More on 64-bit Gaming 246
waytoomuchcoffee writes "Valve has announced "immediate availability" of a linux 64-bit dedicated Counterstrike server, designed to run on AMD's upcoming Opteron. This follows on the heels of Unreal Tournament 2003, previously reported on Slashdot. Gamespy has a related story up on a presentation of the future of 64-bit gaming (sponsored by AMD) at last week's Game Developers Conference. As Intel is in no hurry to make the jump to 64-bit desktops, this leaves AMD to court the gaming market."
Yes ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yes ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yes ... (Score:2)
Re:Yes ... (Score:2, Funny)
Don't try this at home.
Re:Yes ... (Score:2)
Re:Yes ... (Score:2)
I need to get off my ass and work more
advantage ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:advantage ? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:advantage ? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:advantage ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, but why?
You wouldn't have the same accuracy that you would get from using floats
Correct...
it's a nice middle-ground between 32-bit ints, floats, and double-precision floats
Absolutely wrong. Anything that is going to be scaled or rotated (think matrix transformations, vector multiplication, and physics calculations) needs to have floating point representation, unless the processor architecture is incapable of it (the Gameboy Advance or other embedded platforms, say). You can have pseudo floating point with ints (last x bits are behind the decimal, say), but the software needs to do extra work: there's special cases for multiplication, etc. Most processors these days are designed to do floating point operations as fast as anything else, so adding unnecessary overhead that ignores basic funtionality would be stupid.
If you have a 64-bit cpu, use 64-bit floats instead of 32. 64-bit floats are superior for games because of increased dynamic range for lighting (less color banding with scaling) and other values, and of course less floating point round-off errors (less matrix drift).
Game servers do no graphical calculations, so there's no advantage there, but some of the physics could be done centrally to prevent the clients from making up their own and cheating.
64 bit is not the only way... (Score:4, Insightful)
making 64 bit chips is not the only way to "court" the gaming market. I'm sure intel has other plans for bigger (read: smaller) and better chips. Eventually I think they will start to make the 64's, but for now they're making chips with Hyper Threading (great for game servers).
64-bit desktops (Score:5, Insightful)
making 64 bit chips is not the only way to "court" the gaming market. I'm sure intel has other plans for bigger (read: smaller) and better chips. Eventually I think they will start to make the 64's, but for now they're making chips with Hyper Threading (great for game servers).
Correct. However, I have to think--
THe reason why Intel is not interested in the 64-bit desktop is because there isn't really a market for it.
The reason why AMD is interested in the 64-bit desktop is that since their chip is backwards compatible, they can use an existing market to subsidize their push into the high end.
So the problems that Intel has with this market have been deftly dodged by AMD, in what may be an incredible business move. However, that does come at the price of legacy support. Of course at this time, I think that is not an issue, but it may hinder AMD's push into the high end.
Re:64-bit desktops (Score:2, Interesting)
THe reason why Intel is not interested in the 64-bit desktop is because there isn't really a market for it.
a market for it yet... I'm no business major, but do you think they're waiting for AMD to make a market for it? They'll be way behind on developement, but they don't have to spend any money on advertising the "NEW" 64 bit chips
Re:64-bit desktops (Score:2)
Well, this is an interesting question. The thing is that the Itanium chips are not backwards compatible so without emulation, you can't run your standard 32-bit applications. AMD, OTOH....
So, Intel's problem is that in deciding to try to compete in the 64bit space, they have also decided not to support 32-bit binaries the way did with ther 32-bit chips and 16-bit applications. The idea is that support for all this legacy stuff may not be very productive and may hurt them in the high end. This precludes using the Itanium on the desktop for the forseable future (too expensive).
AMD's approach seems to be that low-cost solutions will sell. So they are trying to push a 64-bit desktop in the hopes that a less expensive (but maybe less efficient) processor might be "good enough" for the server. On the surface it is AMD who appears to be foolish, but I am not so sure.
Re:64-bit desktops (Score:2)
In the consumer space you are correct, but I don't think Intel would sneeze at the workstation market than Sun et al sell into.
However, that does come at the price of legacy support. Of course at this time, I think that is not an issue, but it may hinder AMD's push into the high end.
If Apple/Motorola can do it, Intel can do it.
Nonsense! (Score:5, Funny)
WHOA! What about the Commodore 64?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Jaguar was even earlier.. (Score:2)
Re:Jaguar was even earlier.. (Score:3, Informative)
The Jaguar was not 64-bit. They were using the same kind of math that the RIAA used to say that somebody had more CD burners than they really did. "We have more processors, that means we have more bits to play with!"
