Opteron

[Embattle]

Couple of reviews of the Opteron, this is AMDs Server/Workstation product which can give a slight insight to how the desktop, Athlon 64, will perform:

Toms Hardware
Ace's Hardware
HardOCP
AnandTech

nForce3 Pro Chipset to go with that Opteron:

Bjorn3D

To top it all off a Preview of the AMD Athlon 64:

Xbit Labs

 

[Jonty]

Just to add a bit of a gaming slant to matters, Tim Sweeney of Epic fame has recently commented on his (undying) love for 64-bit systems . . .

Tim Sweeney
In Unreal Tournament 2003, we built 2000-polygon meshes, texture map them, and use them in-game with diffuse lighting. That was a simple process, which didn't require any memory beyond that taken up by the mesh and texture maps.

In our next-generation technology, we are building 2,000,000-polygon meshes, and running them through a preprocessing program that analyzes the geometry and self-shadowing potential of the mesh based on thousands of incident lighting direction using per-pixel floating point math, and compresses all of this data down to texture maps, bump maps, and 16-component spherical harmonic maps at as high a resolution as possible.

... So, overall, we've found 32-bit adequate for prototyping new content, but for serious development will only be possible with 64-bit.

The FiringSquad interview went on to detail that content creation tools for Epic's next major engine may well require a 64-bit processor, even though the games themeselves will still be playable on 32-bit systems.

In terms of performance . . .

Tim Sweeney
I think you'll probably see a clock-for-clock improvement over Athlon XP of around 30% in applications like Unreal that do a significant amount of varied computational work over a large dataset.

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. Ever thought of being a newsie Embattle?

 

[Embattle]

IRC I think it was Tim who went on to say that that 2GB was now becoming a barrier to development of the next generation of games.

I was on TN once upon a time

 

[Jonty]

You're spot on about the 2GB limit, and it was indeed Tim who made that observation.

Knowledgable and a good memory, very impressive Mr Embattle. Verrrry impressive. *Jonty swings around in his chair and strokes a cat in a villanous stylé*

Kind Regards