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64bit EVE

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CCP Explorer
C C P
C C P Alliance
#81 - 2012-06-26 21:47:46 UTC
Syllviaa wrote:
Morganta wrote:
Ampoliros wrote:
CCP Explorer wrote:
Nodes with little traffic end up using about 950 MB, most common is 2-3 GB, and then there is normally a handful of nodes that use more than 6 GB (Jita on a busy day, nodes that host WH constellations, nodes where large fleet fights occur).
Interesting. Do W-space systems consume more memory than your average system? Or is it a case where many WH systems are mapped to one node (because overall low per-system activity?)
In my experience they probably host more WH systems as many of them don't even load between downtimes
I've had many many times where I was the one who loaded the hole late in the day.

when you try and log in you get a message that the system is still loading, then you try again and get in
It probably doesn't start loading until someone tries to enter.
We preload the systems that normally have the highest population but other systems are loaded on demand.

Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson | Senior Development Director | EVE Online // CCP Games | @CCP_Explorer
Hauling Hal
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#82 - 2012-06-26 21:58:19 UTC  |  Edited by: ISD Tyrozan
Herzog Wolfhammer wrote:

When people figure out that a 64 bit client will load a grid or change session faster than the people waiting for them in the bubble camp, you won't need an x32 client any more.

I have an old x32 WinXP system running a single core CPU with 1GB RAM and a x64 Win7 8 core system with 4GB RAM and there IS a difference.



Herzog Wolfhammer wrote:

AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+ (2010 MHz)
Windows XP SP 3
1.00GB RAM

Vs

Windows 7 Pro SP1 64 bit
Intel Core i7-2760QM @w.40GHz
8.00 GB RAM


Are you really that -----Edit-----?

To really test the 32 bit Vs 64 bit, why don't you load Windows 7 64 bit and then Windows 7 32 bit on your Athlon 64 or your i7, so you can compare apples to apples instead of apples to planetary orbits.

Post edited.
Please, be respectful of others, courteous when disagreeing.

ISD Tyrozan
Ensign
Community Communications Liaisons
Interstellar Services Department
Bovine Solution
New Millineon
#83 - 2012-06-26 22:14:29 UTC  |  Edited by: Bovine Solution
one day you sit in your white room, you start the dot-matrix LED projector and on all 4 walls around you see the universe. You slide your hand into the glove and greet your corp mates. Ooops they sit in the middle of a fight. you slide your VR goggles over your eyes and accompany them in an epic battle .... things change.
PinkKnife
The Cuddlefish
Ethereal Dawn
#84 - 2012-06-26 22:16:07 UTC
Bovine Solution wrote:
one day you sit in your white room, you start the dot-matrix LED projector and on all 4 walls around you see you the universe. You slide your hand into the glove and greet your corp mates. Ooops they sit in the middle of a fight. you slide your VR goggles over your eyes and accompany them in an epic battle .... things change.



Have you seen the new VR tech that John Carmack from Id Software is working on? I can't wait for that to hit mainstream.
Hammer Crendraven
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#85 - 2012-06-26 22:52:02 UTC
CCP Explorer wrote:
Herzog Wolfhammer wrote:
CCP Explorer wrote:
PinkKnife wrote:
Would it make a large difference? Is it worth doing? Hard to implement?
Really the only reason to create a 64 bit client would be to get access to more memory. But since we would need to maintain a 32 bit client anyway (we still have a lot of Windows XP users and will have for quite some time) then we need to keep the overall memory footprint in line with what a 32 bit client is capable of.

The server is already 64 bit and has been since 2008 (see this dev blog) for exactly this reason. Each blade in TQ has 32 GB of memory and runs 4 nodes, so on average each node has access to 8 GB of memory. At startup then each node uses approx. 700 MB of memory. Nodes with little traffic end up using about 950 MB, most common is 2-3 GB, and then there is normally a handful of nodes that use more than 6 GB (Jita on a busy day, nodes that host WH constellations, nodes where large fleet fights occur).

