Warp wrote:
>   I was just asking, out of curiosity, what is it that makes some people
> believe that a 64-bit system should/might be twice as fast (or just faster
> by some degrees) than an equivalent 32-bit system.

Analogies with other things that work that way, like a V-8 engine having 
twice the acceleration than a 4-banger.

>   It just feels that people never stop to think rationally about these
> things. "What does it actually mean that it's a 64-bit system?"

And some folks don't even know that much, before they ask. Some people 
learn this stuff from the top down, as it were. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     This octopus isn't tasty. Too many
     tentacles, not enough chops.

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Warp wrote:
> 
>   Most people are also probably too young to remember the shift from
> 16-bit systems to 32-bit systems in Intel-based computers and have never
> experienced first-hand the speed difference between a 16-bit binary
> compared to a 32-bit binary (if they do the same thing there's basically
> no speed difference except when big amounts of memory are needed or if
> 32-bit arithmetic is a very relevant part of the program's calculations).
> 
I even remember the shift from 8 to 16 bit systems.   :-)
I started with an Altair -- anybody remember them???
8080 processor running at 2Mhz.  It even started with a whopping 1K of 
memory!

      -=- Larry -=-

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"Ger" <No.### [at] ThankYou> schreef in bericht 
news:44d0700e@news.povray.org...
>
> On the other hand, did you stop to think that not everybody is familiar 
> with
> the inner workings of a computer? That there are actually very few people,
> compared to the numbers that use them, that are knowlegable about the 
> inner
> workings?
> Looking back I can see the validity in Stefan's reasoning.
> -- 

I totally agree!!!
Myself, I have not the slightest idea how that box to my left works. But as 
long as it does what I ask it to do, I am fine :-)
To tell the truth, beyond a basic knowledge, I don't want to know about the 
inner machinery.

Thomas

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Thomas de Groot <t.d### [at] internlnet> wrote:
> To tell the truth, beyond a basic knowledge, I don't want to know about the 
> inner machinery.

  You don't *want* to know? Why? Some weird principle?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> schreef in bericht 
news:44d30822@news.povray.org...
> Thomas de Groot <t.d### [at] internlnet> wrote:
>> To tell the truth, beyond a basic knowledge, I don't want to know about 
>> the
>> inner machinery.
>
>  You don't *want* to know? Why? Some weird principle?
>

Well, just because I feel it is a waste of time for me.

I have a PC for doing things I want it to do, I don't need nor want to know 
(most of the time) why or how it does it. I just don't have the basic 
knowledge and, frankly speaking, I have more interesting things to do.

This said however, I am always curious about what is said on the matter in 
the ng's by those who are more knowledgeable :-) just gleaning here and 
there a little bit of information that I may need some day.

I am fairly certain that there are a lot of people like me around here.

Thomas

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Thomas de Groot wrote:
> 
> Well, just because I feel it is a waste of time for me.
> 
> I have a PC for doing things I want it to do, I don't need nor want to
> know (most of the time) why or how it does it. I just don't have the basic
> knowledge and, frankly speaking, I have more interesting things to do.
> 
> This said however, I am always curious about what is said on the matter in
> the ng's by those who are more knowledgeable :-) just gleaning here and
> there a little bit of information that I may need some day.
> 
> I am fairly certain that there are a lot of people like me around here.
> 

Compare the number of people that know how a car functions to the number of
people driving a car. Same thing goes for computers. In the end they are
nothing but a tool to get something done.
-- 
Ger

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"Ger" <No.### [at] ThankYou> schreef in bericht 
news:44d34855@news.povray.org...
>
> Compare the number of people that know how a car functions to the number 
> of
> people driving a car. Same thing goes for computers. In the end they are
> nothing but a tool to get something done.
> -- 

Exactly my point.

Thomas

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Larry Hudson <org### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >
> >   Most people are also probably too young to remember the shift from
> > 16-bit systems to 32-bit systems in Intel-based computers and have never
> > experienced first-hand the speed difference between a 16-bit binary
> > compared to a 32-bit binary (if they do the same thing there's basically
> > no speed difference except when big amounts of memory are needed or if
> > 32-bit arithmetic is a very relevant part of the program's calculations).
> >
> I even remember the shift from 8 to 16 bit systems.   :-)
> I started with an Altair -- anybody remember them???
> 8080 processor running at 2Mhz.  It even started with a whopping 1K of
> memory!
>
>       -=- Larry -=-


calculator hiding some where. Now that my job does not depend on it like

goes fast enough.

Stephen

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I've run benchmarks on my computer comparing 64-bit povray vs. 32-bit
povray. See for yourself:

sempron 1.6 GHz 32-bit kernel, 32-bit povray, sse2
Total Time:    0 hours 34 minutes  41.0 seconds (2081 seconds)

sempron 1.6 GHz 64-bit kernel, 32-bit povray
Total Time:    0 hours 36 minutes 41 seconds (2201 seconds)

sempron 1.6 GHz 64-bit kernel, 64-bit povray gcc 3.4
Total Time:    0 hours 29 minutes 27 seconds (1767 seconds)

duron 1.6 GHz
Total Time:    0 hours 40 minutes  46.0 seconds (2446 seconds)

So there you go: a 17.7% increase in rendering time on the benchmark scene.
Of course, as others have pointed out, there probably won't be a speedup on
architectures that were 64-bit to begin with.

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Warp wrote:
> 
>   I was just asking, out of curiosity, what is it that makes some people
> believe that a 64-bit system should/might be twice as fast (or just faster
> by some degrees) than an equivalent 32-bit system.
> 

It has lately been common to explain that the CPU MHz doesn't actually
tell the speed of the computer, but just part of it. While most PC-users
has never heard of eg. Sun Ultrasparcs, the AMD64 is the first 64-bit
system to them. And like you said, it has a bunch of features to run
faster. Optimizing in 64-bit mode, yes, but also eg. the integrated
memory controller. Opteron handles memory a _lot_ faster than same aged
Xeon.

That's one thing to make 64bit faster than 32bit - in people's mind.
Just my 2 cents.


-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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