Multi-core/64-bit support

[Seven05]

A little better reading comprehension please.

Seriously?

Here's a recap for you, since you seem to have forgotten.

The initial remark: (please pay close attention the the use of the word performance and lack of reference to frames per second)

The CPU has very little performance impact on games nowadays. The real bottleneck is (and has been for years) the video card.

Interesting...(especially since we basically said the same thing)

That's still dependant on game. Your statement is pretty much a regurgitation of what all the benchmark sites say, but if you will notice, they mainly test with real-time games where a lot of graphics have to be recalculated on the go, and there are a lot more effects on the screen. In a TBS such as civ, the CPU and RAM capacity are still quite important.

It gets better...

Actually he's right to quite a high degree. Its pretty widely known that for the majority of games released in the last 4-5 years, you can get by with even the earliest C2D. There are exceptions to that, like SupCom, Crysis and some other games, but in general, the graphics card is whats holding back your fps.

I think I'll just leave it at that.

 

[DancingWind]

About 64 bits on older cpus and such.
Yes in C++ You could use 64 bit lenth integers (actuall I think now you can use 128bit for some things in new processors) and floats but what compiler use and how CPU use them is completely different things .. (I think SSE instructions could use 64 bits) cpu in its low level op code actually splited the number in 2 parts and then shoved one part after the other through the pipeline. Its slow, its complex and it introduces rounding errors. Now if u can munch down directly all 64bits data in one shove then its much more efficient.

As for 48bits instead of 64 actually I think intel gets by with 36bits. but make no mistake these are physical wiring channel width in the processor connecting with the mainboard - you cant actually connect 16TB in a mother board using 4/8gb ram modules modules how many layers in mobo would you need far all the dimm socket traces? x64 CPU processes full 64 instructions and data chunks but for actual address commands outside itself it uses 36/48 bit length.
If I said something wrong by all means please correct me

For 64 bit support in civ 5 .. well if all of firaxis code is inside work then 64 bit edition shouldnt be a big problem but if they are using but if they are using outside code (graphics engine, AI, physics, network, sound etc.) modules then they could have a problem (for example one of the reasons Elemetal doesn't have advertised 64 bit support because intel only this spring or so provided its first Havocs physics 64bit library) and .. does steam has 64 bit framework ready?

I for myself as a humble q6600 owner am looking for multicore support AND utilization the most :0 it was such a drag in Civ4 RoM halfway trough a large map game to be sitting far qa minute or so and whatshing how my quad core furiously laboring at 25% 1 core was very busy while the rest were wasting away ... so annoying
Well if they go supcom route and only split the program blocks apart for multicore. With 2 elephants in the room in the form of graphics and game simulation (game mechanics + physics + ai) with a 15 or so mice, only one of them 'sound' being a bit fatter. 3 Cores were actually were as far as could go under such a system but it was still better then nothing.
If they got some parrelization from the game mechanics themselves then future really looks bright.
But on the other hand I sow same gameplay footage ... even on so called high end pcs (nothing more specific Im afraid) turns were far from instant add huge maps + mods and i could see Civ4 performance again.

 

[bhavv]

 

[Necro-]

i kinda assume it is, i mean otherwise whats the point of recommending a quadcore computer over a dualcore?

 

[J-man]

I've something like that:

On-topic: I don't pretend to understand all the intricacies of 64 bit and SSE's and what not.
All I want to know is when firaxis releases the 64 bit patch am I going to notice any difference with my Q6600, 4 gig ram and 64 bit OS.

About inside code. Firaxis has said they build the engine from the ground up.

 

[bhavv]

If it says 4 Gb recommended, then it will have to support 64 bit to use that much ram anyway.

 

[croxis]

Doesn't the Wow64 emulator allow extra use of memory for 32 bit programs?

 

[muxec]

I hope there will be no 64bit version. If they do than all mods that modify the .DLLs must be compiled for both 32 and 64 which will put additional pressure on mod developers.

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Thread moved to the technical subsection.

And no more spam. Every spam after this point will get infracted.

 

[J-man]

I hope there will be no 64bit version. If they do than all mods that modify the .DLLs must be compiled for both 32 and 64 which will put additional pressure on mod developers.

Interesting point. Would it be that much extra effort?
Anyway, I assume that if you have the 64 bit patch you can also run the 32 bit mode.

