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LOSTCIRCUITS	SHORTCUTS: Another $64-bit Question PanoramaFactory Revisited Test Configurations Wizard and Stitch Alignment and Geometry Transformations Redering and Blending The Final Crop Conclusions Give Us Some Feedback on this Review
Intel Pentium4 600 64-bit Performance PanoramaFactory Revisited
(Review by MS March 2, 2005)

Conclusions

WoW vs. WinXP-32

We have read it over and again, and especially in the last few days that WindowsXP-64 is slower than WindowsXP-32, at least when it comes to 32-bit applications. We can extend this statement to include 64-bit applications as well, as we showed on the last page, writing the finished image to the hard disk takes longer in 64-bit mode than in 32-bit mode. The simple explanation is that there are drivers involved and these drivers are not yet as optimized as those running in 32-bit mode. The same goes for about every other application that we have seen elsewhere, they were all more or less driver dependent. In other words and pardon my perkiness, it is not an issue of running in 64-bit mode that slows things down, it is an issue of drivers and those are improved on a daily basis. Well, make that monthly...

In our original review of PanoramaFactory, we included a comparison between the native 32-bit environment and the WoW emulation and there were hardly any differences notable, on the other hand, it is no secret that even in a standard 32-bit OS setup, for example the version of graphics drivers used can make quite a dent in one or the other benchmark. In so far, I feel comfortable to dispel the negative impact of 64-bit computing on 32-bit applications as more or less coincidental rather than a necessary evil we will have to live with.

One thing that emerged somehow between the lines of the benchmarks is that the Athlon64 appears to be able to get more mileage out of 64-bit computing than the P4. That does not mean that the P4 fares poorly, on the contrary, a number of disciplines were taken with bravado by Intel's latest and greatest. On the other hand, the "clamshell" pattern of the Athlon64, coming in last in 32-bit and literally stepping all over the P4 in 64-bit mode shows a little bit of the difference between a processor architecture specifically developed for 64-bit computing as opposed to one that was patched to accomodate the latest developements in personal computing. Again, the P4 performs anything but poorly but we don't see that huge performance jump between 32-bit and 64-bit environments.

All of the above aside, PanoramaFactory is just one application but it is one that thrives on massive data compilations. Over the last week I have done mosaic stitching of 50-70 individual photographs with runtimes in the order of 15 minutes (64-bit) to 1 hour (32-bit) where each composite picture was the holdup for an entire group of engineers. Net savings: approximately $2000-4000 per composite just based on the OS version alone. Needless to say that manual stitching would have been close to impossible. Ain't progress grand? And 64-bit is a huge part of it.

With all that stitching going on, we did not talk about gaming and the reason is that the applications are still not available. Available maybe but not to the public -- we'll have more shortly, though.

Intel P4 Northwood 2.4 (Clearance Sales?)

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