Since the server is already 64 bit then all code, except the rendering and audio engines and related middleware, is already 64 bit capable. To date then we don't have 64 bit versions of all the needed middleware and we haven't really dug into what it would take to make the rendering engine 64 bit.
When people figure out that a 64 bit client will load a grid or change session faster than the people waiting for them in the bubble camp, you won't need an x32 client any more.

I have an old x32 WinXP system running a single core CPU with 1GB RAM and a x64 Win7 8 core system with 4GB RAM and there IS a difference.
That has nothing to do with 32 bit vs. 64 bit but has everything to do with single core vs. multi core. And also 1 GB of RAM vs. 8 GB, but 8 GB allows the operating system to cache much more aggressively. Also, I daresay that there are very different graphics cards in these two machines?

Let's start with the number of cores: Even just a dual core makes a tremendous difference. That way EVE can be running on one core but the operating system can do network and hard disk IO on the other, in addition to running other programs (such as your browser, media player, antivirus, ...). You don't get a lot in addition with 8 cores unless you are running a lot of programs.

More RAM: More RAM is better since that allows the operating system to cache more of the file system. As soon as you have started one client then starting the second client will be a lot faster since the file IO actually doesn't hit the disk.

SSD: This is the best thing you can do for your computer. I have a three-year old laptop that I recently upgraded by replacing the spindle disk with an SSD (and upgraded from 2 GB to 8 GB RAM). It's a "new" machine.

Graphics card: This is the next-best thing you can do for your computer (if you play games). But do note that you want to buy from the high-end of a line of cards; if you need to buy something less expensive then you might be better off buying the high-end card from from the next line below what you really wanted.


And he did not even mention the bus speed difference or the on CPU cache speed and size difference. Those are huge for game play as well.
Mme Pinkerton
#86 - 2012-06-26 23:00:34 UTC  |  Edited by: Mme Pinkerton
Don't listen to CCP Explorer Blink

x86-64 has more general purpose registers than the 32bit variant which allows your processor to keep more variables "on hand" and requires fewer (comparatively slow) lookups in cache or memory. This can result in a real performance improvement.

The available extensions were also streamlined with the introduction of x86-64 processors (tossing x87, MMX and 3DNow! out of the window; guaranteeing availability of SSE & SSE2).
This mattered a lot when the first AMD64 processors were released (as SSE2 was not something a programmer could rely on having available on 32bit processors - AMD didn't support it in their Athlons right up to the introduction of the AMD64 line in 2003 - but for 64bit processors one could use this instruction set without hesitation).
However, (in contrast to WoW) EVE does already require SSE2 for their 32bit so I guess the number of Athlon xp users has dropped to such low levels that this advantage does hardly count anymore.

Generally EVE seems to be much less CPU-bound than other MMOs (I don't know what Rift exactly does with all my CPU cycles but it sure loves churning through them, WoW is also relatively CPU heavy) so I doubt we would see a much of a benefit.

Very rough benchmark's of WoW's 64bit (beta) client showed it to give ~10% more FPS compared to the 32bit version.

An IPO guide (David H'Levi) | Towards a Positive Argument For Investing (RAW23) | Freighter Operations 101 (Kazuo Ishiguro) | Dominion market analysis (Akita T)
Hammer Crendraven
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#87 - 2012-06-26 23:00:50 UTC
CCP Explorer wrote:
PinkKnife wrote:
CCP Explorer wrote:
SSD: This is the best thing you can do for your computer. I have a three-year old laptop that I recently upgraded by replacing the spindle disk with an SSD (and upgraded from 2 GB to 8 GB RAM). It's a "new" machine.

Graphics card: This is the next-best thing you can do for your computer (if you play games). But do note that you want to buy from the high-end of a line of cards; if you need to buy something less expensive then you might be better off buying the high-end card from from the next line below what you really wanted.
Would it make a huge difference over an existing rather higher end conventional HDD?

