I recently got my budget supercomputer running, and I popped on XP Pro 64-bit edition. It's super mega fast and totally awesome, but it is not without its drawbacks. Just about all the games I have run 32-bit mode only. I know that 64-bit compiled games run double time over their 32-bit counterparts.

Currently, a full grid of Pro BF1s running on Westhill with ALL the graphics options maxed will bog down my system to 20 FPS at the worst. While this is a big improvement over 4 FPS, it still is not enough. I can almost bet it will run 30 FPS or better in the same scenario if it is in 64-bit mode.

Therefore, would it be possible to compile and run a 64-bit version of the game Live For Speed?

As far as I know it would require a fue changes to the code, and not much more. But than again, I'm a novice programer. I played with the DX9 sdk a while back and from what I learned from it, it shoulden't be to hard.

Quote :

I know that 64-bit compiled games run double time over their 32-bit counterparts.

Nope! Doesn't work like that. 64-bit won't guarantee you those 30 FPS you're after. You better get some decent hardware rather than "blame" LFS not being 64-bit. You obviously wasted cash that would've been better spent getting some decent hardware.

Quote from Impreza WRX :

I recently got my budget supercomputer running, and I popped on XP Pro 64-bit edition. It's super mega fast and totally awesome, but it is not without its drawbacks. Just about all the games I have run 32-bit mode only. I know that 64-bit compiled games run double time over their 32-bit counterparts.

Currently, a full grid of Pro BF1s running on Westhill with ALL the graphics options maxed will bog down my system to 20 FPS at the worst. While this is a big improvement over 4 FPS, it still is not enough. I can almost bet it will run 30 FPS or better in the same scenario if it is in 64-bit mode.

Therefore, would it be possible to compile and run a 64-bit version of the game Live For Speed?

The move to 64bit will NOT double to performance and in some situations will SLOW IT DOWN. 64bit is great if you need apps that need more memory than can be addressed in 32bit or you need the greater resolution in floating maths it brings but that is it.

If the code is moved to 64bit native variable sizes it also means that everything doubles in size so now you cpu cache will only hold HALF what it did before, twice the memory needs to come across the system bus etc.

The move from 16bit to 32bit was a big step because it eased memory addressing issue and stopped the need to page data in and out when it was required. It is just not teh same situation with 64bit.

You really think my budget supercomputer is not good enough?

OK, try this...

ASUS M2N-SLI DELUXE Socket AM2 Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+
1 GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 RAM (Dual Channel Mode)
eVGA nVidia GeForce 7600GT KO PCI Express
250 GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 SATA2 Hard Drive
Windows XP Pro x64 Edition provided FREE from College

Now, what was that about having inadequate hardware?

As for the speed improvement, if the CPU is bottlenecking, 64-bit does help. Case in point, a certain gaming console emulator, which normally runs 3-4 FPS because of super heavy CPU use, runs up to 15 FPS in the same emulation run when compiled to run 64-bit. Also, I read in other game forums about game devs trying out 64-bit versions of their games, and in their experience, if the CPU was bottlenecking, the performance went up in 64-bit mode.

Newer CPUs have bigger caches and another layer of cache than the previous generation of 64-bit processors. The potential is there, and now that Vista is out, with 64-bit versions available no less, taking advantage of 64-bit processing can open up a new level of performance and possibility.

It can't hurt to try, or can it?

Quote from Impreza WRX :

You really think my budget supercomputer is not good enough?

OK, try this...

ASUS M2N-SLI DELUXE Socket AM2 Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+
1 GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 RAM (Dual Channel Mode)
eVGA nVidia GeForce 7600GT KO PCI Express
250 GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 SATA2 Hard Drive
Windows XP Pro x64 Edition provided FREE from College

Now, what was that about having inadequate hardware?

As for the speed improvement, if the CPU is bottlenecking, 64-bit does help. Case in point, a certain gaming console emulator, which normally runs 3-4 FPS because of super heavy CPU use, runs up to 15 FPS in the same emulation run when compiled to run 64-bit. Also, I read in other game forums about game devs trying out 64-bit versions of their games, and in their experience, if the CPU was bottlenecking, the performance went up in 64-bit mode.

Newer CPUs have bigger caches and another layer of cache than the previous generation of 64-bit processors. The potential is there, and now that Vista is out, with 64-bit versions available no less, taking advantage of 64-bit processing can open up a new level of performance and possibility.

