64 BIT CLIENT

stevenbennett_ESO · January 2016

The consoles are already 64 bit. The PC and Mac couldn't be 64 bit because they used 32 bit libraries and needed rewrites to fix that. The Mac in particular should benefit because it will be using a newer version of OpenGL -- we should now see performance roughly equivalent to the Windows version because of that.

And for the few people who made uneducated comments suggesting that using a Mac as a gaming platform was a mistake... You're neither correct nor adding anything useful to the conversation. The switch to 64 bit should make the Mac ESO client considerably more stable than the Windows one, IMHO.

I'm a little concerned about how short the PTS beta period will be for the new client, but otherwise it should generally be a huge improvement.

AzraelKrieg · January 2016

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

Got 12 gigs of RAM little man, I put that *** in yo hand.

Bout time they give us a 64bit client.

12GB? That's cute. 32GB in mine. Yes, not a lot of programs require that amount of the RAM but future proofing when games like Ashes of the Singularity's recommend specs are 16GB

CaptainObvious · January 2016

Ok, here is how 64-bit is useful to you...

32-bit processes are limited to 4.3 gigabytes of addressable space (2^32 ~= 4.3 billion unique addresses). In addition to the stats of the actors, dialog, audio files, this includes graphics memory (character models, terrain, trees, floating deer, textures, etc.).

So if you have 8 GB of RAM on your system and a 2 GB video card, then you have 10 GB of addressable memory. The operating system (windows) will hide some of this memory from the game client because the game client can only use 4.3 GB.

That 10 could be split 2.3 system to 2 GB video. As a result, when the system needs something not in memory, it needs to get the info off of your HDD which is slower than memory. It also needs to offload stuff in memory to the HDD to make room. This process is called paging.

64-bit allows for 2^64 addresses ~= 18.1 exabytes. Though windows 64 I think has an internal limit of 128 Terabytes of RAM.

So your 8GB of memory and 2GB of video memory could be much better used with a 64-bit client. More stuff could be put in faster access and thus things that can be done locally on your machine would be sped up.

WalkingLegacy · January 2016

uberkull wrote: »

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

Got 12 gigs of RAM little man, I put that *** in yo hand.

Bout time they give us a 64bit client.

No games.on the market use over 8gig of system ram. Most run under 6gig. Unless you are running a browser in the background with 65 tabs open...

That's a lie. Have you seen SWTOR memory leak useage?

AzraelKrieg · January 2016

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

uberkull wrote: »

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

Got 12 gigs of RAM little man, I put that *** in yo hand.

Bout time they give us a 64bit client.

No games.on the market use over 8gig of system ram. Most run under 6gig. Unless you are running a browser in the background with 65 tabs open...

That's a lie. Have you seen SWTOR memory leak useage?

Blame EA/Bioware for bad coding.

ZOS_GinaBruno · January 2016

alainjbrennanb16_ESO wrote: »

This might be a stupid question but when the 64 bit client comes out does it mean re-downloading the entire game or will there be a patch

You will not need to re-download the entire game. The 64-bit client is only an additional ~300MB on top of the other patch data. We'll have a much more in-depth article going into the 64-bit client soon. Hang tight!

Robbmrp · January 2016

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

alainjbrennanb16_ESO wrote: »

This might be a stupid question but when the 64 bit client comes out does it mean re-downloading the entire game or will there be a patch

You will not need to re-download the entire game. The 64-bit client is only an additional ~300MB on top of the other patch data. We'll have a much more in-depth article going into the 64-bit client soon. Hang tight!

Great to hear! Hopefully it will help with game improvement a lot. If anything, from reading the posts above, it should help with stability a ton.

sdtlc · January 2016

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

You will not need to re-download the entire game. The 64-bit client is only an additional ~300MB on top of the other patch data.

Well, that's close to redownloading the whole game

And the hardware in a mac is identical to a normal pc today

daemonios · January 2016

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

alainjbrennanb16_ESO wrote: »

This might be a stupid question but when the 64 bit client comes out does it mean re-downloading the entire game or will there be a patch

You will not need to re-download the entire game. The 64-bit client is only an additional ~300MB on top of the other patch data. We'll have a much more in-depth article going into the 64-bit client soon. Hang tight!

OMG she said soon(TM)!

UrQuan · January 2016

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

Got 12 gigs of RAM little man, I put that *** in yo hand.

If that money doesn't show, then you owe me owe me owe.

Tinolyn · January 2016

sdtlc wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

You will not need to re-download the entire game. The 64-bit client is only an additional ~300MB on top of the other patch data.

Well, that's close to redownloading the whole game

And the hardware in a mac is identical to a normal pc today

Um...look again. 300 megs is nowhere close to redownloading the whole game.

Elijah_Crow · January 2016

Ready with 32 GB DDR4 2800 Ram. I'm really hoping it helps performance for everyone on lower end systems however as its good for the game.

sirrmattus · January 2016

wait a minute. the game is not currently 64bit???

daemonios · January 2016

sirrmattus wrote: »

wait a minute. the game is not currently 64bit???

