What's the situation regarding the 64bit executable?

[louisv]

Originally Posted by ZaltysZ

268 and 386 added 24-bit and 32-bit protected modes respectively, whose extended available address spaces to 16MB and 4GB.

I was writing from memory...but I stand corrected.

[Antoninus]

Originally Posted by louisv

That's just it, because a lot of people still run in 32bit (even if the hardware has been 64bit since the later models of Pentium IVs), the devs have to keep the two versions very similar and will not really take advantage of the wider data path until a large majority have made the move.

According to the latest Steam hardware survey already 60+ % of users have an 64 Bit OS. Among the users with PCs that can satisfactorily run CloD the percentage is probably much higher. All new PCs have at least 4 GB RAM or mostly much more. If any software wants to fully utilize these amounts memory it has to be 64 bit.

CloD development started 7 years ago and thats perhaps the biggest reason why something that should become the foundation of a new series of flightsims for the next decade is still a 32 bit application. I doubt they would loose many sales without a 32 bit exe. Casual gamers with outdated hardware probably don't look for a hardcore sim, but something like WoP.

Originally Posted by Skoshi Tiger

Since the Track IR software was fixed and I was able to use the 64bit version I haven't really noticed any boost in performance on my system.

64 bit is good to have, but the software has to take advantage of the extra memory space.

If you only have 4 GB RAM installed there is no extra memory that 64 bit DCS A10 can use.

[ATAG_Doc]

64 bit is the de facto standard now for personal computing.

[Madfish]

It doesn't really matter if it's standard or not.

Until CloD uses more than 4gb ram we wouldn't really benefit. It only makes sense or is required if the application is actually USING more than 4gb of ram for itself. The OS and other applications don't matter.

I'm running on 16gb here and usually I have a crazy number of applications etc. running. Combined they use the memory but each application only a small chunk. So the applications themselves can be anything - just the OS has to be a x64 version and you don't have to worry about memory issues anymore, if you got a decent amount of ram that is.

[Stefem]

Originally Posted by Antoninus

According to the latest Steam hardware survey already 60+ % of users have an 64 Bit OS. Among the users with PCs that can satisfactorily run CloD the percentage is probably much higher. All new PCs have at least 4 GB RAM or mostly much more. If any software wants to fully utilize these amounts memory it has to be 64 bit.

CloD development started 7 years ago and thats perhaps the biggest reason why something that should become the foundation of a new series of flightsims for the next decade is still a 32 bit application. I doubt they would loose many sales without a 32 bit exe. Casual gamers with outdated hardware probably don't look for a hardcore sim, but something like WoP.



If you only have 4 GB RAM installed there is no extra memory that 64 bit DCS A10 can use.

Guys, it has only to be recompiled to 64bit, almost no more work for devs.

And forget magical performance improvement

[ATAG_Snapper]

Originally Posted by Madfish

It doesn't really matter if it's standard or not.

Until CloD uses more than 4gb ram we wouldn't really benefit. It only makes sense or is required if the application is actually USING more than 4gb of ram for itself. The OS and other applications don't matter.

I'm running on 16gb here and usually I have a crazy number of applications etc. running. Combined they use the memory but each application only a small chunk. So the applications themselves can be anything - just the OS has to be a x64 version and you don't have to worry about memory issues anymore, if you got a decent amount of ram that is.

When playing CoD I frequently have Task Manager running on a second screen (as well as the EVGA gpu monitor utility) and it usually shows at least 4.5 Gigs of memory in use - frequently more! There are all kinds of applications running in the background, plus for the sim itself I'm running TrackIR5, Ventrilo, Voice Commander, etc.

If I were running Win 7 32-bit and only had 4 Gigs of RAM on my machine (as many in this forum have), would this not be a memory bottleneck? Could this be a reason for performance and stability problems reported for CoD? Perhaps CoD itself uses less than 4 Gigs of RAM, but add in the other applications combined with the 4 Gig limitation of Win 7 (or Vista) 32-bit and you encounter a drastic memory shortage?

[Blackdog_kt]

What you say does happen Snapper, but it's a case of overall RAM management, ie a matter of having enough RAM and a 64-bit OS to use it.

If the sim doesn't use more than 3 GB for example (the entire game folder is about 4 gigs), having a 64-bit executable for the sim won't matter much. What matters is having more than that and an OS that can "see" it so you can give CoD the assumed 3GB it needs and have enough left to run whatever else you need to run in the background

[Igo kyu]

Originally Posted by Stefem

Guys, it has only to be recompiled to 64bit, almost no more work for devs.

This is very probably mistaken.

If the devs used the sizes of variables in any of a thousand ways that they could, then changing from 32 bit to 64 bit could cause problems. It doesn't have to, if the devs were scrupulous about not using the sizes of the variables it all might just work, but if they used any of the possible optimisations that depend on the sizes of variables, then it will probably be a very long job to make a 64 bit version of the game.

Obviously, I don't know how the devs made the game, but if there were almost any optimisations at all, then simply recompiling it for 64 bit would probably break the code. You'd get error reports from the compiler about what broke where, but sorting that out is typically tricky, because what seems to be broken there is often connected to something that doesn't seem broken here, and that's connected to something else somewhere else, and so on and so on. Eventually you sort out all the connections, but that might be months later. Feeding random code to the compiler and chasing the errors it gives you is probably not the most efficient way of working.

[ATAG_Snapper]

Thanks for the clarification, BD. From my layman's perspective, in terms of memory "more" won't necessarily help, but it won't hurt either.

[hc_wolf]

Try some testing fun. Go to your conf.ini and change the render.

dx10_0
dx11_0
dx10_x64_... or something. I forget. but look in the files you can change dx to a number of dx 10 and 11 settings.

I used to get strange artifacts. But that was a couple of patches back. I have not tried since. Someone give a go today and see how it goes

I will look when I get home and post the variations.