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64-Bit Gaming Oversold to Consumers
Ryan Shrout writes "Recently AMD and Atari have both been promoting the game "Shadow Ops: Red Mercury" as the first 64-bit game to hit retail shelves. Even without an operating system ready for it, both companies want us to believe that the 64-bit version of the game adds a large amount of detail and visual quality that the 32-bit version just can't handle. PC Perspective decided to go buy the game and test those claims."
64 bit proccessors are still new, and aren't going to crush 32 bit anytime soon. As the article mentions, the only difference between the two versions they noticed was the 64bit had the extra things like rocks and stuff. Although things like that do take up substantial computing power, todays 64bit proccessors aren't going to have an easier time doing it then the 32bit counterparts. So we can conclude (as the article suggests) that they were added in there just for marketing purposes.
Once RAM gets cheaper, then 64bit gaming will start to seperate from 32bit. 64bit processors pass the 4GB RAM barrier that 32bit ones are stuck by. I think the maximum is around 16exabytes or soemthing (it goes GB, TB, PB, EB) Also, in a few years the fabrication proccess will have advanced, allowing them to stick more transistors on a chip (which isn't a benifit of 64bit or anything, but by that time theyre gonna at least be slowing production on 32bit proccessors if not completly stopped)