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More on 64-bit Gaming
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."
Ok, nice. But where is the actual advantage ? Are the 64Bit features used anywhere or is it just an updated version to cope with 64 bit addressing or semething similar? The timing of the release seems to hint at this :)
this leaves AMD to court the gaming market
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).
A lot of people will buy 64 bit versions of games whether they really get any benefit from the 64 bitness or not. I don't know of many games that need to address more than 4 gigabytes of memory. Sure, there are a couple of other advantages (native 64 bit words, etc.), but this is really just marketing hype.
future of 64-bit gaming
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....
moo
Sorry, but when you say '64-bit gaming', I imagine actually playing the game on the 64-bit machine. In this case, they're talking about a dedicated server. Sorry, but that's not very exciting, nor is it an indication that AMD's getting the jump on Intel through the gaming market.
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?
Ok, so most of the FPS companies are great about releasing servers for linux, but only ID ever releases the game itself.
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!)
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Cool! A Counterstrike server! Now, where's the Linux client that we've been asking for for years, Valve?
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.
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I guess this begs the question, who cares? Counter-strike doesn't exactly take a $2000 server to run. I think something along the lines of a single AMD 1.4GHz with 256MB SDR SDRAM can run a 20-24 player server without much issue. Dual CPU DDR systems with 512MB shouldn't have any trouble running two 20 player servers. And I think I'm even being generously on the safe side.
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?
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