 

[Pyrion]

Nice, there's another topic on the 64-bit issue, I didn't see this on my first browsing through the thread listings... *shrugs*

Everything I have to say on that particular subject is here, and DancingWind is correct from an architectural standpoint, but even then it wouldn't matter with current gen processors because the operating systems only allow for physical ram utilization up to 128GB (Vista x64) or 192GB (7 x64). The only systems you'd likely find capable of running those are multiprocessor server boards with FB-DIMM's running at max capacity, and what gamer is going to blow several thousand dollars on that much processing capacity and RAM that'll likely never go to use? (Those boards also generally don't offer much in the way of PCI-Express lanes as they're not built with the expectation of being used for gaming rigs.) Not to mention I'm not even certain the client Windows kernels are licensed to go beyond two physical processors anyways.

On the topic of multithreading, Civ5 is in fact multithreaded, it handles up to 8 logical processors (check the config.ini for MaxSimultaneousThreads), although their usefulness is questionable as the threads other than the primary Civ5 thread don't do much (you can see per-thread utilization in Process Explorer if you're really curious).

 

[civ_king]

Windows 7 Home Premium maxes at 16GB RAM

 

[bruntfca]

It's less intensive than most people think. I write database applications for a living and having a 64-bit client and a 32-bit client is almost trivial. There's a reason you can specify build time variables when you're writing your application. It's far easier than multi-platform support. Once more people understand that 64-bit aplications give you much more than just access to more memory you'll see more of them out there.

Here's some interesting facts for you

A 32-bit integer memory address can address 4GB of memory, not 2GB as a lot of people like to quote. The 2GB limit is imposed by the operating system a sa virtual memory limit per application. A 32-bit operating system can not handle over 4GB however. From my standpoint, a 32-bit integer allows me to work with a DB table of some 4 billion records, while that sounds like a lot you'd be amazed how quickly you can hit that limit when doing things like merging data for long term archiving.

64-bit processors have been in use for almost 50 years. 64-bit processors have been in widespread use in games as far back as the old Nitendo 64 and Playstation 2.

64-bit processors hit mainstream personal computers back in 02 or 03 when Apple launched their G5 (I think) based computers. Business servers and workstations had them available in the early 90's.

So really, isn't 7 years long enough to wait? Compare that to shader models in video cards and you'll find that technology from even 3 years ago isn't enough to run the latest and greatest. As long as people fear 64-bit because it sounds complicated, as long as people refuse to move to 64-bit because they insist on sticking with software that is 10+ years old and as long as software production is driven by the budgets of revenue focused publishers we're stuck with 32-bit software. It's the old 'it works good enough' mentality so we're more likely to see commercial space flight than a mass exodus away from 32-bit computing.

What he said. 32 bit is a joke. My mobile phone has more memory than a 32bit PC...garbage. 64 bit is just the word size the CPU uses, the source code does not have to be dramatically different.

This is why I hate devs like Adobe, lazy ass mofos...all their stuff runs like crap, and guess what, their "working" on a 64 bit flash.

My system is so much better since I moved to >4GB and 64 bit. If you are still using XP32 bit, then don't come whining about not running stuff, since its 32 bit. and almost 10 years old junk, my mobile phone is better!

/<RANT>

 

[civ_king]

What he said. 32 bit is a joke. My mobile phone has more memory than a 32bit PC...garbage. 64 bit is just the word size the CPU uses, the source code does not have to be dramatically different.

This is why I hate devs like Adobe, lazy ass mofos...all their stuff runs like crap, and guess what, their "working" on a 64 bit flash.

My system is so much better since I moved to >4GB and 64 bit. If you are still using XP32 bit, then don't come whining about not running stuff, since its 32 bit. and almost 10 years old junk, my mobile phone is better!

/<RANT>

Your phone does not have more than 4GB RAM

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Newsflash: most apps you use are still in 32-bit. 64-bit only support isnt due for another 2 versions of Windows.

 

[Furiey]

Office 2010 comes in 64 and 32 bit versions, as does Internet Explorer 9.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Thats not most apps, not even approaching it. Most means that only a minority are 32-bit, which is quite the opposite of what is true today.

 

[Furiey]

I agree that's far from most apps (I was agreeing with you although I did not word it well). If IE9 is still in beta and Office 2010 is the first to have a 64 bit version then the vast majority of Office/IE users will still be using 32 bit apps. More 64 bit apps are coming out (some elements of Adobe CS5 are 64 bit only), but it's still a long way to go before 64 bit apps are the majority.

 

[bruntfca]

Your phone does not have more than 4GB RAM

kernel panic: Sense of humor failure

 

[civ_king]

kernel panic: Sense of humor failure

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