64 bit amd?

[Tron]

Originally posted by Automaggin2


I trust only tomshardware.com

How much did intel pay you to say that?

[Miscue]

Originally posted by Fixion


This isn't a scheme. Its an extention to the addressing instruction set of processors.

!!!!!

YOU CANNOT MAKE THE REGISTERS BIGGER! Whatever method it uses to access more memory than the original CPU could address, is an extention, scheme, or whatever you want to call it. And, there is overhead involved - adding more complication than normal memory addressing. There is a trade-off - and you would use this memory extention when the benefits of more memory and less page faults outweigh the additional overhead.

I'm talking about the capabilities and capacity of a car, not one with a tow hitch and a trailer on it. That's a special situation, and not something to bring up when talking about CPU architecture... or comparing a car to another car.

[Miscue]

Originally posted by Buff


why is it faster? uhm....they took the Athlon core, updated it, put the memory controller on-chip(very LL), gave it dual-channel ram, gave it a 1.6ghz HT bus, and a few other things, and then 64bit extensions. All I know is that under WinXP-64 Beta, it encodes media stuff, etc 20% faster then in WinXP-32. I dont own one yet though....So thats a rough estimate. I guess i'll learn more later this year when I start my education as a computer engineer

o ya, talking about ram, I saw an Opteron 2xx board that had room for 16x2gig ram slots....
wow. might make a nice rig for HL2.....

No kidding Sherlock! Improving the architecture makes it faster. I'm not talking Athlon, Intel, etc. I'm talking Processor X that is 64-bit, and Processor Y that is nearly identical to processor X except that it is 32-bit. If they are EXACTLY the same except for this, the 32-bit CPU will on average be faster! Why? Cache misses, among other issues. You get big time performance drops when you get cache misses or page faults. 64-bit CPUs use up cache twice as fast, and you get performance hits quicker.

Contrary to popular belief, a 64-bit CPU doesn't let you process double the information in the way people think it does. If everything else is exactly the same, a 64-bit CPU gets 10 instructions computed in the same time it takes a 32-bit CPU - taking cache out of the picture.

What it does let you use are larger data types with larger ranges or higher precision. This typically isn't beneficial unless you are doing some number crunching or scientific computing. Video games for instance, will take a performance hit going to 64-bit. (YES, I KNOW that a 64-bit Athlon is faster for games but it is NOT because it is 64-bit, it's the other technology)

I'm not talking about a 32-bit AMD versus a 64-bit AMD - they have different architectures and there's a lot of things different than whether it is 64 or 32 bit. I'm talking about IDENTICAL architectures and the nature of a 64-bit CPU vs. a 32-bit CPU.

So what I'm saying is, 64-bit CPUs are not faster because they are 64-bit. And modern CPUs are not entirely 64-bit (This has NOTHING to do with backward compatibility). For instance, they will let you use 32-bit data types instead of having to use 64 exclusively... so you don't have the problem of unnecessarily increased cache misses like I mentioned. Basically, they allow the usage of both worlds - using what's fast about 32-bit processing, and what is fast about 64-bit processing... and then throwing on other features that speed it up.

These new chips... they are not 64-bit or 32-bit. They are both... hybrids. (Once again, I am not talking about 32-bit mode backward compatibility).