Would upgrading to 64-bit actually help Dolphin run faster?

[Typheus]

AMD 64 X2 6400+ 3.2Ghz Dual Core
4GB DDR2 RAM
Nvidia 8800GT OC

I'm on 32-bit right now, and I can get a steady 27FPS on Wind Waker on the starting island. (Goes up to 90-100 in houses). Would a 64-bit OS help at all? I've been thinking about getting one, but I hear compatibility isn't the greatest :/

[kronoxrox]

You are already getting amazing speeds with a x86 system. Personally i'd recommend you to upgrade to a 64bit OS 'cause you are wasting that processor. Not only for emulation, but also for gaming and multitasking. Also the AMD Dual core optimizer drivers works better on a x64 system.
Really it's not like changing clothes, cause we are talking about OS here, but if you have the means, then try upgrading. With your specs Vista won't have any slowdowns on your machine neither will have XP64

[tuanming]

More like he's wasting his ram! ;D

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[kronoxrox]

(didn't want to spoil the surprise when he finally decided to switch)
x86 OSs don't have support for more than 2gb RAM so as Tuanming wisely said, you are wasting 2GB of RAM

[Typheus]

Eh, it's 4GB, right? 4GB total, which means the 4 gigs of RAM I have now - the 512MB of VRAM on my video card.

That leaves me with ~3.5GB RAM.

...64-bit OS takes advantage of more of the processor? I thought it just allowed for smoother system use through larger (I can't remember wtf they're called) kernels or whatever. But that's pretty godamn nice to know

[Geomancer]

Actually 32 bit OS support 4gb, but almost 1gb is used to map devices, so the max supported ammount of ram is something arround 3gb (3.2 in some scenarios)

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[kronoxrox]

I think the word you were looking for was "Servers" xD
AFAIK your 4GB are available RAM it doesn't have anything to do with your Video card, cause it has it's own memmory. VRAM is only used when you have integrated video cards, but that's not your case. I'm running XP64 here with an Athlon 5600 x2 64 bits and 4GB DDR2 RAM and it runs beatifully, i also got Cross compatibility with all my drivers and stuff, so you really shouldn't be afraid of changing unless you are using really old drivers for... i don't know.. A webcam or something to that end =)

Good luck

[Geomancer]

It would be good to see a comparison benchmark, between a x86 and x64 OS, to see how much is the speed improvement (if there is any)...

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[Typheus]

kronoxrox, give me an example of how your emulated GC games run, just FPS wise. Name a title, give an FPS. Plz?

I'm mainly concerned about all this for that damned fighting game that's coming out on the 11th. It'd be a helluva lot easier to do this on my PC than have to risk bricking my Wii or some crap to play an imported game.

[kronoxrox]

Okay give me a sec i'm going to download a x86 version of Dolphin rev 413

Quite a shock ... Wind waker on rev 1400 x86 and x64 didn't make any kind of difference O_O
in earlier versions the difference was more notorious, but now it seems that x86 is at par with the x64 ones.

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Last edited by kronoxrox; December 7th, 2008 at 06:44..

[Shadow Lady]

In my case x64 did add some fps (like 1-4) in a couple games but it added some weird horrible stuttering in Metroid Prime 1, could be bad texture management on the drivers for my card on Vista 64bit tho as launching the x86 version in there did the same thing except less.

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[sbock]

Theoretically the 64bit builds are a bit faster but in reality there could be some problems with Vista. In my case I lose about ~5 fps in my Vista 64bit environment against Win XP. After investigating I find the reason: The crappy Audigy2 sound driver. Without sound the 64bit build gets 5 - 8 fps more than the 32bit OS.