It can't hurt to try, or can it?

your hardware is good but i tell you this you have ether been ripped off or set somthing up wrong!!! cause for you to get 20fps on that is wrong i have a lower spec machine and a hdd spare with XP64-bit which i tested out a few days ago and i was gettign 40fps, in lfs on normal xp i get 110 roughly.

my specs dont laugh,
Asus A8V 939
AMD 3000+ 939
1GIG DS (2x512) DDR
Sparkle 6600GT 128mb (specs= mem clock 1800MHZ, 3dclock 500MHZ)
240gig hdd (2xhdds 1x80gig , 1x 160gig)

anything else?

well i think you should be getting more from your stuff.

Something is wrong with your rig, my Laptop with AMD64 3000+, 512Mb and a Mobile ATI 9600 Pro never drops below 40fps @ 1024*768 with 2*AA 4*AF and Temperal AA on.

I hate to say that the problem could be XP64. The reason I say this is that XP64 does not have mainstream support from Microsoft so never gained real traction. This means hardly anyone really does the level of driver support they would with 32bit drivers, where their income is.

It's Microsoft's bastard child, they only released it to shut AMD up when the AMD64 took off and even then they dragged for ever. MS wanted to get Vista out as 64 bit and not worry about XP64.

What LFS would benefit more from than 64bit would be optimisation for multi-core now that is more common, far far far bigger gains.

I get the feeling if you installed the mainstream XP it would sort many of your issues.

Did you try my test? Max out graphics, then do a full grid of BF1s in Westhill.

I popped to Windowed mode and watched the Cores cranking. I have the nVidia driver in threaded mode, which leaves core 0 at near 80-95% and core 1 at near 25-40%. The only things taking up CPU are LFS and the nVidia Driver.

Theoretically, I can overclock the X2 and get another 7600GT KO and run SLI mode for almost double the GPU performance. However, the CPU is going to hold it back. Also, I have all the settings in the nVidia driver to be quality over speed, which is reverse of my other computer.

Normally I get 150 FPS using ASUS GT in LFS, compared to 110 on Gigabyte-GSR, the over overclocked P4 with AGP computer.

Quote from Impreza WRX :

Did you try my test? Max out graphics, then do a full grid of BF1s in Westhill.

I popped to Windowed mode and watched the Cores cranking. I have the nVidia driver in threaded mode, which leaves core 0 at near 80-95% and core 1 at near 25-40%. The only things taking up CPU are LFS and the nVidia Driver.

Theoretically, I can overclock the X2 and get another 7600GT KO and run SLI mode for almost double the GPU performance. However, the CPU is going to hold it back. Also, I have all the settings in the nVidia driver to be quality over speed, which is reverse of my other computer.

Normally I get 150 FPS using ASUS GT in LFS, compared to 110 on Gigabyte-GSR, the over overclocked P4 with AGP computer.

Only one CPU is being used because LFS does not thread in a way that allows for multiple cores, as I said. A 64bit recompile will do nothing to change this, it will not magic the code to use both cores and you will still get the same load distribution.

Quote from Impreza WRX :

Did you try my test? Max out graphics, then do a full grid of BF1s in Westhill.

There's your problem, the BF1 is a real hog on resources. I'm really hoping for an optimization of the mesh(or whatever makes it such a hog) in the near future. It's downright impossible for me to have more than 4 BF1's on screen at the same time. Otherwise i have no problem running LFS @ 1280x1024, full AA(T3), Full AF, max settings ingame and all of Elektrik Car's textures. The FPS goes between 35-75.
Specs:
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ @3500+
ATI Radeon 9800PRO(OC'd)
1GB DDR1
XP SP2 32-bit

Just give up on that P.O.S XP64, and get yourself the regular 32-bit of either XP of Vista.

Vista sucks like a warp driven vaccum cleaner unless you have LOTS and I mean LOTS of RAM. I have it on Gigabyte-GSR and 1 GB of RAM is not enough for Vistra and gaming. Also, Vista slows down the hard drive to a grinding halt. I'm not giving up on x64 Windows XP just yet, and I can assure you every other game I have played (GT Legends, some top end Star Wars games, and the like) does not max out my system. TBH GT Legends looks awesome at 1280x1024 with everything turned on and up to the limit, and still pulling 75 FPS (Vsync).

Quote from Impreza WRX :

You really think my budget supercomputer is not good enough?

OK, try this...

ASUS M2N-SLI DELUXE Socket AM2 Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+
1 GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 RAM (Dual Channel Mode)
eVGA nVidia GeForce 7600GT KO PCI Express
250 GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 SATA2 Hard Drive
Windows XP Pro x64 Edition provided FREE from College

Now, what was that about having inadequate hardware?