To put it another way, it was like saying my dual Athlon machine is 64-bit.
Re:Jaguar was even earlier.. (Score:2)
Re:Jaguar was even earlier.. (Score:2)
Heh yeah the Jaguar was a pretty piddly machine. Honestly, it had trouble keeping up with the older 3DO machine. (although Tempest 2000 was the only game that really put the Jag through it's paces...)
Just as a side note, the 3DO had some embarrasing shortcomings as well, the main one being the price. Some people thought that 3DO stood for "Doh! Doh! Doh!"
Re:Jaguar was even earlier.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Jaguar was even earlier.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Jaguar was even earlier.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
Then just don't buy Celda (Score:2, Interesting)
I want to look into my 3D monitor and see a monster; not a cartoon.
Everybody who has preordered The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, where everything looks like a cartoon, disagrees with you.
Re:Then just don't buy Celda (Score:2)
I don't give a damn what graphic style Nintendo chooses for their games.. since they are one of the last game developers actually making FUN GAMES instead of barely interactive movies, I'll keep buying from them.
Not true! What about IL-2, LO-MAC, ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not true! What about IL-2, LO-MAC, ... (Score:2)
Re:Not true! What about IL-2, LO-MAC, ... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
-prator
Re:Well (Score:2)
Re:Well (Score:3, Informative)
Is 130% not good enough? (Score:2)
Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well (Score:2)
Re:PXE Jackass (Score:2)
But it's NOT 64-bit code! (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like they are simply re-compiling with a new tool chain; nothing about actually changing the code base to take specific advantage of Opteron features. Still, kudos to their coders if their code base just works on 64 bit platforms; there'll be plenty out there that won't, despite availability of the SDKs and programming guides like this [microsoft.com] and this [microsoft.com]
Jon.
Re:But it's NOT 64-bit code! (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes it is (Score:2, Informative)
Linux kernel works in similar way, if you compile some file on x86 you get a 32bit code, if you compile it on 64bit machine you get a 64bit code.
Re:Yes it is (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yes it is (Score:2)
When Linux was ported to Alpha (the first 'official' port, BTW), it ran into many problems because of certain assumptions made by developers when writing code for x86 that was then ported to the Alpha. The worst assumption was that an int is always 32 bits, and that it matches the length of a pointer.
On a 64-bit platform, where the ints are 32-bit, you'll lose the top 32 bits of a pointer if you try and cram it into an integer. Unfortunately, there's a lot of code out there that does exactly that.
mooooooovin on up (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:mooooooovin on up (Score:4, Funny)
Re:mooooooovin on up (Score:2)
64 bits!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
64 bits BAHHH, back in my day we had 2, and we were happy with the both of them! Youngsters.
but can you imagine... how may players could be on one server tht has over 4 gigs ram, 4 of them athlon 64 cpus, and one massive pipe to the net. Imagine your favorite CS map, but with 500 people on it at once... chicken shoot.
Ohh yeah and can you imagine a soviet beowulf cluster of these?
wow... my first all in one post. Lord help me.
Re:64 bits!!!! (Score:2)
Re:64 bits!!!! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
64bit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Didnt we learn from past descussions that word length has nothing to do with how good games are... remeber the jaguar?
I think the n64 was a good step forward, but then the xbox is 32bit yet far superior....
Re:64bit? (Score:3, Funny)
When I was in school at the time the jaguar came out, I remeber a mate of mine who thought that becauase it had 4 64bit processers(thats what he thought), 32 bit sound and what not ment it added up to (((64*4)+32)+N)bits or something like that.. its really crazy.. but thats how it is.. the bigger the number the better the "bang!"
At the end of the day you have to laugh..
Re:64bit? (Score:2)
This ambiguity has spawned many, many debates, far too many for a half-assed attempt at a console system like Atari's Jaguar, which did everything wrong.
I don't have a problem! (Score:5, Funny)
Wait a sec (Score:2)
Not really 64-bit gaming... (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that AMD'd have one up on Intel if they did get 64-bit gaming going, but dedicated servers are not going to create a new market. Give me a game that runs noticably better on a 64-bit processor. For example, what extra can they do with Doom III?
