64bit HL2?

[lordoftheroot]

I was just wondering if HL2 will be a true 64bit game like Shadow Ops: Red Mercury (Here some pics http://www.atari.com/shadowops/us/amd.html) If it is then it will run a lot better on my computer. I have emailed Gabe about this and i haven't got a response yet. So i just wanted to if there was some info i missed.

 

[Maui]

I'm not aware of any plans to do it. While I'm not very well versed in what would be required, I believe it would be a significant rewrite of quite a few things if they wanted to take full advantage of it. Anyone with more knowledge feel free to step in

 

[lordoftheroot]

any one have an idea how long it take for gabe to respond?

 

[redundant]

i seem to remember someone email gabe a while ago asking about this, and he said that the performance increase for the few people who actually have 64-bit processors would not justify the amount of work needed.

it's the same case with hyper-threading, i believe.

 

[Dulrough]

He doesnt exactly respond to everyone, your much better off asking some one in the steam forums.

 

[[daniom]]

Hopes for HL2 to be able to use true 64bit tech. I can dream right.

Yeah me to! btw: when is windows 64 getting out?

 

[Ansur]

Yeah me to! btw: when is windows 64 getting out?

I'ts been delayed again, so I think mid 2005.

 

[Nex321]

I was just wondering if HL2 will be a true 64bit game like Shadow Ops: Red Mercury (Here some pics http://www.atari.com/shadowops/us/amd.html) If it is then it will run a lot better on my computer. I have emailed Gabe about this and i haven't got a response yet. So i just wanted to if there was some info i missed.

heh that looks like graphic improvement which can be done with 32 bit........

 

[lordoftheroot]

Yeah me to! btw: when is windows 64 getting out?

I am waiting on that too. I am runing the beta on this computer. it runs good doesn't crash. Any way thanks. well i guess i shouldn't get my hopes up

 

[lordoftheroot]

heh that looks like graphic improvement which can be done with 32 bit........

When i run a game on windows beta it has to convert the 32bit code to 64bit code so it run a little bit slower. and i have heard that if its in 64bit format to start off with you can see some amazing power behind the computer

 

[Milo 7]

is that red merc game anygood? i saw screenshots from it and it looked pretty ugly. whats the point of the 64bit stuff then? only to make it run faster?

 

[|Jz|]

Actually Gabe Newell stated once that they're gonna make a 64-bit version of HL2 and that it will run around 30% faster than the 32bit version (ofcourse only if you have 64bit OS; 64bit CPU; 64bit drivers).

But I'd not bet 20 bucks for it.

 

[lordoftheroot]

is that red merc game anygood? i saw screenshots from it and it looked pretty ugly. whats the point of the 64bit stuff then? only to make it run faster?

thats why i haven't got it. i dont like the gamplay style and i haven't heard the best things about it. i just want a game to see what my computer can do and not waste my money on some piece of crap.

 

[redundant]

64-bit processors won't make the graphics better, it'll just make the calculations of the cpu run faster.

basically, a 32-bit processor can look at (process) 32 bits of data at any given time, i.e. 4 bytes. a 64-bit processor can process 64 bits of dataat any given time, i.e. 8 bytes. the cpu is not necessarily faster, just more efficient.

 

[lifebringer]

I was just wondering if HL2 will be a true 64bit game like Shadow Ops: Red Mercury (Here some pics http://www.atari.com/shadowops/us/amd.html) If it is then it will run a lot better on my computer. I have emailed Gabe about this and i haven't got a response yet. So i just wanted to if there was some info i missed.

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1298

search that official info thread for 64bit. i recall (as someone said above) someone emailing gabe (or another valve employee) regarding this...basically the answer was something like they might do it sometime in the future since it'd give a decent performance improvement, but it's not exactly at the top of the list.

as this was a year ago....who knows. personally i don't think it'd be worth it...but who knows.

update: rick ellis: "it will probably lag the 32bit version" -- once again, this was in feb of this year, so who knows...
( http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?p=395630&highlight=64bit#post395630 )

 

[koopa]

If I remember the ATI drivers aren't that fast under 64-bit mode yet, so it's possible Valve wouldn't want to release any 64-bit version which reflects badly upon their graphics partner. And ATI may wait for proper 64-bit OS until their optimisation team works on the drivers, so as always we'll probably have to wait until then.

I think a 64-bit dedicated server makes more sense than a client at this stage. Assuming they have a Linux dedicated server, I wouldn't be surprised if they're already geared up for 64-bit in server mode at least.

 

[Nex321]

I see no reason upgrading to 64 bit now since win 64 won't be here til 6 months from now

 

[JFry]

I pulled this out of the sticky about emails from valve.

From Me:
I was wondering,

Will Half-Life 2 support Hyper-Threaded CPU's?
In theory shouldn't it take alot of load of the system?

Example, the first processor does all the physics, while the second does some other tasks, like AI, 3d Sound etc

Any Thoughts?

Hyperthreaded CPUs attempt to extract thread-level parallelism, as opposed to traditional pipelined architectures which attempt to take advantage of instruction level parallelism. Hyperthreading can be somewhat unpredictable in terms of the performance impact, as you can, in some cases, run slower.

Implementing and maintaining a "deeply" multi-threaded version of Source would be a pain (i.e. multi-threading the renderer). Implementing a hacky version (e.g. having a discreet physics thread or running the client and server in different threads) is something we may do depending upon how much bandwidth we have before we ship. Right now we don't get nearly as much bang for the buck working on hyperthreading as we do on other optimizations. That may change as we run out of things to optimize.

64-bits, in contrast, is a one-time cost and is fairly simple to take advantage of. It's a huge win for tools as it not only gets more work done per instruction, but it also gets us past the current memory limitations, which are a problem for us today on tools.

Distributed computing is harder than hyperthreading but it has the potential to increase performance by a huge amount (8X on our tools) as opposed to hyperthreading (30%). All of our tools are going to a distributed approach.

So the taxonomy looks like this:

- general algorithmic optimization (general good thing to do)
- DX9 optimization (big gains, long term direction)
- 64-bits (not that hard, solves memory problem as well as performance gains)
- hyperthreading (hard initial cost, on-going code maintainence cost, limited unpredictable performance gains, benefits in multiprocessor environments as well)
- distributed computing (hardest to do, biggest potential gains, great for tools, may be great for servers, not sure how it works with clients)

Hope this makes sense. Jay, any corrections?

Gabe

Also I thought I'd mention that at one time ati was having trouble with 64-bit drivers but at this point they are equal to or better than 32 bit ones.

 

[Lanthanide]

If Source doesn't already have support for 64-bit architecture, it will in the future if they want to try and keep it a cutting-edge engine. So eventually, if Source has it, HL2 should get it patched in, too.

 

[Gorgon]

I'ts been delayed again, so I think mid 2005.

Last time I read about it, its coming feb 05 :thumbs:

 

[|Jz|]

I see no reason upgrading to 64 bit now since win 64 won't be here til 6 months from now

You can still use the Windows 64-bit beta, runs kinda good already.

Anyway, I won't get into another hardware discussion right now, but the 64bit is not the only plus for the AMD64.

 

[Platinum]

gabe - "half life 2 will run 25-30% faster on 64 bit processors" :bounce:

 

[Asus]

Valve has said they will support Windows XP 64bit with a Half-life 2 64Bit version when is released.
A 64Bit system can do more at one time. So you can either speed it up or add more into the program. Or a balance of both.

An Athlon 64 running a 32Bit OS could run the added detail in the Atari game but it would run slower. That's why they could add those effects with the 64Bit version. I agree, it doesn't look that great of a game. hehe