As for the speed improvement, if the CPU is bottlenecking, 64-bit does help. Case in point, a certain gaming console emulator, which normally runs 3-4 FPS because of super heavy CPU use, runs up to 15 FPS in the same emulation run when compiled to run 64-bit. Also, I read in other game forums about game devs trying out 64-bit versions of their games, and in their experience, if the CPU was bottlenecking, the performance went up in 64-bit mode.

It can't hurt to try, or can it?

What you need is multi-core optimization, not really 64 bit. As far as LFS goes, all you have is a AMD 2.2GHz with 512kb L2 cache. It doesn't effectively use both cores. If LFS was to become optimized for multi-cores, you, I and all the multi-core users would be in luck. I'm going out on a limb, but I'm guessing there are a Lot more dual-core users than there are 64bit users.

That said, you could up you min fps with a little overclocking.

Quote from Impreza WRX :

Did you try my test? Max out graphics, then do a full grid of BF1s in Westhill.

I popped to Windowed mode and watched the Cores cranking. I have the nVidia driver in threaded mode, which leaves core 0 at near 80-95% and core 1 at near 25-40%. The only things taking up CPU are LFS and the nVidia Driver.

Theoretically, I can overclock the X2 and get another 7600GT KO and run SLI mode for almost double the GPU performance. However, the CPU is going to hold it back. Also, I have all the settings in the nVidia driver to be quality over speed, which is reverse of my other computer.

Normally I get 150 FPS using ASUS GT in LFS, compared to 110 on Gigabyte-GSR, the over overclocked P4 with AGP computer.

no chance SLI will double your performance, it might increase it a bit, but nowhere near double. your line of thought seems to be that if its double the numbers, then double the performance, which simply isnt true except for a few things.

for us to test this you have to give us details. telling us that Nvidia is set to "quality" doesnt give me any idea at all what AA and AF are set at.

I just want it to use more than one cpu, I have a Prescott HT running at 3.2 ghz and I get around 100fps in HL2, with a 64mb agp4 card no less. But LFS I get around 50 at lower resolutions and stable at 30 with 1280x1024. I use all the high res textures for the track I have so I had around, get this, 90fps at 1600x1200 before. (I didn't think my old Radeon 9000 could go 1600x1200 in 3d)

I would think that if LFS used both logical CPUs it would help a bit.
(then again, I realy don't need the high res textures )

Note, the current test patch promises some (possibly quite slight) increases in FPS due to cleaning up the code in some places. Keep that in mind!

Quote from Impreza WRX :

Vista sucks like a warp driven vaccum cleaner unless you have LOTS and I mean LOTS of RAM.

Nope, runs fine here. Just as smooth as XP.

Quote from Impreza WRX :

1 GB of RAM is not enough for Vistra and gaming

Yeah, it is

Quote from Impreza WRX :

Also, Vista slows down the hard drive to a grinding halt

evidence of this?

Quote from Impreza WRX :

I can assure you every other game I have played does not max out my system.

So? has nothing to do with your "problem"
You might want to try and set "min. sleep" in LFS to 1 ms. That usually boosts FPS considerably.
You're one of those people who just wants to keep throwing "power!"(© J. Clarkson) at it, aren't you? I find it incredibly weird that you keep demanding LFS to be completely re-written, just so a dwindling few "might" get a performance boost.

Basically I'm saying: STFU!

srdsprinter: V's been out for some time now :P

fixed it. the current test patch offers these improvements.

No need to be all snappy man, everyones entitled to use this forum for suggestions.

While I agree, it might not be the best idea, no need for the insulting and derogatory behavior.

Quote from Impreza WRX :

Vista sucks like a warp driven vaccum cleaner unless you have LOTS and I mean LOTS of RAM. I have it on Gigabyte-GSR and 1 GB of RAM is not enough for Vistra and gaming. Also, Vista slows down the hard drive to a grinding halt. I'm not giving up on x64 Windows XP just yet, and I can assure you every other game I have played (GT Legends, some top end Star Wars games, and the like) does not max out my system. TBH GT Legends looks awesome at 1280x1024 with everything turned on and up to the limit, and still pulling 75 FPS (Vsync).

Yep, Vista is a POS that eat so much memory just to idle. That will be the huge amounts of DRM stuffed into every aspect of the system at work. mmmmm nice.

SLI is not your issue and no GFX changes will help you with LFS as it does nothing that will really tax your system like some more recent games will.

As an interesting test whu not shunt around space on your disks, free up say 5Gb and put on an XP partition just to compare game speeds between XP64 and XP. You don't wan't to appear to believe me that companies and the like are not bothered by XP64 and hence do no real active test/dev with it. Hardly anyone uses XP64 so there is just no support.