So, interpreting you right, of cards A, B, and C (A being best, B being second best, and C being worst in terms of performance)

Getting top of the line B would be better than medium grade A given similar pricing?
SSD might not make a lot of difference compared to a high-end desktop drive, but it will make difference compared to a low-end drive and vastly outperforms spindle laptop drives.

Medium-line A will always be better than high-line C. Medium-line A will possibly be similar to high-line B but that would depend on the exact cards.


For EVE SSD drives do not impact the game play much at all. Your patch time is faster. And game startup is much faster. Almost no waiting between clicking the play button and getting the log on screen. But that is about it. In game loading the inventory and market screens is a bit faster but a lot of that info comes from the server so you still have to wait for the server packets to arrive.
All in all the game play experience is about the same with a conventional drive or a SSD drive.
Hammer Crendraven
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#88 - 2012-06-26 23:07:24 UTC
Mme Pinkerton wrote:
Don't listen to CCP Explorer Blink

x86-64 has more general purpose registers than the 32bit variant which allows your processor to keep more variables "on hand" and requires fewer (comparatively slow) lookups in cache or memory. This can result in a real performance improvement.

The available extensions were also streamlined with the introduction of x86-64 processors (tossing x87, MMX and 3DNow! out of the window; guaranteeing availability of SSE & SSE2) which mattered a lot when they first were released (as SSE2 was not something a programmer could rely on having available on 32bit processors - AMD didn't support it in their Athlons right until the introduction of their AMD64 line in 2003).
However, (in contrast to WoW) EVE does already require SSE2 (and as such does not benefit from its guaranteed availability on x86-64) so I guess the number of Athlon xp users has dropped to such low levels that making SSE2 a requirement is acceptable even for 32bit software.

Generally EVE seems to be much less CPU-bound than other MMOs (I don't know what Rift exactly does with all my CPU cycles but it sure loves churning through them, WoW is also relatively CPU heavy) so I doubt we would see a much of a benefit.

Very rough benchmark's of WoW's 64bit (beta) client showed it to give ~10% more FPS than the 32bit version.


But and this is always the case with MMO's you have to wait for the packets to arrive before you can proceed with game play.
A super fast client is a waste of money as the packets only go so fast. Sure you can do more while waiting for packets.
But there is only so much to do and then you have a wait state, waiting for the next instruction. And if CCP tries to fill that space up with more to do on the client between packets then the slower computer users will complain. So the game is designed for the slowest link which is the internet.
Knug LiDi
The Dark Space Initiative
Scary Wormhole People
#89 - 2012-06-26 23:32:47 UTC
CCP Konflikt wrote:
This is what TQ looks like from the inside.


There is no eve-art on display in there.

I am entirely unimpressed.

Not even graffiti !

If only we could fall into a woman's arms

without falling into her hands
PinkKnife
The Cuddlefish
Ethereal Dawn
#90 - 2012-06-27 00:13:31 UTC
Hammer Crendraven wrote:
CCP Explorer wrote:
PinkKnife wrote:
CCP Explorer wrote:
SSD: This is the best thing you can do for your computer. I have a three-year old laptop that I recently upgraded by replacing the spindle disk with an SSD (and upgraded from 2 GB to 8 GB RAM). It's a "new" machine.

Graphics card: This is the next-best thing you can do for your computer (if you play games). But do note that you want to buy from the high-end of a line of cards; if you need to buy something less expensive then you might be better off buying the high-end card from from the next line below what you really wanted.
Would it make a huge difference over an existing rather higher end conventional HDD?

So, interpreting you right, of cards A, B, and C (A being best, B being second best, and C being worst in terms of performance)

Getting top of the line B would be better than medium grade A given similar pricing?
SSD might not make a lot of difference compared to a high-end desktop drive, but it will make difference compared to a low-end drive and vastly outperforms spindle laptop drives.

