Has 64bit helped anyone?

CompanionCube · May 2008

hi

when i bought my last computer i tried to future proof kinda so i got 4gb ram. i'm only using Xp home so i know i'm not using was just putting off going 64bit because i already had xp home. but just curious has 64bit helped anyone. i especially mean in the instance of baking textures like normal maps etc.. at the moment i'm having trouble with max and RTT because of 2k normal maps i'm trying to produce from pretty high poly models (trying to normal map the head and ponytails, about 350k tris) i've had to resort to Xnormal for now, but i usual like to compare results between different programs.

so ye, has 64 bit helped anyone with a similar problems?

thanks

Jonathan · May 2008

Yes, it helps, but if you're using 4gb, a XP32 with the "3gb switch" will increase the limitation a little. I have 8gb of RAM and often use well over 4gb of RAM when I'm multitasking and have a game engine/2d program/3d program open, especially when tweaking textures/materials.

I'd suggest XP64 over Vista 64 for now.

pior · May 2008

Is there a way to switch from XPhome to XP64? My sys is 64 friendly so I'd like to switch over.

Joao Sapiro · May 2008

i also would like the benefits, but im afraid that my programs/games etc wont run in xp64, im really noobish regarding that and still dont understand this 64 bits business heheh...

*goes to wikipedia*

Archanex · May 2008

where can I find more info on this "3gb switch"? I've got 4 gigs I'd like to make full use of heh

midorisabato · May 2008

Hi enabling the 3GB switch in XP is not too difficult. Here's how.

1. Right click My Computer click Properties

2. Under the Advanced tab Startup and Recovery click the Setting button.

3. Click the Edit button in the System startup section.

4. now notepad should open and show you something like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

add another line to the bottom that goes like this

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP professional with 3GB switch" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /3GB

so now you have this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP professional with 3GB switch" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /3GB

5. Save and reboot your PC.

6. Before windows starts up you should now have 2 choices "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" and "Microsoft Windows XP professional with 3GB switch"

Unfortunately for me though this only worked the first time I tried it, after that my nivida drivers refused to load which defeated the whole purpose of turning the 3GB switch on to help with my 3d apps etc...

Maybe there's something more that needs to be done to get it working properly or I'm just out of luck for this mod.

Anyway hope this helps some of you out

georgemancer · May 2008

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vista-workshop,1775-5.html

"The upshot is that it doesn't make sense to install a 64 bit version of Vista in order to better utilize 4 GB of memory simply because the 32 bit version would only recognize 3.5 GB. The problem is that while it is true that you would "gain" the missing memory, you would also immediately lose it to the system due to the 64 bit version's larger memory footprint. Thus, using a 64 bit version really only makes sense with larger memory sizes."

or in even shorter....

'Only if you have 8GB RAM'

Illusions · May 2008

...the comments lead me to believe that the article you posted isn't entirely truthful owing to the fact that one of the commentators stating that there were 200 negative posts about the article (not the OS), that was wiped by Tomshardware...

Vista 64bit works fine. Yes it has helped also, I'm probably going to eventually install more ram as Maya has maxed it out at some points.

georgemancer · May 2008

Illusions wrote: »

...the comments lead me to believe that the article you posted isn't entirely truthful owing to the fact that one of the commentators stating that there were 200 negative posts about the article (not the OS), that was wiped by Tomshardware...

I read that comment also. Whether previous comments were wiped or not (who knows for what reason), the one paragraph I quoted is very logical. It won't necessarily hurt you to go from 32bit to 64bit with 4GB RAM but the gain (if any) is negligible to the point where I wouldn't bother.

I'm going to wager that eckre fellow is a conspiracy theorist. If people want to think the U.S. government staged 9/11 and the Moon landing was set in Hollywood, they're entitled to their opinions.

katzeimsack · May 2008

maya 64 seems to have less crashes (especially stuff which ran out of ram with only 32 bit, like combining huge objects or rendering lot's of polygons)

got 8 gigs of ram and vista 64, it's nice!
The downside is, that old soundcards and some random small devices aren't supported.

Illusions · May 2008

georgemancer wrote: »

I read that comment also. Whether previous comments were wiped or not (who knows for what reason), the one paragraph I quoted is very logical. It won't necessarily hurt you to go from 32bit to 64bit with 4GB RAM but the gain (if any) is negligible to the point where I wouldn't bother.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.html

Although the performance benefits of 64-bit are somewhat dubious on the desktop, a 64-bit OS absolutely essential if you run applications that need to use more than 2 GB of memory. It's not common, but we're getting there.

CompanionCube · May 2008

thanks guys

i think for now i'll get xp 64. i've been on some vista machines and just don't really like it ( i love the 3d chess though!) , only reason i think i would get would be for directX 10 but i've heard that 3ds max with directX 10 is kinda buggy. plus isn't windows 7 only about a year and a half away? as soon as i heard that i thought that even microsoft doesn't have much confidence in vista if they are already going to release next windows so soon.

Jonathan · May 2008

I have had a lot more issues with engine SDK/tools on Vista 64 machines than XP64. XP64 works great with Unreal Engine 3, CryEngine 2 (which has 64-bit versions of its editor/game), and IIRC, I have also used Source/Hammer SDK a bit with XP64, with no noticeable issues.

I also have used the Radiant editor for COD4 on XP64 as well, just not as much.

georgemancer · May 2008

Illusions wrote: »

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.html

I question if it would help to allow an application to use over 2GB RAM with a total availability of 4GB (whilst Vista x64 takes 750MB for itself, along with anything else that might be running). With that percent of usage, you'd have nothing left for system paging.

Illusions · May 2008

georgemancer wrote: »

I question if it would help to allow an application to use over 2GB RAM with a total availability of 4GB (whilst Vista x64 takes 750MB for itself, along with anything else that might be running). With that percent of usage, you'd have nothing left for system paging.

I've commonly hit 2.5-3 gig of memory used when batchrendering large scenes with Maya on a 64bit system with 4 gig of memory, and if I run orthos on the system, it will max out at 4 gig of memory used, so it is possible. Probably not as beneficial as using 64bit with 8 gigs, but still do-able.

Has 64bit helped anyone?

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