On Thu, 9 Feb 2006 08:54:29 -0500, "John P"
Post by John PDear Microsoft,
Flight Simulator 2004 runs great on Windows XP64 (32bit), but wouldn't it
really show the true capabilities of XP64 if Microsoft upgraded FS2004 to
run in a true 64 bit OS platform? What's the holdup? It's a no brainer.
Despite what you might think, the current crop of 64-bit CPU's do not
boost performance very much. The main difference is their ability to
address more than 4G of main memory. In pure processing speed the
difference is small, in any case, many applications are not CPU bound;
the bus speed between memory and the CPU is the problem. Check your
task manager, very few modern applications peg the CPU to 100%.
For the reasons stated, server applications such as databases benefit
most from 64 bits because they are able to address much more memory.
Flight Sim would not be an application that would showcase the
abilities of x64 as much as SQL Server for example.
No-brainer? Not quite. Have you considered driver issues? Native
64-bit applications require pure 64-bit drivers, they do not work with
32-bit drivers; there is no mix and match. Therefore 3rd party
joystick, video card etc. manafacturers would need to port their
device drivers. That's a lot of time and effort for very little
return.
Just in case you feel like shooting the messenger, I know what I'm
talking about. I've spent the last year porting a large scientific
application from win32 to win64.