64-bit Half-Life 2 Slower than 32-bit

[bapenguin]

According to TechAge (http://techgage.com/review.php?id=3889), the 32-bit version of Half-Life 2 is quite a bit faster than the recently released 64-bit version which automagically installs via Steam while running Windows XP x64.

Sadly, 64-Bit could not even muster enough to keep up to it's smaller brother. The only advantage it had was in the Lost Coast single player run, and even that's hardly an advantage. 32-Bit proved to be 22FPS faster than the 64-Bit version.. ouch.
Kind of sucks if you are running XP 64 that you are forced to play the inferior version.

[Conner Dain]

I really don't see any advantage to running X 64. Driver support is spotty at best, and there just don't seem to be that many (if any) programs that actually run faster.

[Emabulator]

After reading that article I am somewhat skeptical of the results and conclusion. Looking at the test result graphs one has to wonder if v-synch was left on while testing the 64-bit version. Could also be a bug of some kind, a configuration problem or an odd coincidence. Regardless, those results warrant further testing.

That said, I tend to agree with Conner Dain, x64 is probably not ready for prime time yet.

[stomper1080]

I really don't see any advantage to running X 64. Driver support is spotty at best, and there just don't seem to be that many (if any) programs that actually run faster.

Yeah....It seems to me the ideal solution is wait a few months until buying a 64 bit processor, they would have come down in price by then anyway!

[H.Bogard]

Developing idiots are too preoccupied with dual cores and multi threads to focus on a 64 bit processing environment. Something which is ACTUALLY FUCKING BETTER THAN MULTIPLE CORES AND THREADS!

[jeffool]

Windows x64 is straight up painful to use anyway. We've got a 64bit chip at my house on the gaming PC, but we're still run XP on it.

No offense H. Bogard, but do you program? Since programmers realized they could use bits to do the job of bytes (bools, bit-fields, etc.), actual C++ data type (ints, etc.) that use the full 32/64 bits, are most often used for things like file data, physics, and object count. Places where you usually have no reason to count above 4294967295. And even if we can process a datatype twice as large, to get a greater precision would theoretically still take just as long as it would on a 32 bit processor.

So now games use 64bit datatypes where smaller datatypes worked perfectly. Though theoretically there should be no loss either. (But shit happens, and programmers will get used to optimizing their code for 64bit soon.) But dual core/multiple-threads are still areas where there's much room for improvement/optimization. Hell, if anyone ever delivers on the long-promised "compiler that optimizes threads excellently for you!", gaming would see a HELL of an upswing in quality.

[torrefaction]

Developing idiots are too preoccupied with dual cores and multi threads to focus on a 64 bit processing environment. Something which is ACTUALLY FUCKING BETTER THAN MULTIPLE CORES AND THREADS!

Jeffool was much nicer. It seems to me that your uninformed, and speaking out of your ass. Please read up on what your talking about before you speak out about it. Misinformation is nothing but a large pain in the ass.

[Mr.Green]

Jeffool was much nicer. It seems to me that your uninformed, and speaking out of your ass. Please read up on what your talking about before you speak out about it. Misinformation is nothing but a large pain in the ass.
Some guy speaking out of his ass on the internet? UNHEARD OF!

[Phanto]

64 bit its not going anywhere until Windows Vista comes out, atleast thats what i think and makes sense. Obviously they have release the 64 processor earlier so people can "upgrade to them" before Vista comes into play.

[Citizen Philip]

Meh. What is the deal? You've got brand new tech with youthful drivers and very little native support running only a mere few frames behind an architecture that has been in use for what, almost a decade? 64-bit processing is a future proof, not current tech: it's nice to see that it IS only a few frames behind.

[Teddeh]

Developing idiots are too preoccupied with dual cores and multi threads to focus on a 64 bit processing environment. Something which is ACTUALLY FUCKING BETTER THAN MULTIPLE CORES AND THREADS!

I know, and have known, a lot of programmers and other developers, and the least of them could out-think you ten times over while coding at the same time. Idiots they are not, so less of the name-calling.

If you're going to spout off so forcefully that 64 bit is better than 32, perhaps you's like to share your reasons why that is so?