Re:Not really 64-bit gaming... (Score:2)
I'm tired of treating linux dedicated servers as big news. Seems a lot of people see the word linux and then ignore the words "dedicated server" immediately following it. I like to think of it as the intentionally blind affect (pull the wool over your eyes and chant tralalalala, happy place everything is going along nicely now).
Evidentally, enough people run the dedicated server under linux to make it worthwhile to keep an up to date port of it, but they're not willing to put forth the effort to actually port the game (and half-life has only been around for HOW long now?).
Doubt we'll need 64-bit computing power to have 500 people playing on a counterstrike server. Doom 3 however....
Re:Not really 64-bit gaming... (Score:3, Insightful)
Read it on slashdot maby (a do not know), and that
it gave some 10% speed increase from the 32-bit
version (both running on an hammer). I do not
think it gained any increase in speed with 64-bit
types, the increase came from the that more
registers are avaible in 64-bit mode.
Server, great (Score:5, Insightful)
There STILL isn't a linux version of half-life OR counterstrike that can be played natively under linux... unless you count WINE (not an emulator, still not native).
So for those of you that still have windows boxes and a linux box to dabble with, this is great news I'm sure. Those of us who have gone Linux native however, still can't game... 64 bit or 32 bit. (We gots 16 and 8 bit console emulated ROMs tho!)
Re:Server, great (Score:2)
Re:Server, great (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Server, great (Score:2)
I don't care how many dorks keep saying that "Wine Is Not an Emulator", but it is. FFS. It's not windows. It pretends to be windows, ie it EMULATES windows... Not all of it, it's not as good as a whole PC emulator, but it's still an emulator.
</rant>
Cool! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cool! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cool! (Score:5, Funny)
Half-Life for Mac (Score:2)
Anyone who knows the story of Half-Life for Mac will tell you that you shouldn't hold your breath.
Here's the story... Valve commissioned a port of Half-Life to the Mac, and it would have hit the shelves back in late 1999, a year after the PC version was released and declared a smash hit. Mac gamers were clamoring for it, and of course, there were a lot of fan sites that had already sprung up.
The code was nearly finished. Sierra was less than a week away from mass producing CD's when Gabe Newell of Valve announced the cancellation of the project. Why, because Valve didn't think they'd make money on the project? No, HL for Mac was destined to be a smash hit; DukeNukem 3D for Mac made back all of its development costs the same day it went on sale, and Half-Life for Mac was looking to be as big, if not bigger. No, Valve's problem was that they wanted to build a brand, not simply sell a game; in order to do that, they planned early on that they would make frequent patches to the game.
The problem is that the Mac port would also have to be updated frequently, and the Mac developers would have to port every patch after its release, including all of the bugs and flaws, in order to maintain full compatibility. It also meant that Mac users would frequently be cut off from the PC users during the lag time between the release of the PC patch and its conversion to the Mac. According to Valve, they decided at the last possible moment that they didn't want Mac users complaining all the time, so they kill the Mac version altogether and pissed of a WHOLE lotta people in the process.
Valve doesn't have a problem releasing HL for consoles, obviously, because they couldn't update that code even if they wanted to, so the consoles are off in their own HL universe.
It should also be noted for the record that Gabe Newell of Valve was also a senior manager at Microsoft for a long time before starting Valve, so you can't rule out the possibility that he probably feels very loyal to the Windows platform, and has little to no enthusiam for the minority platforms.
So... Half-Life for Linux or Mac? It'll never happen.
Nice way to benchmark (Score:5, Interesting)
n-Bit gaming (Score:5, Funny)
Valve? Of all devs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who in their right mind is going to run Counter-strike servers on expensive 64bit chips when a $40 CPU and pre-DDR architecture has no trouble at all?
Re:Valve? Of all devs... (Score:3, Insightful)
But that's not really where these CPUs are going to have the most impact. They'll be great for databases and the like, but for gamers the 64-bit CPUs are going to really kick into gear as backends for all the upcoming MMORPGs. That extra address space can go along way when you're hosting servers that contain 1000's of people. And for games like Neverwinter Nights? Well, you just never know what might happen...