Medium-line A will always be better than high-line C. Medium-line A will possibly be similar to high-line B but that would depend on the exact cards.


For EVE SSD drives do not impact the game play much at all. Your patch time is faster. And game startup is much faster. Almost no waiting between clicking the play button and getting the log on screen. But that is about it. In game loading the inventory and market screens is a bit faster but a lot of that info comes from the server so you still have to wait for the server packets to arrive.
All in all the game play experience is about the same with a conventional drive or a SSD drive.



One of the main reasons I was looking is the speed up of the CQ time. If it loads fast enough I often don't bother switching to the hangar view as I prefer the CQ view, It just loads a bit slow for me. I'm currently running this: WD500 etc etc 7200 rpm. So I'm more curious what kind of a speed boost putting eve on an a SSD would be. Granted it isn't a terrible drive, but it isn't super top of the line either.
Hammer Crendraven
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#91 - 2012-06-27 00:25:31 UTC
PinkKnife wrote:
Hammer Crendraven wrote:
CCP Explorer wrote:
PinkKnife wrote:
CCP Explorer wrote:
SSD: This is the best thing you can do for your computer. I have a three-year old laptop that I recently upgraded by replacing the spindle disk with an SSD (and upgraded from 2 GB to 8 GB RAM). It's a "new" machine.

Graphics card: This is the next-best thing you can do for your computer (if you play games). But do note that you want to buy from the high-end of a line of cards; if you need to buy something less expensive then you might be better off buying the high-end card from from the next line below what you really wanted.
Would it make a huge difference over an existing rather higher end conventional HDD?

So, interpreting you right, of cards A, B, and C (A being best, B being second best, and C being worst in terms of performance)

Getting top of the line B would be better than medium grade A given similar pricing?
SSD might not make a lot of difference compared to a high-end desktop drive, but it will make difference compared to a low-end drive and vastly outperforms spindle laptop drives.

Medium-line A will always be better than high-line C. Medium-line A will possibly be similar to high-line B but that would depend on the exact cards.


For EVE SSD drives do not impact the game play much at all. Your patch time is faster. And game startup is much faster. Almost no waiting between clicking the play button and getting the log on screen. But that is about it. In game loading the inventory and market screens is a bit faster but a lot of that info comes from the server so you still have to wait for the server packets to arrive.
All in all the game play experience is about the same with a conventional drive or a SSD drive.



One of the main reasons I was looking is the speed up of the CQ time. If it loads fast enough I often don't bother switching to the hangar view as I prefer the CQ view, It just loads a bit slow for me. I'm currently running this: WD500 etc etc 7200 rpm. So I'm more curious what kind of a speed boost putting eve on an a SSD would be. Granted it isn't a terrible drive, but it isn't super top of the line either.


I have not tried that yet. But I would guess the ssd drive would cut the time about in half for that particular load.
I just use the hanger view myself.
Mohr Cowbell
KarmaFleet University
#92 - 2012-06-27 01:38:56 UTC
CCP Konflikt wrote:
This is what TQ looks like from the inside.


How many blades are there?
Mars Theran
Foreign Interloper
#93 - 2012-06-27 01:54:53 UTC
CCP Explorer wrote:
PinkKnife wrote:
Would it make a large difference? Is it worth doing? Hard to implement?
Really the only reason to create a 64 bit client would be to get access to more memory. But since we would need to maintain a 32 bit client anyway (we still have a lot of Windows XP users and will have for quite some time) then we need to keep the overall memory footprint in line with what a 32 bit client is capable of.

The server is already 64 bit and has been since 2008 (see this dev blog) for exactly this reason. Each blade in TQ has 32 GB of memory and runs 4 nodes, so on average each node has access to 8 GB of memory. At startup then each node uses approx. 700 MB of memory. Nodes with little traffic end up using about 950 MB, most common is 2-3 GB, and then there is normally a handful of nodes that use more than 6 GB (Jita on a busy day, nodes that host WH constellations, nodes where large fleet fights occur).

