Can anyone give me some insight into the advantages of using the version of
POVRAY specifically meant for the 64 bit WinXP and and AMD 64 bit processor.

Hopefully runtime would be an advantage? Does anybody have any ballpark about
how much faster? 50% faster 3300% faster?

Any other advantages?

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"Woody" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Can anyone give me some insight into the advantages of using the version of
> POVRAY specifically meant for the 64 bit WinXP and and AMD 64 bit processor.
>
> Hopefully runtime would be an advantage? Does anybody have any ballpark about
> how much faster? 50% faster 3300% faster?
>
> Any other advantages?

Sorry that I can't answer your question.

I guess the subject was discussed but I don't know when nor by whom. Perhaps
someone here remembers or has an idea or knows some links to benchmarks. Did
you question search engines on the web?

    Bruno

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> Can anyone give me some insight into the advantages of using the version of
> POVRAY specifically meant for the 64 bit WinXP and and AMD 64 bit processor.
> 
> Hopefully runtime would be an advantage? Does anybody have any ballpark about
> how much faster? 50% faster 3300% faster?
> 
> Any other advantages?
> 
> 
Well, I know 64-bit can give you a 300% improvement in big integer 
calculations, but POV-Ray is mostly floating point; I don't know how 
much better it gets there.

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Woody <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Can anyone give me some insight into the advantages of using the version of
> POVRAY specifically meant for the 64 bit WinXP and and AMD 64 bit processor.

  It shouldn't be any slower than the 32-bit version, so I don't see any
harm in using it. Its advantage is that it can use more memory and it might
be a bit faster (due to how compilers can optimize code for the AMD64
processor).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Woody nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/11/05 19:09:
> Can anyone give me some insight into the advantages of using the version of
> POVRAY specifically meant for the 64 bit WinXP and and AMD 64 bit processor.
> 
> Hopefully runtime would be an advantage? Does anybody have any ballpark about
> how much faster? 50% faster 3300% faster?
> 
> Any other advantages?
> 
> 
It's not realy about speed, but about RAM access capacity.
With the 32 bits version, there is an absolute limit of 4Gb for the amount of 
RAM available, more like 2 to 3 Gb due to various OS limitations.
With the 64 bits version, that limit disapears, BUT, you also must be running a 
64 bits OS on a 64 bits CPU, with enough RAM installed.

This can come to a faster rendering IF you have a scene that need LOTS of space 
in memory (over 4Gb), have all the memory installed and can prevent the use of 
the swap file. Such a scene just CAN'T be rendered on a 32 bits system.

Any gain in speed don't come from the 64 bits processing, but from the generaly 
more clock effecient 64 bits processors.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
You know you've been raytracing too long when your idea of a complete computer 
is a fast CPU, lots of RAM, and a means of running POVray.
Aaron Gage a.k.a Slartibartfast

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Woody wrote:
> Can anyone give me some insight into the advantages of using the version of
> POVRAY specifically meant for the 64 bit WinXP and and AMD 64 bit processor.

The program can access much more RAM, which won't necessarily speed things up
but can make some scenes previously impossible possible. As far as speed is
concerned, it will be a bit faster as those CPU's have a few extra general-
purpose registers available, and the compiler will take advantage of this to
avoid memory accesses under some circumstances.

-- Chris

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Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> It's not realy about speed, but about RAM access capacity.
> With the 32 bits version, there is an absolute limit of 4Gb for the amount of
> RAM available, more like 2 to 3 Gb due to various OS limitations.
> With the 64 bits version, that limit disapears, BUT, you also must be running a
> 64 bits OS on a 64 bits CPU, with enough RAM installed.
>
> This can come to a faster rendering IF you have a scene that need LOTS of space
> in memory (over 4Gb), have all the memory installed and can prevent the use of
> the swap file. Such a scene just CAN'T be rendered on a 32 bits system.
>
> Any gain in speed don't come from the 64 bits processing, but from the generaly
> more clock effecient 64 bits processors.
>
> --
> Alain
> -------------------------------------------------
> You know you've been raytracing too long when your idea of a complete computer
> is a fast CPU, lots of RAM, and a means of running POVray.
> Aaron Gage a.k.a Slartibartfast

I know it's been a long long time, but I just wanted to add to this conversation
that fact that the 64 bit processors also have several more registers than the
IA-32 counterparts.

So with 64 bit you get more memory access, and more registers on the "good"
side.  On the "bad" side is the fact that all pointers are now 8 bytes, which
may negatively affect your data cache performance.

--Keith Brafford

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> Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
>> It's not realy about speed, but about RAM access capacity.
>> With the 32 bits version, there is an absolute limit of 4Gb for the amount of
>> RAM available, more like 2 to 3 Gb due to various OS limitations.
>> With the 64 bits version, that limit disapears, BUT, you also must be running a
>> 64 bits OS on a 64 bits CPU, with enough RAM installed.
>>
>> This can come to a faster rendering IF you have a scene that need LOTS of space
>> in memory (over 4Gb), have all the memory installed and can prevent the use of
>> the swap file. Such a scene just CAN'T be rendered on a 32 bits system.
>>
>> Any gain in speed don't come from the 64 bits processing, but from the generaly
>> more clock effecient 64 bits processors.
>>
>> --
>> Alain
>> -------------------------------------------------
>> You know you've been raytracing too long when your idea of a complete computer
>> is a fast CPU, lots of RAM, and a means of running POVray.
>> Aaron Gage a.k.a Slartibartfast
> 
> I know it's been a long long time, but I just wanted to add to this conversation
> that fact that the 64 bit processors also have several more registers than the
> IA-32 counterparts.
> 
> So with 64 bit you get more memory access, and more registers on the "good"
> side.  On the "bad" side is the fact that all pointers are now 8 bytes, which
> may negatively affect your data cache performance.
> 
> --Keith Brafford
> 
> 
True, but 64 bits CPUs also have more cache than the 32s.
So, while you put about twice as much data in the cache, that cache is 
often 2 to 4 times larger... and have a 64 bits data pipe.


Alain

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