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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42 Comments
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Jeff7181 - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link
Very nice. This is reminding me of the Windows 3.1 > Windows 95 switch.PrinceGaz - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link
Just to add to what I said, it would be beneficial if AnandTech ran all CPU article game tests at 640x480 to reduce the impact of the graphics-card as past reviews have shown that some of them are gfx-card bound.PrinceGaz - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link
Its clear from those results that uaing an Athlon 64 with a 64-bit O/S will certainly give considerable performance improvements with many applications and perform at least as well in everything else.Equally clear is that the poor gaming results in this test are caused by immature/unoptimised AGP GART chipset and/or graphics-card drivers as all the other tests which weren't dependent on what was sent to the graphics-card showed the A64 doing at least as well as in 32-bit mode and usually somewhat better. Changing from 32-bit to 64-bit mode obviously isn't going to hamper the transfer of data down the AGP/PCI-Express bus (quite the opposite with suitable drivers) so I'd expect games to show similar performance gains to other apps once the drivers are mature.
INTC - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link
Here is a description of the different modes of AMD64 operations:http://www.lostcircuits.com/cpu/amd_a64fx51/7.shtm...
It looks like WOW is okay but until applications are recompiled for full 64-bit the advantages are absent and there may even be some penalty for "Compatibility" mode as seen in the gaming scores.
It will be interesting to see what Intel will have at IDF in a few weeks.
Pumpkinierre - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link
This OS has been written for the a64 which from memory has 3 modes of operation: full64bit, 32bit emulation and something in between. You mention DX-32bit(post #13) so can this OS run in 32bit mode. If so, you could run the games benchmarks using 32bit drivers and Win64. If scores were still the same then the OS would be to blame not the drivers.Still, good to see movement on the 64bit front. I suspect that Intel's recent announcements have something to do with this. Perhaps Win64 is not coded for A64 alone. Nevertheless, it cant but help a64 sales.
tolgae - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link
Well, nobody seems to mention the fact that many of these apps (games especially) are running under WOW64. It is normal that such losses are happening. The CPU can run 32-bit natively very well, but now applications are going through this extra layer (being "converted" on the fly, in a sense) so that they can run on 64-bit OS. As with everything else about the Windows XP 64-bit, I am sure this will be optimized until the product ships (even after that).mattsaccount - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link
The important thing to keep in mind is that this is not the final release of Windows 64 bit, unlike Prescott :) Nobody would use this BETA OS in a production environment.The way I interpret these results is like so. The improvements are real and will still be present when Windows 64 final (whatever it's called) is shipped. The applications with poor performance (i.e. games) will probably improve by the time the OS ships and we should therefore withhold judgement.
raskren - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link
Wow what a hit in the gaming department! I expected to a see a modest gain in everything, but the tiny boost in 64bit apps and the huge loss in games makes the Prescott look a lot better.Wesley Fink - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link
Splinter Cell has been added to the Game Benchmark comparison.XP64 uses DirectX 64 and a Direct X 32-bit version. We were told there may be a problem with enabling DirectX 64 in this Preview Edition. We did run DXDiag for 64-bits and checked to make sure DX64 was enabled. We then reran several game benchmarks and got essentially the same results as those posted in this review.
We will be on the lookout for updated graphics drivers and will report what we find.
klah - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link
The Nvidia driver is still very slow and buggy. OpenGL actually runs faster in software mode with this driver.http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000257