Windows XP 64-Bit Preview: First Look at Athlon 64 Performance
by Wesley Fink on February 7, 2004 12:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Media Encoding and Gaming
Benchmarks
Media Encoding
One area where Intel processors have enjoyed an
advantage over Athlon 64 is Media Encoding.
Many have expected that Media Encoding with 64-bit extensions would
erase that advantage. We ran the latest
XMPEG 5.0.3 with the latest DIVX codec 5.1.1 to compare encoding performance in
a common 2-pass setup.
|
Media Encoding - XMPEG 5.0
with DIVX 5.1. 1 |
|||
|
|
32-Bit (Windows XP SP1) |
64-Bit (XP64 Preview Edition) |
% Change 32 to 64-bit |
|
XMpeg 5.03/Divx 5.1.1 2-Pass |
58.7 fps |
67.8 fps |
+15.5% |
Keep in
mind that the software we used is not really written for 64-bit operation. Even so, we found 64-bit encoding to be 15.5%
faster than 32-bit. With 64-bit versions
of the encoding software we would expect even higher performance. Keep in mind that this is a preview version
of XP64, hampered by very early drivers, running an encoder optimized for
32-bit. It certainly appears that Media
Encoding under Windows XP64 will be a totally different animal.
Gaming
The Athlon
64 quickly distinguished itself as the Gaming CPU with its outstanding
performance in almost every 32-bit game.
With that kind of 32-bit advantage, we fully expected 64-bit gaming to
fly.
|
Game Performance - Athlon 64
FX51 |
|||
|
|
32-Bit (Windows XP SP1) Frames Per Second |
64-Bit (XP64 Preview) Frames Per Second |
% Change 32 to 64-bit |
|
Halo DX9.0b 1024x768 |
55.0 |
44.5 |
-19.1% |
|
Splinter Cell 1024x768 |
57.52 |
40.10 |
-30.3% |
|
X2 1024x768 |
135.9 |
130.1 |
-4.3% |
|
Quake 3 1024x768 |
482.0 |
235.0 |
-51.2 % |
|
Unreal Tournament 2003 - 1024x768 Flyby |
291.85 |
233.52 |
-19.0% |
|
Unreal Tournament 2003 - 1024x768 Botmatch |
112.46 |
88.21 |
-21.6% |
|
GunMetal 2 - Bench 2 DX9 1024x768 |
49.14 |
30.63 |
-37.7% |
|
GunMetal 2 - Bench 1 DX9 1024x768 |
39.93 |
26.50 |
-33.6% |
|
Comanche 4 1024x668 4AA |
71.24 |
52.35 |
-26.5% |
Gaming is
the one area in the preview that is a disappointment. As you can see, the standard benchmark games
under XP64 Preview were 4% to 51% slower than 32-bit, with the average speed
about 20% slower. It is far too early to
reach any conclusions in this area, but there is a lot of driver optimization
to be done to make up this kind of delta.
With the CPU and memory providing faster 64-bit performance, we have to
believe the drivers play a big part in this disappointing gaming performance.
Epic was
demonstrating UT 2004 64-bit at the release of the Athlon 64 last September,
and by all reports the performance was amazing. Perhaps we will only see the promised
advantage of 64-bit in games written or compiled for XP64. As we have already said, it is too early to
draw conclusions; We are only asking
questions. nVidia, ATI, Microsoft, and
chipset manufacturers really need to improve drivers to the point where 64-bit is at least on par with 32-bit when running 32-bit games. AMD
has argued all along the advantages of backwards compatibility with 32-bit
games. This will still be a 32-bit world
for a while and competitive gaming performance running 32-bit games is
extremely important. We fully expect
gaming to improve as we move toward the release of XP64. ATI has no published drivers for 64-bit, and
nVidia's release drivers now are nearly 3 months old. As we have seen over and over in the past,
drivers are what make the difference in games.
With the release of XP64 Preview we should now see ATI and nVidia making
giant strides in 64-bit graphics drivers.
Aquamark 3
would not run under XP64 preview, but the rest of our gaming benchmarks would
run. X2 has always had problems with
image tearing on nVidia cards and the image tearing is even worse in XP64, but the
benchmark does complete and provide believable results.
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Boonesmi - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link
sweet :)ksumom - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
Have any of you tried to hook a printer up to the windows 64 bit?My daughter is trying to find a printer thats compatable with it