I personally fail to see how 64 bit precision, registers and addressing will miraculously be faster than a multi-core 32 bit processor running a multi-threaded app when that same app ran just as well at 32 bit precision in far less than 4Gb of RAM.

Perhaps you think the "64 bit" in x64 means 64 bit data path, which is definitely faster than 32 bit data path? That's been around since the Pentium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium) - it was one of the reasons why the Pentium spanked most 486-class chips.

Read this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit#32_vs_64_bit), paying close attention to the 3rd paragraph of the 64 vs 32 bit section.

[DingBat]

64 bit processors are no panacea. In fact, they're pretty much going to run any 32 bit app slower than a comparable 32 bit processor (all other things being equal). The slowdown on HL2 is no surprise to me.

64 bit will come into it's own. However, the critical mass of apps required to justify it is not here yet. Of course, you need the processor before you can build the apps that justify it, so that's about where we stand right now. :)

[Teddeh]

Meh. What is the deal? You've got brand new tech with youthful drivers and very little native support running only a mere few frames behind an architecture that has been in use for what, almost a decade? 64-bit processing is a future proof, not current tech: it's nice to see that it IS only a few frames behind.
Since when has 22 fps been a "mere few"? 22 fps is easily the difference between playable and slideshow. If Doom had run at 'merely' 22fps on my 486, I'd have been well pleased, and IndyCar Racing was limited to 15fps!

The x86 architecture has been around for over twenty years and the Pentium class CPU celebrates it's 13th birthday in March.

Are you saying you're actually glad that a near brand new (as far as Intel, AMD, MS and Apple are concerned - 64 bit has been in SPARC and other CPUs for ages) technology is getting comprehensively beaten by something far older? :rolleyes:

I suppose 64 bit is somewhat future-proof - until 128 bit, that is. 32 bit will still be around for a while yet, though.

[SynapseLapse]

This is NOT a 64 bit bug.
http://techgage.com/articles/halflife2_64bit/64-bit_bug_thumb.jpg

I get this glitch every once in a while when I play HL2DM. It seems like some reflection map doesn't get cached properly. Although, I usually see it on metal surfaces and it seems to happen only if I Alt+tab out of the game before loading a new level.

[XenonCJ]

I suppose 64 bit is somewhat future-proof - until 128 bit, that is. 32 bit will still be around for a while yet, though.If the past is any indicator, we'll be worrying about the Y10K bug before 128 bit CPUs come out...

[Citizen Philip]

Since when has 22 fps been a "mere few"? 22 fps is easily the difference between playable and slideshow. If Doom had run at 'merely' 22fps on my 486, I'd have been well pleased, and IndyCar Racing was limited to 15fps!

The x86 architecture has been around for over twenty years and the Pentium class CPU celebrates it's 13th birthday in March.

Are you saying you're actually glad that a near brand new (as far as Intel, AMD, MS and Apple are concerned - 64 bit has been in SPARC and other CPUs for ages) technology is getting comprehensively beaten by something far older? :rolleyes:

I suppose 64 bit is somewhat future-proof - until 128 bit, that is. 32 bit will still be around for a while yet, though.

Did you even RTFA? The difference between 100 and 80 frames on a single map at the lowest graphics setting is the entire hinge in your argument?

What I'm saying dumbass: only a technophile, and apparently only literate ones, will know the difference between 80 and 100 frames being used in a game from a technical perspective, as it will have no visual or gameplay impact to a regular consumer since the game experience will be the EXACT SAME. If you can't figure out why new technology, notmore than 3 years old is only running the pace with it's low-tech brother is your problem.

[Taco]

No one should be using the unoptimized trash that is XP 64. It will get there, but between the OS and the drivers it's barely out of beta.

Yeah....It seems to me the ideal solution is wait a few months until buying a 64 bit processor, they would have come down in price by then anyway!

Any processor worth having for the last 1.5 years is 64 bit, that's not really an issue since they are also the fastest 32 bit processors around.

