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  • Maybe you did not read my post, you can certainly start 64 bit apps from a 32 bit client - therefore you do need to not change it, but you dont get the community features that steam provides. Maybe it could be done with a 64 bit overlay that the app itself preloads in that case. Install World of Goo and Amnesia and see yourself what i mean. I highly doubt that there is one game out here that runs faster when using 64 bit but some games have got sound issues. With direct pulse audio support this should be easy to fix however.

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    • Originally posted by blackout23 View Post
      Hear it from the master:



      PAE really really sucks. The biggest single reason to go 64-bit is exactly because of physical address space. Your virtual address space needs to bea multiple of the physical one: when you hit 1GB …


      Linus just nails it sometimes.

      Still think it is a good idea to release 32 bit only software on linux when all you have to do is run the compiler again to get some 64 bit binaries?
      Ever wondered why Linux supported 64 bit software from day one and everything is available for 64 bit. Because it is god damn easy!
      Much as I do with religious nutjobs, I don't care what your prophet says or what desktop environment he runs. If you must run to a quote by someone else because they say a thing you don't know how to, you don't have much of an argument.

      And I do still play and enjoy both Daggerfall and the original DOOM.

      Comment


      • Originally posted by blackout23 View Post
        Still think it is a good idea to release 32 bit only software on linux when all you have to do is run the compiler again to get some 64 bit binaries?
        *rolls eyes* FYI, taking a 32-bit application code and trying to make 64-bit binaries is not as easy as "all you have to do is run the compiler again". It would be nice, but it just doesn't work that way.

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        • Originally posted by deanjo View Post
          *rolls eyes* FYI, taking a 32-bit application code and trying to make 64-bit binaries is not as easy as "all you have to do is run the compiler again". It would be nice, but it just doesn't work that way.
          it isn't easy in 2 cases:
          you are
          1. using assembler / JIT compiler / virtual machine
          2. lame developer creating poor code

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          • Originally posted by JS987 View Post
            it isn't easy in 2 cases:
            you are
            1. using assembler / JIT compiler / virtual machine
            2. lame developer creating poor code
            When you are dealing with older code it is still not as simple as that. You also have to look for pointers to ints and vice versa, dumps of structures to disk/network, printf specifiers, the use of long, etc.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by JS987 View Post
              it isn't easy in 2 cases:
              you are
              1. using assembler / JIT compiler / virtual machine
              2. lame developer creating poor code
              I'm leery of simple fixes and solutions because I often find them to be fundamentally flawed in some way. The thing about just re-running the compiler seems to fit into the "too easy" category. The "poor code" thing strikes me as boilerplate as well.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by Larian View Post
                I'm leery of simple fixes and solutions because I often find them to be fundamentally flawed in some way. The thing about just re-running the compiler seems to fit into the "too easy" category. The "poor code" thing strikes me as boilerplate as well.
                You should be leery. Besides some of the above mentioned hurdles in my previous post, if you are going to port to 64-bit you might as well add some 64-bit specific instructions and optimizations or else there is little reason to compile a 64-bit binary other then the fact of having to have 32-bit compatibility libs on the system.

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                • Originally posted by Kano View Post
                  Maybe you did not read my post, you can certainly start 64 bit apps from a 32 bit client - therefore you do need to not change it, but you dont get the community features that steam provides. Maybe it could be done with a 64 bit overlay that the app itself preloads in that case. Install World of Goo and Amnesia and see yourself what i mean. I highly doubt that there is one game out here that runs faster when using 64 bit but some games have got sound issues. With direct pulse audio support this should be easy to fix however.
                  You've raised a very good point there with the community features/overlay. Just spelling it out again: If _any_ game sold through steam has a 32 bit version, and they want overlay support, steam would need to bring in a whole bunch of 32-bit libs that the overlay library links to so that it can be used. The same goes with 64 bit games ran from a 32-bit client. The only case where Valve won't need to deal with multilib systems is if they make it a requirement that all game devs provide 64-bit and 32-bit versions of their games, while valve provide both 64 bit and 32 bit steam clients.

                  And those saying that 32-bit is dead, there's still plenty of 32-bit CPUs out there. Why don't you tell Intel it's dead:

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Kamikaze View Post
                    You've raised a very good point there with the community features/overlay. Just spelling it out again: If _any_ game sold through steam has a 32 bit version, and they want overlay support, steam would need to bring in a whole bunch of 32-bit libs that the overlay library links to so that it can be used. The same goes with 64 bit games ran from a 32-bit client. The only case where Valve won't need to deal with multilib systems is if they make it a requirement that all game devs provide 64-bit and 32-bit versions of their games, while valve provide both 64 bit and 32 bit steam clients.

                    And those saying that 32-bit is dead, there's still plenty of 32-bit CPUs out there. Why don't you tell Intel it's dead:
                    http://ark.intel.com/products/70105
                    The Atom Z is an embedded processor, you can not buy any desktops or notebooks with it. (and you don't want to have an atom for gaming at all)

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Kamikaze View Post
                      And those saying that 32-bit is dead, there's still plenty of 32-bit CPUs out there. Why don't you tell Intel it's dead:
                      http://ark.intel.com/products/70105
                      I think everyone is meaning it is dead on the desktop, not on a tablet (which is what that series of atom is for).

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