G5 vs AMD Opteron - Page 2

Viro · #9 December 30th, 2003, 06:37 AM

http://www.firingsquad.com/features/...ew/default.asp

That's an interview with Tim Sweeney (from Epic Games) on porting Unreal Tournament to 64 bits. Note the main performance gains come from the additional registers (16 instead of 8) and on-die memory controller.

64bits really doesn't have anything to do with that, but as Ripcord said, 64 bit is easier to sell than "More registers, faster memory controller"

mindbend · #10 December 30th, 2003, 01:58 PM

The scary part about the 64-bit thing isn't so much what the respective marketing engines do with it (an obvious and easy mechanism), but that a shocking number of "reviews" tout 64-bit as something currently meaningful. Of course, I don't have an example right in front of me, bu a month ago I read one right off Apple website headlines (might even still be there FAIK) discussing FCP 4. The review made claims that FCP has been optimized for the G5 (true) to especially take advantage of the 64-bit horsepower (FALSE!). This is obviously just flat out wrong. Some of these reviewers, pundits, "experts" and others ned to get knowledge worked out.

I wouldn't mind some sort of extended truth in advertising legislation that covers these technical situations. For example, Apple and Athlon's current ads would have to say "64-Bit* Computing Power. [bottom] *Currently 64-bit doesn't give you jack-diddly in performance, but we're hoping someday to make use of it. We appreciate the reviewers of our products for propogating the myth that 64-bit really means something."

**Captain Code** · #11 December 30th, 2003, 02:02 PM

I don't know for sure, but what i expect they mean by FCP being updated for 64bit is probably just so it can use more than 4GB of RAM when editing movies. Having more of the movie in memory should make editing a lot faster.

Viro · #12 December 30th, 2003, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mindbend

I wouldn't mind some sort of extended truth in advertising legislation that covers these technical situations. For example, Apple and Athlon's current ads would have to say "64-Bit* Computing Power. [bottom] *Currently 64-bit doesn't give you jack-diddly in performance, but we're hoping someday to make use of it. We appreciate the reviewers of our products for propogating the myth that 64-bit really means something."

Hey, marketing type people need to make a living you know? Stuff like that will get them sacked instantly