Since the server is already 64 bit then all code, except the rendering and audio engines and related middleware, is already 64 bit capable. To date then we don't have 64 bit versions of all the needed middleware and we haven't really dug into what it would take to make the rendering engine 64 bit.


tl;dr: two 32 bit processes will fit on the same 64 bit pathway. If you have a 64 bit PC, you'll get the full benefit of the 64 bit features while running a program using 32 bit processes, with a few exceptions or maybe a little drawback provided the program is coded to take advantage of it. Even if it isn't, your PC will run other 32 bit applications at the same time, so you'll likely see benefit from it anyway.

In short, it has it's advantages but it's not really practical unless everyone is using 64 bit architecture because they would have to have both a 32 bit and 64 bit client otherwise.
zubzubzubzubzubzubzubzub
CCP Explorer
C C P
C C P Alliance
#94 - 2012-06-27 09:49:43 UTC
Mohr Cowbell wrote:
CCP Konflikt wrote:
This is what TQ looks like from the inside.
How many blades are there?
There are 17 proxies on 5 blades (16 on 4 blades are externally accessible from the network load balancer) and 208 nodes on 52 blades. In addition there are blades for services such as Gate, Forums, API, Image Rendering, Image Server, Search, and large servers for various databases.

Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson | Senior Development Director | EVE Online // CCP Games | @CCP_Explorer
St Mio
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#95 - 2012-06-27 11:00:57 UTC
CCP Konflikt wrote:
This is what TQ looks like from the inside.

I'm disappointed, I was expecting it to look more like some sort of Icelandic hamster gulag Sad
J3ssica Alba
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#96 - 2012-06-27 11:07:45 UTC
Closeup detail view of a blade server 
This is my signature. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.  Without me, my signature is useless. Without my signature, I am useless
ChromeStriker
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#97 - 2012-06-27 11:47:31 UTC
Jett0
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#98 - 2012-06-27 12:16:40 UTC
CCP Explorer wrote:
Syllviaa wrote:
Morganta wrote:
Ampoliros wrote:
CCP Explorer wrote:
Nodes with little traffic end up using about 950 MB, most common is 2-3 GB, and then there is normally a handful of nodes that use more than 6 GB (Jita on a busy day, nodes that host WH constellations, nodes where large fleet fights occur).
Interesting. Do W-space systems consume more memory than your average system? Or is it a case where many WH systems are mapped to one node (because overall low per-system activity?)
In my experience they probably host more WH systems as many of them don't even load between downtimes
I've had many many times where I was the one who loaded the hole late in the day.

when you try and log in you get a message that the system is still loading, then you try again and get in
It probably doesn't start loading until someone tries to enter.
We preload the systems that normally have the highest population but other systems are loaded on demand.


On a side note, when are we getting an animation to replace the loading screen? Big smile

Occasionally plays sober
Evelyn Meiyi
Corvidae Trading and Holding
#99 - 2012-07-04 11:52:20 UTC
PinkKnife wrote:


Would it make a huge difference over an existing rather higher end conventional HDD?

So, interpreting you right, of cards A, B, and C (A being best, B being second best, and C being worst in terms of performance)

Getting top of the line B would be better than medium grade A given similar pricing?


An HDD has to physically move a mechanism across the surface of the disk, which means that the access speed is limited to how fast the 'reader arm' can move. An SSD, by contrast, is just a really big flash-drive -- there are no moving parts involved, which means that seek times increase dramatically and there's nothing to wear down and break inside.
San Severina
One Point 0
#100 - 2012-07-04 12:24:19 UTC
My computer has lots of expensive parts & bits, I'm not sure if it has 64 bits though. I never counted them all, next time I clean it I will.
Maybe it's a 32 bit computer.
It runs real great though.