Few games are, if I'm not mistaken. 64 bit is NOT a performance fix. It mostly helps only if the game needs insane amounts of memory.

RWKT · January 2016

Capraid wrote: »

moesmaker wrote: »

You must be kidding. Take a look on their forums. It's client crashes all over the place. And have you tried playing GW2 on a mac? It's a buggy mess.

Your mistake is trying to play games on MAC.

LOL

Lokryn · January 2016

daemonios wrote: »

sirrmattus wrote: »

wait a minute. the game is not currently 64bit???

Few games are, if I'm not mistaken. 64 bit is NOT a performance fix. It mostly helps only if the game needs insane amounts of memory.

This. Don't be surprised if it doesn't help much. It might help if you're running a low end rig with 4 GB or less.

Slylok · January 2016

I am looking forward to the 64bit client.. They can possibly increase texture quality since the RAM isnt going to be a problem anymore.

linuxfueled · January 2016

So with Open GL we can play ESO on just about any linux platform with great frame rates and excellent visuals?

Grisemn · January 2016

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

alainjbrennanb16_ESO wrote: »

This might be a stupid question but when the 64 bit client comes out does it mean re-downloading the entire game or will there be a patch

You will not need to re-download the entire game. The 64-bit client is only an additional ~300MB on top of the other patch data. We'll have a much more in-depth article going into the 64-bit client soon. Hang tight!

i cant even describe how much of an relief this is for me, as i only have max 500kb/s download, but normaly 200-300

KiriX · January 2016

And what about directx 12 support?

KhajitFurTrader · January 2016

linuxfueled wrote: »

So with Open GL we can play ESO on just about any linux platform with great frame rates and excellent visuals?

Unfortunately not, since GNU/Linux lacks other software frameworks/libraries the game needs to run on either OS X or Windows. There are emulators for certain Windows frameworks, but compatibility or performance are not a given.

Cinbri · January 2016

64-bit must help to improve perfomance. I remember how played Witcher 3 on low quality with lags and decided to fully upgrade computer's 4 cores and new videocard just to play this best game, now i playing Witcher 3 64-bit on Ultra without lags. Imagine my dissapointment when i launched ESO just to see that gave zero difference and it still unplayable in heavy Cyro fights even on low graphic settings and facing either paper and unloaded textures .

daemonios · January 2016

Cinbri wrote: »

64-bit must help to improve perfomance. I remember how played Witcher 3 on low quality with lags and decided to fully upgrade computer's 4 cores and new videocard just to play this best game, now i playing Witcher 3 64-bit on Ultra without lags. Imagine my dissapointment when i launched ESO just to see that gave zero difference and it still unplayable in heavy Cyro fights even on low graphic settings and facing either paper and unloaded textures .

64-bit doesn't mean what you think it means...

The most obvious thing about 64-bit is the ability to address a much larger memory space, doing away with the ~4GB limit of 32-bit. This could allow for some more preloading of game assets (slight speed increase would be possible) or prevent crashes due to running out of available memory (stability increase).

Any other performance increase requires actual rewriting of game code, either client-side or server-side. The Cyrodiil issues you mention are most likely server-side, so no amount of changes to the client would improve performance there.

Uberkull · January 2016

Slylok wrote: »

I am looking forward to the 64bit client.. They can possibly increase texture quality since the RAM isnt going to be a problem anymore.

Video Ram isnt a issue with either 32bit or 64bit. The game can use all the vram necessary to store texture maps and model information. This is why there are video card minimum requirements and ZOS actually increased those requirements over time. I believe it was 1.6 that required a higher quality video card to play in Ultra settings.

The game should not use system ram to store these assets.

IcyDeadPeople · January 2016

CaptainObvious wrote: »

Ok, here is how 64-bit is useful to you...

32-bit processes are limited to 4.3 gigabytes of addressable space (2^32 ~= 4.3 billion unique addresses). In addition to the stats of the actors, dialog, audio files, this includes graphics memory (character models, terrain, trees, floating deer, textures, etc.).

So if you have 8 GB of RAM on your system and a 2 GB video card, then you have 10 GB of addressable memory. The operating system (windows) will hide some of this memory from the game client because the game client can only use 4.3 GB.

That 10 could be split 2.3 system to 2 GB video. As a result, when the system needs something not in memory, it needs to get the info off of your HDD which is slower than memory. It also needs to offload stuff in memory to the HDD to make room. This process is called paging.

64-bit allows for 2^64 addresses ~= 18.1 exabytes. Though windows 64 I think has an internal limit of 128 Terabytes of RAM.

So your 8GB of memory and 2GB of video memory could be much better used with a 64-bit client. More stuff could be put in faster access and thus things that can be done locally on your machine would be sped up.

You sure it will work this way? I play on a crap PC with 16GB RAM and 1GB graphics card - am I really going to see some performance improvement in Cyrodiil?

Morozov · January 2016

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

CaptainObvious wrote: »

Ok, here is how 64-bit is useful to you...