[Thenetcase]

Hmm... I dunno. I'm running x64 now .... and I have had NO driver problems. In fact, the only game that currently will not play on my computer is Chaos Theory (only because their detection software says that I'm trying to run it on a non-Windows OS, so it refuses to run at all-- Plus they said they don't plan on fixing it).

I have tons of peripherals and accessories and have not had the first problem. Things that don't have x64 drivers seem to run just fine with their x86 drivers. Not sure what people are talking about when they say driver support is "spotty". Maybe they just are too lazy to actually try for themselves.

As for HL2 64-bit being slower? Not the case. I noticed a NICE improvement in speed over the 32-bit edition after doing my upgrade.

My system specs:
AMD Athlon x2 3800+ (Dual Core)
ASUS nForce4 A8N-SLI Deluxe
1GB CAS2 Corsiar PC3200 DDR RAM
BFG Geforce7800GTOC single card configuration
SoundBlaster Audigy 2
etc. etc.

I also suspect that some of the poor results people are getting from their tests may result in people buying crap parts. If you don't buy the best stuff, don't expect the best results.

-TNC-

[Teddeh]

Did you even RTFA? The difference between 100 and 80 frames on a single map at the lowest graphics setting is the entire hinge in your argument?

What I'm saying dumbass: only a technophile, and apparently only literate ones, will know the difference between 80 and 100 frames being used in a game from a technical perspective, as it will have no visual or gameplay impact to a regular consumer since the game experience will be the EXACT SAME. If you can't figure out why new technology, notmore than 3 years old is only running the pace with it's low-tech brother is your problem.

You've really gone off on a tangent here, as the whole point of the article was a benchmark which measures PERFORMANCE - frames per second, rather than the subjective gameplay experience. Gameplay had nothing to do with it. They just used a game with high requirements and both 32 and 64 bit binaries instead of SPEC or PCMark. You just saw I censured you for ill-judged and badly-researched comments and went on a rant, didn't you? :rolleyes:

Did you even read what I posted? You described 22 fps as "a few", and I asked when that restatement of fact became true. Even if the difference in the article is between 80-100fps, that's still TWENTY percent behind. That's not really a "few" or a rounding error, is it? I'd go as far as to call that pretty bloody statistically significant.

I also asked if you actually meant what you typed, when you said it was "nice" that a new technology was trailing behind it's 20+ year old predecessor.

Thanks for the unwarranted insults, by the way.

[Teddeh]

This is NOT a 64 bit bug.
http://techgage.com/articles/halflife2_64bit/64-bit_bug_thumb.jpg

I get this glitch every once in a while when I play HL2DM. It seems like some reflection map doesn't get cached properly. Although, I usually see it on metal surfaces and it seems to happen only if I Alt+tab out of the game before loading a new level.

Have you got an AGP RADEON?

Happened to me a lot after installing a Radeon 9800Pro. It happened in that location, too! :D It was always on reflective or bump-mapped surfaces, and once it happened to one texture, it would affect all the instances of that texture, until a restart or an ALT-TAB. Same symptoms as you?

It completely went away after turning the AGP transfer rate down from 8x to 4x. 8x doesn't seem to affect other games, so my own deduction was it was a problem in texture caching or AGP transfer routines.

Reported it to Valve, got usual bullshit from automated tech support. :(

Hope this helps.

[dena miscreant]

I run XP Pro x64 on an AMD 64 3200+ with a 256mb ATi x800xt and a GB of RAM.

The updates to Source were welcomed by me and I don't doubt that more updates are on their way.

I got x64 because it is the future of my PC. I figured I'd have to upgrade eventually, even if the present upgrade wasn't all that much of an upgrade. I'll bet you a year from now most of the kinks will be ironed out and my 64-bit apps will run better than most ever could in 32-bit.

[Taco]

Well netcase, from what I've read, if your lucky you get a 5 FPS increase. Generally it's the same or a smidgen slower. When I say shoddy driver support I mean we are not seeing the benefits we will.

Laziness has nothing to do with it, I'm not stupid enough to wipe a system that is battle tested for over a year for something with little or no gain and who knows what issues still lurking. Besides, I work on this shit all day, sometimes I don't want to go home and do the same unless there is a well documented reason to do so, which there isn't other than what you personally have "noticed".

