address 4 gigs worth, you really only have 3 or 3.5 (generally!) available for system RAM.

64 bit systems can address 2^64 bytes of RAM. This is a 20 digit number, and 10 orders of magnitude larger than the 32 bit systems. As best I can tell, modern RAM chips max out at 4 gigs, so 4 gigs * 6 DIMMS = 24 gigs of RAM, which is massively far from the limit.

tl;dr; 32 bit systems address 4 gigs but get less in practice, 64 bit systems get a whole lot more.
 
Its actually a little complicated, but this is basically true; the main difference is the amount of addressable RAM. (There's also the downside about doubling your pointer size and the subsequent cache issues, but google Knuth's remarks about that)

32 bit systems can address 2^32 bytes of ram. This is 4 gigs. However, this address space applies to the entire system, not just system RAM. So this address space is shared by expansion cards, various RAM and ROM on the motherboard, addressable bits on peripherals, etc. So while the system can address 4 gigs worth, you really only have 3 or 3.5 (generally!) available for system RAM.

64 bit systems can address 2^64 bytes of RAM. This is a 20 digit number, and 10 orders of magnitude larger than the 32 bit systems. As best I can tell, modern RAM chips max out at 4 gigs, so 4 gigs * 6 DIMMS = 24 gigs of RAM, which is massively far from the limit.

tl;dr; 32 bit systems address 4 gigs but get less in practice, 64 bit systems get a whole lot more.
Thank you. That's the best explanation I've seen. :goodjob:

A positive example: My system is 32bit, it has 4 gigs of RAM installed, yet process explorer reveals there is total ~3.25GB RAM. Or about 3.4 million KB.
 
The main difference is you can use more RAM (random access memory) if you have the 64 bit version.

Not just that but a 64 bit system will run faster overall than one that's only 32. So everything in the game will run faster.

I think 32 bit limits you to 3 gigs, while 64 bit lets you take so much that you wont have to worry about the limit until years into the future.

By default, a 32 bit program will only use up to 2 gig. But there is a way to squeeze an extra gig for it. It requires that you make a change to your OS boot sequence though.
 
Bit more than years methinks, 64 bit lets you theoretically address 18446744073 gigs of ram!

Except that at the moment, the OS to run your system is capped well below that figure. IIRC, Microsoft has set a limit of something like 195 gig or so. I'm not sure about Mac.
 
Not just that but a 64 bit system will run faster overall than one that's only 32. So everything in the game will run faster.

Eh, no. 64-bit just gives you more precision, but does not calculate faster. You could argue that the extra amount of RAM available will increase the speed as it can load more into the memory instead of waiting for I/O so much, but you'd have to have 6 or 8 GB of RAM for this to be a noticeable difference.

Sure 64-bit is great for calculating floating point numbers, but it's still the same for calculating integers (well, it can calculate much higher integers natively, but that's another story). If there really was a significant speed difference, people would be adopting 64-bit a lot faster than they are. And in addition, if that was the case, why all the focus on more cores and pipelines? Why not just up the bits?! Because they are not related to speed, but precision... and accessible system memory. And a few other things.

Except that at the moment, the OS to run your system is capped well below that figure. IIRC, Microsoft has set a limit of something like 195 gig or so. I'm not sure about Mac.

Unix system rarely has a cap on these things. For instance, Windows has a cap of 64 CPUs it can use at once, while Linux, by default has its cap at 1024 CPUs, but you can increase this amount by fiddling with the kernel.

In addition to that, you probably don't wanna use Windows or Mac OS X on a supercomputer.
 
Not just that but a 64 bit system will run faster overall than one that's only 32. So everything in the game will run faster.



By default, a 32 bit program will only use up to 2 gig. But there is a way to squeeze an extra gig for it. It requires that you make a change to your OS boot sequence though.
The program also has to be flagged for that to work
Bit more than years methinks, 64 bit lets you theoretically address 18446744073 gigs of ram!
My dad remember the days of making a custom bootloader to get those few extra kilobytes (IIRC MS-DOS had a 640kb cap)
Except that at the moment, the OS to run your system is capped well below that figure. IIRC, Microsoft has set a limit of something like 195 gig or so. I'm not sure about Mac.
OSX doesn't have one IIRC the Mac Pro MoBo supports up to 64GB RAM (though 8x8GB RAM sticks are "expensive")
Eh, no. 64-bit just gives you more precision, but does not calculate faster. You could argue that the extra amount of RAM available will increase the speed as it can load more into the memory instead of waiting for I/O so much, but you'd have to have 6 or 8 GB of RAM for this to be a noticeable difference.

Sure 64-bit is great for calculating floating point numbers, but it's still the same for calculating integers (well, it can calculate much higher integers natively, but that's another story). If there really was a significant speed difference, people would be adopting 64-bit a lot faster than they are. And in addition, if that was the case, why all the focus on more cores and pipelines? Why not just up the bits?! Because they are not related to speed, but precision... and accessible system memory. And a few other things.



Unix system rarely has a cap on these things. For instance, Windows has a cap of 64 CPUs it can use at once, while Linux, by default has its cap at 1024 CPUs, but you can increase this amount by fiddling with the kernel.

In addition to that, you probably don't wanna use Windows or Mac OS X on a supercomputer.
People did make a supercomputer out of Macs, but that was back in the PowerPC days, but using Windows on a supercomputer is contradictory
 
My dad remember the days of making a custom bootloader to get those few extra kilobytes (IIRC MS-DOS had a 640kb cap)

640k ought to be enough for everyone!

People did make a supercomputer out of Macs, but that was back in the PowerPC days, but using Windows on a supercomputer is contradictory

Was that Macs? I know there was someone who made a supercomputer out of PowerPC CPUs, because PowerPCs, while slower than their x86-rivals, consume far less energy than x86s. So they could add far more CPUs to their computer and still use the same amount of energy as a rival x86 computer, but be much faster.

But I am not sure that was Macs, maybe I am thinking of something else.
 
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