I know where you come from as when I got my lappy it was one of the first to use an AMD64 and I really wanted to put a 64bit OS on it. Still running XP standard now because of how MS dealt with XP64 and I am never touching Vista.

As an aside. I'm holding off on vista for about a year or so, untill i build my next rig. By then MS will hopefully have come out with SP1, and DX10 will be showing (up) advantages in terms of graphics performance.

If:
-Intel really keeps the cpu battle push up, with rumoured $266 quad cores late this year
-AMD(ATi) and Nvidia really continue to battle the gpu market
-SSD disks become mainstream
-ddr3 ram for desktops?

Hardware might really be up in a years time to be able to use vista with no percieved drawbacks. Till then, I'l probably just get an 8800gts and enjoy dx9 (and LFS dx8 goodness!)

ok well after reading this thread i decided to test out my vista home pre, ive never installed cause of driver issuses.

now you say its a memory hog well im about to prove you wrong.

i have this old P3 866MHZ yeah old is right,
its got 384mb ram, a ATI 9550 256mb graphics card, and a 13gig hdd,

so i thought hell why not try this out and se for myself, i installed vista home prem booted up for the fist time and had a little issue with it running a bit slow but as soon as everythin loaded it was ok,so i then started to install stuff like LFS just the demo for now, and guess what 40fps, wow so vista cant be too bad then if its going to run on a machine that over 5yrs old, (not that i like vista in any way it was given to me as a gift)
vsta didnt stay on there for long as i had driver issues.

but my point here is if vista can run lfs on an old machine like that then you should have no probs with running on XP64-bit.

anyways ill be waiting before i upgrade my pc now i know i cant use my controllers.
@ Impreza WRX: turn your graphics down then see where you fps are at, turn to balanced or a little higher, play with the settings cause im sure you will get more FPS then what you have now you might loose some ingame graphics and things may not look as nice, but you will atleast be able to play at somthing over 40fps on those system specs.

@srdsprinter LFS is using DX7 atm iirc by the time lfs needs to use DX10 i think most of us will be granpas and for those few here grandmas.


Racemania

added 2 images, the first is of lfs run in shift+F4 mode with proof its vista and the 2nd is of LFS run full screen.

Quote from Woz :

Yep, Vista is a POS that eat so much memory just to idle. That will be the huge amounts of DRM stuffed into every aspect of the system at work. mmmmm nice.

Holy galloping FUD Batman! Do you know why Vista "eats memory"? Because it caches DLLs, executables and other files you use frequently in left over memory so that they're right there should you ever need them again. This makes frequently used apps load in seconds because Windows doesn't have to go through the disk every time.

Any OS worth it's salt should use up every last bit of memory in your computer, and do something useful with it. This is a Good Thing™. Empty memory is just wasted capacity.

Quote from wien :

Do you know why Vista "eats memory"? Because it caches DLLs, executables and other files you use frequently in left over memory so that they're right there should you ever need them again.

Pretty much every OS out there has been doing this for years (Including windows). The memory used as such cache is generally not included in the "used memory" calculation, it would not make much sense to do that as the amount of memory free would be almost always close to zero and thus would tell you nothing useful.

It always baffles me how people want tons of RAM in their system, but want it to be used as less as possible.

Quote from Kegetys :

Pretty much every OS out there has been doing this for years (Including windows). The memory used as such cache is generally not included in the "used memory" calculation, it would not make much sense to do that as the amount of memory free would be almost always close to zero and thus would tell you nothing useful.

It is included in Vista though. The task manager's "Physical Memory - Available" section is mostly very close to zero. There's a new section called "Cached", or something to that effect, which represents this program cache.

Anyway, I know OSX has this feature, but I'm pretty sure XP doesn't. Not nearly as agressive as the one in Vista (Superfetch) anyway. It may cache some files, but as far as I've been able to gather, XP is mostly set up to keep as much memory as it can "ready for use" (read "unused"). That's why you'll often see XP go for the swap-file even with large amounts of memory available.

Anyway. Sorry for dragging this (even further) off topic.

Quote from wien :

Anyway, I know OSX has this feature, but I'm pretty sure XP doesn't.

XP does have it, so does 2k, NT4 and even windows 95. I'm not sure about Windows 3.x but that might use whatever DOS has (Smartdrv works as a disk cache in DOS).

What Vista does differently as far as I understand is that it tries to preload things it thinks applications might use in the future based on what they did in the past. This might or might not be advantageous, I would suspect for games it would have mixed results since their behaviour is not that predictable (Like in LFS, you might once load Blackwood but next time you run it you might want to drive on South City instead)