Bryan
Re:Valve? Of all devs... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Valve? Of all devs... (Score:3, Interesting)
CPU AMD XP1800, ATI9700/Audigy1, runs 100fps average on both server/client, but if I enable EAX it dips to 40's due to CPU load. Also AA turned on in the client doesnt seem to effect the server running in the background, so I run about 4x AA with 16x AF. (No trueform enabled)
But this is just for localized playing. Game hosting companies might use this 64bit machines. They need to run multiple copies on the same machine to turn a profit. We currently rent a CS server process at http://rentals.nuclearfallout.net/ [nuclearfallout.net] for a 24 users. I know they run at least 4 cs processes per server. You can tell by the way which your CS server uses ports 27015-27018, unless they bind a CS server to an IP. (Hey can I patent that? j/k)
Re:Valve? Of all devs... (Score:2)
All those wallhacks are a bitch on your server resources, believe me. By the time the Opteron will become commercially viable, you will NEED that 4+GB of RAM just to run the latest aimbot and it wouldn't hurt if those AMD lads figure out how to copy HyperThreading as well... :D
Wow (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:x86-64 also supports (Score:2)
Quite possibly SSE2 support is a bigger short-term
gain than 64-bits because many applications are
"tuned" for SSE2 use. By supporting SSE2 (and possibly,
later Hyper-Threading) AMD will immediately increase
performance. Creating a new "set" like "3dnow Extra"
is much less likely to get developer support so fast.
After all, SSE2 is not such a bad idea!
P.
P.S. Don't get me wrong, x86-64 is cool, but it isn't
something you will immediately enjoy with games
and commercial (!open source) apps. Maybe in a
few months....
Re: (Score:2)
makes sense... (Score:5, Funny)
Well yea, have you SEEN Intel's attempt at 64 bits?
cheater (Score:4, Funny)
What's the deal with Valve? (Score:5, Interesting)
And then... lots of nothing. Half-Life: Opposing Force and Half-Life: Blue Shift were done by Gearbox. Counter-strike was mostly done by people outside Valve.
Did Valve lay off most of the people who worked on Half-Life? If not, how are they paying all those salaries? Does Valve have any actual projects in the pipeline (little pun there) or is Team Fortress 2 all they are working on? (And does anyone think TF2 will actually ever ship?)
For that matter, who the heck is Gearbox? Was it spun off in some way from Valve, or is it something else? How big is Gearbox?
I think that something really bad must have happened to Valve. But I don't have any idea what it was.
steveha
Re:What's the deal with Valve? (Score:4, Informative)
It's been leaked at some news sources such as www.ve3d.com that Valve are currently busy with Half-Life 2. One of the general theories out there is that this Half Life will have Team Fortress 2 included, or at least integrated with HL2. Most of us are also assuming that Valve has changed engines for the new games or are basically building their own.
At any rate, they're working on something, they're just taking their sweet time with it and not releasing any information about it. They've probably learned a thing or two from Duke Nukem Forever.
Re:What's the deal with Valve? (Score:2)
So they either still have a huge staff and are working on something new or just have an even larger churn rate.
Confusing (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps I missed this gigantic discovery over the past year or so, and in which case I retract my statement. But if it's still an issue, this really seems like putting the cart before the horse.
Wait a second (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wait a second (Score:2)
The increase was 30% _clock-for-clock_, so the clockspeed is irrelevant in this comparison. Hammer running at 2GHz (for example) using x86-64 is 30% faster than it's 32bit cousin at 2GHz when running CS dedicated server.
Re:Wait a second (Score:2)
Re:Wait a second (Score:2)
Chances are the compiler for 64 bit is NOT AS GOOD as the 32bit compiler, due to inexperience with optimization on the new platform. And other than 64 bit and the register changes that accompany that, most of the architecture between the two are identical.
So the answer is: Good chance that ALL of the gain was due to the jump to 64 bits.
quote me (Score:5, Funny)
the reality of it (Score:2, Insightful)
So uh - whats wrong with the servers we have now (Score:2)
What do I think? WOOP DE FREAKIN DO! It won't affects pings and thats all the people playing on the servers should care about - that and the server has sufficient power.
And on a related note (Score:2, Funny)
yep (Score:2, Insightful)
BF1942 (Score:2)
What about SPARC (Score:2, Interesting)
64-bit HLDS, Right? (Score:2)
64-bit *PC* gaming (Score:2)
Re:64-bit counterstrike ... why? (Score:3, Informative)
To some it doesn't matter, but in a competitive environment, you want the fastest shit you can find. And spreading that across 2-4 boxes makes management a bitch. Not mentioning other servers for other games being run at the same time.
Now, the funny question, is what is the CPL going to do, since it's an Intel sponsored event. Although I won't disagree that some dual 3ghz+ xeon servers w/ scsi and dual channel ddr don't already make great game servers for my needs.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)