More x86-64 support....

[texas_techie]

Sorry if its been posted before. But its good to see the graphics people getting on board X86-64. Should be some interesting products come out of this.


http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1022126367

Benchmarks are like sex, everybody loves doing it, everybody thinks they are good at it.

 

[eden]

That is why Intel cannot just make their own 64-bit architecture different from the one AMD does, since they can see now that even video card manus are interested and have begun building for Hammers. I love for once to see the competition turning to AMD's side having the edge in a new improved technology!

--
I can't beleive Dungeon Siege has a pitchfork weapon called "Hoe"! :lol:

 

[FatBurger]

Not really surprising to me, it's not like they were saying they'll never support IA64.

But interesting that nVidia is left out of that. nVidia and AMD are pretty close, they're like Siamese twins joined heel to forehead (just picture that :lol: ).

<font color=blue>Hi mom!</font color=blue>

 

[texas_techie]

Nvidia seems to announce alot about cores, but not too much about any of their other stuff. Since Nvidia basically owns the video market, im sure they will support x86-64 if the competition does.
Im honestly not sure what 64-bit extensions would do in the graphics arena. Someone wanna enlighten me?


Benchmarks are like sex, everybody loves doing it, everybody thinks they are good at it.

 

[Kemche]

Im honestly not sure what 64-bit extensions would do in the graphics arena.

Exactly my Questions. May be they want to get 64bit graphics but I don't think 64bit processor is required for that. May be they want to get larger memory support. But I think 4GB for Graphics memory is enough. When will it be that games are going to use that much GFX memory? So the question remains, What benifits do the x86-64 offers to the Graphics? Only thing I can think of is that they probably will write drivers to take advantage of 64 bit instructions.

KG

KG.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates.

 

[bront]

It might be to some advantage in handeling matricies and other complex calculations, but that depends on how a CPU deals with them, and that I don't know.

"Search your feelings you know it to be true, I am your... twin sister" - Darth Vader

 

[FatBurger]

Yeah, I was kind of thinking the same thing. They mentioned HyperTransport, so maybe they're talking more about the Hammer platform than x86-64?

<font color=blue>Hi mom!</font color=blue>

 

[eden]

I was told Hyper Transport actually helps in AGP gaming as it reduces game load times. Is it true? It seems logical, but I do hope so, I am tired of unoptimized games taking over 20 seconds to load levels.

--
I can't beleive Dungeon Siege has a pitchfork weapon called "Hoe"! :lol:

 

[FatBurger]

I wouldn't think AGP is the bottleneck, the hard drives would be.

<font color=blue>Hi mom!</font color=blue>

 

[texas_techie]

AMD is putting out three chips for the chipsets on the mainboard. The PCI-X bus, The hypertrans I/O bus, And the AGP 8x tunnel.
After looking at the Hypertransport consortium's website - I see the max bit rate across the bus is 32 (32 bit). So im at a loss to see how graphics can benefit, at least from a bit size perspective. Now we all know that H.T. is REAL fast, but again were at looking at bit size not speed.
BUT:

"PCI-X, at 133 MHz and 64-bits, will enable data throughput of over 1 Gbyte/sec."

So apparently HT can only do 32-bit. But PCI-X can handle 64-bit. But im still confused as hell. How does the pci-x tunnels (supporting up to 5 pci masters) work with the I/O hub (aka the southbridge of a hammer chipset)? The specs for each chip all show diff bit-size support.
Only thing i understood from my researchwas the AGP tunnel chip is necessary so that graphics cards can operate on a HT setup.
Anyone actually know how all this crap fits together? Im too lazy to go tap my sources...



Benchmarks are like sex, everybody loves doing it, everybody thinks they are good at it.