Slashdot Mirror
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."
The Jaguar was a 16-bit system. It used the same CPU as the Genesis, Motorola 68000. It did have a 64-bit graphic processor, but 64-bit graphic processors have been around in PC's since the 486 days. The N64, while it technically had a 64-bit CPU, was a 32-bit system. The entire motherboard was 32-bit, the CPU was multiplexed. The GC and PS2 are 64-bit (the PS2 uses a CPU that's a close relative of the N64 CPU, just a higher clock speed). The PS2 does, in addition to the main CPU, have two "vector unit" coprocessors, but that doesn't make it a 128-bit system. The PS2 does not have a GPU like the GC does, it's purely a rendering accelerator. It lacks most of the features of modern GPU's, for all intents and purposes it's a really really fast Voodoo1 (it doesn't even support multitexturing, which has been a staple since the Voodoo2). There isn't anything in there that makes it a 128-bit system.
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)
There's some new objects in the levels of the 64 bit game. Hardly anything to do with the amount of bits, but technically they are not lying for saying the content is exclusive for the 64 bit version. As long as they avoid saying those objects could not have been there with 32 bit hardware.
Okay, the screenshots published by Atari and AMD were deceptive, but they have now removed those too.
Bot Assisted Blogging
Why do I always feel compelled to respond to these trivial bits of misinformation on obsolete consoles?
The Jaguar did indeed contain a Motorola 68000, but it even though it was the only CISC chip in the system it was not the CPU. The system did not have a single CPU, rather any of five processors (two of which were in fact 64 bit devices) could take over the system bus and thus function as CPU. It was this flexible hierarchy that made the Jaguar so difficult to program, resulting in many developers relying on the familair 68000 as the system workhorse (even though it was actually intended originally for housekeeping and to handle controller input), which resulted in the common misconception that the Jag was a 16 bit machine.
The "bitness" of any given system is arguable anyway, and of less significance with each passing generation. NEC first blurred the lines by claiming the TurboGrafx-16 was a 16 bit console based on it's video chip, and the waters have become muddier with each generation. IMHO the Jaguar was the system to finally prove such labels had become worthless. There are three common definitions used to describe a systems "bitness": CPU register width, GPU register width, and system bus width. But more and more it is the overall system efficiency that produces impressive performance, something better measured by standardized benchmarks than the PR hype attached to just one of a system's specifications.
BTW, just for grins, the first console with a 16-bit CPU was the Intellivision. If only George Plimpton had known!
Must... think up... something... clever!
Here is AMD's PR about this game. Here is Firing Squad's review with ATI cards and mentions Athlon 64 briefly.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Back when the PII was being launched with MMX, Intel gave the company I worked for then some money to help develop a game we were writing. A version would be bundled with new PII machines that would take advantage of MMX instructions and provide some extra features.
As it turned out, MMX wasn't all that well suited for gaming but we had some stuff in there that used MMX to generate some procedural textures on the fly, that kind of thing.
We shipped the code to Intel, and it went out with lots of Intel machines.
Later we shipped the retail version of the game - still 'enhanced for MMX'.
However, I was later working on a patch, or new networking code for the game or something (I don't remember exactly now), when I came across the source of the main bit that did the procedural textures. It had a check in to see if you had MMX and was meant to use it, falling back on a normal ASM bit if you didn't. There was also the reference C version still hanging around in the code that we had originally tested with.
When I looked at the code however, it turned out that some bright spark had obviously #ifdeffed out the ASM and MMX versions while tracking down a bug or something and had forgotten to put them back.
The version we originally shipped contained no MMX code.
Oooops.
I think some of the later builds we did (including I think the American version, as it came out some time later in the States than it did in Europe) actually had the MMX stuff all working, but it just goes to show that much of this stuff is marketing hype...