In short, get off your high horse. You aren't the PC expert of EA.

[jeffbax]

Developing idiots are too preoccupied with dual cores and multi threads to focus on a 64 bit processing environment. Something which is ACTUALLY FUCKING BETTER THAN MULTIPLE CORES AND THREADS!
Er...

Sorry, but multicore and threading is a *whole* lot more important to future performance gains than just inherent 64-bitness.

Especially when 64-bit sized data is just often wasteful for a lot of stuff. The gains of 64-bit computing usually come with the extra registers in the CPU moreso than larger data chunks.

And yeah, it seems XP-64 shouldn't have been released to public, its more of a for-pay beta test for 64bit MS apps.

Think of it this way, is it faster for one person to try and carry 4 cases of beer back to the dorm, or have 3 friends along the way to help carry some :p

Threading > 64-bit.

[Citizen Philip]

You've really gone off on a tangent here, as the whole point of the article was a benchmark which measures PERFORMANCE - frames per second, rather than the subjective gameplay experience. Gameplay had nothing to do with it. They just used a game with high requirements and both 32 and 64 bit binaries instead of SPEC or PCMark. You just saw I censured you for ill-judged and badly-researched comments and went on a rant, didn't you? :rolleyes:

Did you even read what I posted? You described 22 fps as "a few", and I asked when that restatement of fact became true. Even if the difference in the article is between 80-100fps, that's still TWENTY percent behind. That's not really a "few" or a rounding error, is it? I'd go as far as to call that pretty bloody statistically significant.

I also asked if you actually meant what you typed, when you said it was "nice" that a new technology was trailing behind it's 20+ year old predecessor.

Thanks for the unwarranted insults, by the way.

The guy who starts mentioning Doom when talking about HL2 on 64 bit processing is telling me I am running off on tangents. That's very rich.

Any system that runs above 60 FPS under maximum load is a perfect gameplay experience; If you want to start supplementing your limited commentary in your first post, with additional refinements to what you meant to say in additional posts that's fine, but I'm not going to address it. It's above 60 frames at maximum load, excluding the HDR demo, the margin by which it surpasses the mark is technophile only.

As stated previously: If you can't figure out why 64 bit processing is only matching 32 bit processing under this specific application, that is entirely your problem.

You are welcome to enjoy my scathing and inflammatory remarks as a pure and direct attack against your internet ego, you may seek councilling with your e-friends or perhaps e-girlfriend and nurse yourself back to e-health. I could only assume someone who would mention the 20 frames, within the context of this review was a total moron and needed to be reminded of it.

I am a troll who goes out of his way to pick on people, I probably live in my parent's basement and my only contact with girls is pr0n. It's also safe to assume I get a boost to my own ego knowing I put you down, or tried my best to. I am unreasonable and probably a softspoken geek in RL: you could probably come to my parent's house and beat me up.

PS: I eat babies.

[Thenetcase]

Well netcase, from what I've read, if your lucky you get a 5 FPS increase. Generally it's the same or a smidgen slower. When I say shoddy driver support I mean we are not seeing the benefits we will.

Laziness has nothing to do with it, I'm not stupid enough to wipe a system that is battle tested for over a year for something with little or no gain and who knows what issues still lurking. Besides, I work on this shit all day, sometimes I don't want to go home and do the same unless there is a well documented reason to do so, which there isn't other than what you personally have "noticed".

In short, get off your high horse. You aren't the PC expert of EA.

I think that a good technician experiments on his own equipment to gain knowlege because the average person doesn't have systems like you and I can and will build.

I see your point about your "Battle tested" system. <shrug> I probably wouldn't have done it if I hadn't recently upgraded.

Oh and for what it's worth... I'm also a full time technician... and have been for seven years. That said, I can appreciate your views about not wanting to come home to deal with PC troubleshooting (one of the reasons why sometimes I come home and hit the xBox instead of the PC :)).

Anyways... no offense intended... I probably come off sounding like more of an asshole than I intended. Sorry if that was the case. I got the flu or some crap and it's not helping my disposition any.

