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64-bit Performance
The main thing about the Athlon 64 is its 64 bit data path that can only be put to work using a 64-bit operating system and 64-bit applications. The version of Windows XP we received is a beta version, with a few alleged bugs. The 64-bit chipset drivers worked ok in most situations, however, for example, there was no way to running the ATI RADEON cards, that is, as soon as the nForce3 drivers were loaded, we would only get a blank screen with the monitor going into standby mode.
Not that the situation was much better with the nVidia GeForce FX5900 Ultra. The card would run, but the performance would take a hit in the order of 25 % compared to the same application running in a 32bit environment, that is, e.g. Comanche4 scores dropped from 74 fps to 60 fps.
We also had a copy of 64-bit Unreal Tournament, unfortuntately, the performance hit was just as bad or even worse. To try whether this performance hit was symptomatic for running in 64-bit Compatibility vs 32-bit Legacy (protected) mode, we ran a few other applications like e.g. Amorphium3, which, surprisingly, ran actually faster under WindowsXP-64 than in the standard WindowsXP. The differences were less than 1% improvement for WinXP-64, which is in accordance with our expectations. However, it clearly shows that, per se, one should neither expect any performance degradation nor any improvement in legacy applications. Rather, the poor results we saw in some gaming benchmarks should be attributed to immature drivers, which could be either GART or video drivers.
We tried a few other applications like e.g. Cachemem, which, as a 16-bit DOS application did not run ... - so what?
The Gretchen question of course is, what happens in 64-bit applications or in applications that have been ported to 64-bit mode. Already, there are numerous programs out there that are ready for launch and of particular interest for e.g. chip designers, Cadence is one of them just as one example, however, the licensing costs and lack of proper database are prohibitive for its use as a common test bench. For the time being, there are only a few selected programs that are available and can be used for testing without being limited by e.g graphics driver issues.
DivX 503 Media Encoder
We tested DivX 503 Encodemain within Windows XP-64 using both the 64-bit and the 32-bit version where the latter would run in WoW mode
Runtime in seconds, lower is better: a 211 MB sample .avi file is converted into a .bit file.
It certainly appears as if porting 32-bit software to a 64-bit OS will make some difference. The gain we saw is acceptable but not earth shattering, though, but keep in mind that different applications will benefit more ot less.
Another genre of application that may benefit from a 64 bit code centers around compression algorithms. We ran MiniGZip in both 64-bit mode and in compatibility mode using the ZLib 1.1.4 compression library and here is where we might have caught the first glimpse into the 64-bit future of computing. The near future, that is.
Runtime in seconds, lower is better: A 23 MB text file is compressed into a .gz format. We used the -f switch for compressed with Z-filtered and -6 to specify the compression level. Over 60% savings in 64-bit over the WoW mode are extremely impressive. Surprisingly, the Athlon XP3200+ beats the FX51 by a nose length in 32 mode.
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