Half-Life 2: 64-Bit – Reason to get excited?

[PAGETITLE=Introduction] This past Thursday, Valve out of the blue announced 64-Bit compatibility with Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast. Don't mistake this as a simple 64-Bit patch because it is actually a completely native 64-Bit application. Chances are that if you are running Windows x64, then next time you try to play you will be required to download new files. Depending on the OS you are using, the game will know whether to load a 32-Bit or 64-Bit version. Bellevue, WA. December 22, 2005 Valve, a leading entertainment and technology studio, unveiled a 64-bit version of its Source game engine technology today. The first 64-bit Valve games released will be native 64-bit versions of Half-Life 2 and Lost Coast, and have been developed to take advantage of AMD Athlon 64 FX processor-based systems - the ultimate 64-bit gaming platform for PC enthusiasts. If you, like me, dual boot with Windows XP and Windows x64, then you will be required to install the game individually in each OS. This means, that you will technically have two complete installs of the game... a real space hog. After installing Half-Life 2 in 32-Bit, I went to x64 to install Steam there. Even though I installed it to the exact same directory, I was forced to re-download the game in it's entirely. So keep this in mind, because you may as well delete the local content for your 32-Bit install if you are going to use 64-Bit only. So what does 64-bit offer? New levels? Updated graphics? No and no. Valve released the 64-Bit version of HL2 and Lost Coast for those who have the accompanying software and hardware. Applications and games written to support native 64-Bit are able to handle larger amounts of data, compared to 32-Bit. Half-Life 2 is actually quite a heavy duty number cruncher and is very CPU intensive. 64-Bit should allow the game to flow more freely because the calculations will not be held back by a wimpy (kidding) 32-Bit processor. Back in June, we had an article where we benchmarked a few games in their standard 32-Bit versions as well as their 64-Bit. Half-Life 2 was actually the only game to actually benefit at all, with higher frame rates. At the time, it was still utilizing the 32-Bit version, but it could have had a boost due to the faster mathematical processing. I can say right away, that the 64-Bit version of HL2 is buggy, as is Lost Coast. There have been numerous reports of various bugs on the Steam forums, and I have experienced a few myself. After loading a saved game in HL2, some textures would be missing or distorted, as you can see in the below picture. In Lost Coast, loading a saved game would cease any AI. The only way to have the AI work was to completely exit the game and reload it again. Obviously, these are noticeable bugs and I question Valve on why they didn't catch them, because they are very easy to find and are widespread. Before I tested either version, I had to install the games separately on each OS because I previously un-installed them a few weeks ago. I also un-installed the NVIDIA drivers in each OS and replaced them with newer versions, using Driver Cleaner in between. One thing I found interesting is that the image quality in some areas seem slightly different in each version. The left above image is the 32-Bit version with the latest 81.98 drivers, and the right is the 64-Bit with the latest 81.98 64-Bit drivers. There is extreme glare on the water in the 32-Bit version, while the 64-Bit version is ideally clean and easy on the eyes. Matt was nice enough to test this on his system also, and the 32-Bit version with latest drivers appears the same as in the picture above. I don't recall ever seeing it like this before, or what driver version started causing this. If anyone can enlighten me, please feel free. Overall though, the image quality is identical, besides the water glare. Edit: This issue has been fixed (Jan 10, 06). Kudos Valve for taking care of this in a timely manner. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Benchmarking and Conclusion] To benchmark both versions, I used both the Canals level from Half-Life, and also used the tech demo Lost Coast. I recorded the frames per second with FRAPS. I tested using the stress test in Lost Coast also, but grabbed the results from it rather than FRAPS. The game was run at the same resolution and detail level in both versions: 1280*1024 @ 4xAA and 16xAF. You can see further detail settings in the picture above. In each version of Windows, all unnecessary services and applications were closed, including Virus Scanners and Firewall's. Motherboard: - DFI LanParty Ultra-D w/ 704-2BTA BIOS. Processor: - AMD Venice 3200+ 2.0GHz @ 2.50GHz. Memory: - Corsair PC4000 2GB Platinum @ 3-4-4-8/2.8v. Graphics: - eVGA 7800GT 256MB PCI-E @ Stock. Sound: - Chaintech AV-710. Storage: - Western Digital 8MB 160GB, Western Digital 8MB 200GB * 2. Removable Storage: LG DVD+RW DL 16x. Odds and Ends: - D-Link NIC, Titan Robela Water Cooling, 4x 120mm Fans. Etcetera: - WinXP Pro SP2 / WinXP x64 Pro SP1. The first test was going through the entire canals_07 map, which takes approximately 4:30 minutes. The Lost Coast Stress Test was run also, proceeded by a run-through that lasted 10 minutes. Surprisingly enough, I didn't see an ounce of benefit from the 64-Bit. The 32-Bit had better overall frame rates than the 64-Bit. I was a bit confused by this, because in our article from June, I found better overall FPS while running the 32-Bit version of the game in x64. I look forward to other benchmarks around the web in the days to come to see if my results turn out to be similar to others. I would certainly hope that a native 64-Bit wouldn't take away your FPS. Where a 64-Bit version could be beneficial is with load times. In each OS, the levels mentioned below were opened up in the same order, and timed with a stopwatch but rounded off to the nearest second. The timer was stopped as soon as I could see the graphics in the given level. Load Times 32-Bit 64-Bit Canals 30secs 14secs LC Stress 19secs 17secs Lost Coast 12secs 12secs As we can see, the 64-Bit actually was faster in almost all instances throughout each test. It was a staggering 16 seconds faster loading the Canals level in x64! All of these times were re-tested and proved accurate on my machine. Addendum As per requests, I re-ran all the tests in low resolution as opposed to the maxed out settings I was using before. This time, 640*480 was selected, and each setting was set as low as it could go. HDR was disabled in Lost Coast for these tests. Sadly, 64-Bit could not even muster enough to keep up to it's smaller brother. The only advantage it had was in the Lost Coast single player run, and even that's hardly an advantage. 32-Bit proved to be 22FPS faster than the 64-Bit version.. ouch. Conclusion Admittedly, this was by no means an intensive test. But these quick run-throughs can give a good idea of whether 64-Bit is anything to really get excited about yet. Sadly, I was expecting better performance in 64-Bit but was left dissapointed. I would rather play the 32-Bit version where I saw better FPS than have slightly faster load times. As mentioned in the previous section, I am looking quite forward to checking out what other people are benchmarking both of these versions at. I do not own an FX processor, but that's the CPU they are pushing in their Press Release, so is it expected that the FX may be the only CPU where a performance increase will be seen? If you are a gamer wanting the best experience, I would hold off from downloading the 64-Bit version unless x64 is your only OS. Not only does the 64-Bit version hold back FPS, at least in my case, it's quite buggy at this point. For all I know, some of the bugs may be responsible for holding back the FPS... I guess we will know soon enough when they fix up the bugs. If you have any rants about the 64-Bit version, assuming you have used it, feel free to send me an e-mail and I can stick a quote in the end of the article. Or, feel free to include your comments in our related thread. You do not need to register to post in our content threads. Responses: Bruce writes: I have just read your article concerning 64 bit HL2 and as you have stated I can confirm that the water in the 32 bit does look like your published picture. This is not a driver issue, with either detonator or catalyst but is in fact a strange side effect of the 64 bit upgrade. It is my belief and that of some others on the steampowered forums, that some sort of update was applied to the 32 bit version when the 64 bit version was released. As a concequence of this update the water seen in the 32bit version is now as you see it.

Half-Life 2: 64-Bit – Reason to get excited?

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Rob Williams