-TNC-

[Teddeh]

The guy who starts mentioning Doom when talking about HL2 on 64 bit processing is telling me I am running off on tangents. That's very rich.

Any system that runs above 60 FPS under maximum load is a perfect gameplay experience; If you want to start supplementing your limited commentary in your first post, with additional refinements to what you meant to say in additional posts that's fine, but I'm not going to address it. It's above 60 frames at maximum load, excluding the HDR demo, the margin by which it surpasses the mark is technophile only.

As stated previously: If you can't figure out why 64 bit processing is only matching 32 bit processing under this specific application, that is entirely your problem.

PS: I eat babies.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not trying to start a fight, but your initial comments did raise a hackle or two, and insults don't help. I don't want this to degenerate into Slashdot, I come here to get away from it! :p

I apologise for the Doom and IndyCar references, I was only trying to get the point across that just GETTING 20+fps was an achievement not 10 years ago.

You don't seem to acknowledge the fact that an objective 20-25% difference is significant, regardless of any subjective 'experience'.

To use a (crap) analogy - A young man and an old man run the hundred. Old man does it in 10 secs, the young does it in 12 secs. 2 secs difference, younger man is 20% slower. You say "Who cares, it was still a fast race." I won't disagree with that. However, the old man beat the young man, and beat him easily. That's where I'm coming from.

I know (or can reasonably guess) some of the reasons why the 64 bit HL2 is behind;

Increased cache thrashing as pointers/variables are twice as long.
WinXP 64 is crap. The Beta I tried wasn't even fit for Alpha. :rolleyes:
Drivers aren't optimized fully yet.
Valve have probably pushed the first 64 bit binary to compile without errors out the door. ;)

And they're the easy ones.

64 bit will come into its own, but I believe only in certain things - movie encoding, photographic work, sound editing, things that actually need vast levels of mathematical precision and huge quantities of memory without mucking about with paging memory internally or to disk. Games don't, at least not for a while.

[ÜberJumper]

I'd sure like to see this test run with the 32-bit version of HL2 running on 64-bit WinXP rather than 32bit HL2 on 32bit WinXP vs 64bit HL2 on 64bit WinXP.

I wonder if he had a 64bit version of FRAPS? Would that matter?

[Citizen Philip]

...
Increased cache thrashing as pointers/variables are twice as long.
WinXP 64 is crap. The Beta I tried wasn't even fit for Alpha. :rolleyes:
Drivers aren't optimized fully yet.
Valve have probably pushed the first 64 bit binary to compile without errors out the door. ;)

And they're the easy ones.

64 bit will come into its own, but I believe only in certain things - movie encoding, photographic work, sound editing, things that actually need vast levels of mathematical precision and huge quantities of memory without mucking about with paging memory internally or to disk. Games don't, at least not for a while.

Agreed. I don't think WinXP64 is more than a dumping ground for bad ideas for Vista or that MS is really interested in developing anything 64-bit before the official release of Vista.

Games will learn to take advantage of 64-bit in the future, but not anytime soon. I'm not concerned about the frames loss for all of the above reasons: Vavle have a working game using (to an extent) 64 bit processing, which is cool but I imagine the support is very poor and the entire thing (firmware, OS, etc) is mostly unsupported or not optimized. That's why it's quite nice to see it does so well.

[Deathspawner]

I'd sure like to see this test run with the 32-bit version of HL2 running on 64-bit WinXP rather than 32bit HL2 on 32bit WinXP vs 64bit HL2 on 64bit WinXP.

I wonder if he had a 64bit version of FRAPS? Would that matter?

FRAPS only has one version that runs on XP, 2003 and x64. I have run tests with FRAPS in other games in x64 and it's proven accurate in the past. I could not benchmark the 32-Bit version in x64 because Steam forces the 64-Bit update.

As I mentioned in a previous article, I have found the 32-Bit version to work faster in 64-Bit Windows. If they left it alone, I believe that people would receive better performance overall.

I have taken all the critism and recommendations and plan on updating the article in a few weeks, because I will be doing further tests between similar speed AMD and Intel 64-Bit CPU's and also with different driver versions.