32-bit processes are limited to 4.3 gigabytes of addressable space (2^32 ~= 4.3 billion unique addresses). In addition to the stats of the actors, dialog, audio files, this includes graphics memory (character models, terrain, trees, floating deer, textures, etc.).

So if you have 8 GB of RAM on your system and a 2 GB video card, then you have 10 GB of addressable memory. The operating system (windows) will hide some of this memory from the game client because the game client can only use 4.3 GB.

That 10 could be split 2.3 system to 2 GB video. As a result, when the system needs something not in memory, it needs to get the info off of your HDD which is slower than memory. It also needs to offload stuff in memory to the HDD to make room. This process is called paging.

64-bit allows for 2^64 addresses ~= 18.1 exabytes. Though windows 64 I think has an internal limit of 128 Terabytes of RAM.

So your 8GB of memory and 2GB of video memory could be much better used with a 64-bit client. More stuff could be put in faster access and thus things that can be done locally on your machine would be sped up.

You sure it will work this way? I play on a crap PC with 16GB RAM and 1GB graphics card - am I really going to see some performance improvement in Cyrodiil?

yeah, I guess that was my point in asking what I will get out of a 64 bit client. I get the additional use of my memory etc etc....but everything runs fine on the client side with a decent computer....how will this help things server side? not at all imo

KhajitFurTrader · January 2016

Morozov wrote: »

yeah, I guess that was my point in asking what I will get out of a 64 bit client. I get the additional use of my memory etc etc....but everything runs fine on the client side with a decent computer....how will this help things server side? not at all imo

Uh, of course not, since it's a client update... whatever systems they use server-side, very much likely they have been 64-bit from the get-go. Besides, running blade servers such as these with 32-bit operating systems would be suboptimal.

As has been noted numerous times (@daemonius said it best above), running a 64-bit client on a machine with > 4 GB RAM will mostly help with program stability in zones with lots of stuff in them (e.g. player character models, or lots of graphical assets like in Wrothgar/Orsinium), and sightly help with the caching of assets (so, if the local HDD is a current system bottleneck, this might be mitigated a bit). Real performance gains on the GFX side of things will come with the switch to OpenGL 4.1 now, and Direct3D 12 at a later, yet unannounced time.

RSram · January 2016

danno8 nailed it on the advantages, but if you only have 4 GB of memory or less you will not gain any benefit of running a 64 bit client. To run a 64 bit client, you will also need to have a 64 bit operating system installed.

The slowest link in computer system is the physical hard drive's read/write data access speed. This is why SSD's are popular with gaming enthusiasts.

Another possible solution if you have 64 or more GB of ram is to run the 32 bit ESO client from a RAM disk. Using a RAM disk, you most gain of the benefits of a 64 bit client even though the client is 32 bit. The disadvantage to this method is that you need to save the RAM disk to a physical disk after each session or you lose the data saved in the C:\Users\Username\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\ folder.

The 64 bit game code has to be written to take advantage of the memory over 4 GB. 64 bit consumer processors have been available since 2004, so if you bought a PC or gaming system within the last 10 years it most likely can run a 64 bit operating system.

Game play may be smoother because ESO constantly streams about 200K of game data per second from C:\Program Files (x86)\Zenimax Online\The Elder Scrolls Online\depot, so it may be possible to cache (copy) the entire zone into RAM instead of streaming it as needed from the hard drive.

In-game transitions times will depend on how the 64 bit ESO client caches game data into memory. If the game data is not located in the RAM cache then a new data will need to be reloaded from the hard drive. So larger RAM cache reloads results in longer disk access which translates into longer load times despite having a 64 it client and more than 4 GB of RAM. How the 64 bit ESO client manages the RAM cache is the real issue as to whether or not a 64 bit client will be faster; for example, the entire ESO database is roughly about 40 GB in size, so how much does the client cache if the gaming system only has 25 GB of ram available at run time? Loading 20 GB of game data is a lot slower than the current method of steaming 200k per second of data from the hard drive. So the smoothness of the game would depend on the efficiently of the 64 it client’s RAM cache management algorithms.

Another bottleneck in performance is the amount of VRAM in the video card. The more VRAM available, the less frequency the hard drive is accessed.

So, just converting a client to 64 bit is no magic bullet to increased performance.

WalkingLegacy · January 2016

VRAM only bottlenecks you if you're gaming past 1080p. Most 'gaming' GPUs have more than enough VRAM for 1080p. (MSI 970ME)

Upgrading to a SSD does not help much for games built on Hero engine. ToR and now ESO prove my theory on this. I mean, you'll see improvement over a disk but the game still loads poorly when compared to other games.
(I use a Samsung 850 512gb)

The 64bit client should have been developed from the get go. 32bit will be the thing of the past in a few more years.

Will be interesting to see if it actually brings any improvement to client side though. I'm sure if all goes well, all the fixes the push with this DLC will make it look like it was a magic fix from the 64bit client.

Stranglehands · January 2016

There was a short glorious period, I think after the craglorn update(?) when I could put my graphics settings to high without it crashing or the textures going screwy. That's all I want out of this 64-bit patch really