Age of Conan not running in 64bit mode in Vista 64...?

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Kahnvex

2[H]4U
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Sep 5, 2001
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HI there,

when I look at task manager, I see "Age of Conan *32" indicating that it's not running in native 64bit mode. I also can't seem to find anyway to denote where it would or would not run a particular way by my choice.

Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Any similar experiences out there?


Please tell me it's not because I installed in a custom directory instead of the 64bit program folder. It can't be that, please not that.
 
I too am running 64bit windows and it shows Age of Conan 32. I don't know if they have a 64bit client.
 
ah. Funny. I naturally assumed it would have to, but I guess not. Now, does that mean it can see my full ram cache since the OS is 64bit?

Pardon my noobness, but theres still a disconnect in my knowledge of exactly how 64/32 bit items interact within the OS.
 
Kahnvex said:
ah. Funny. I naturally assumed it would have to, but I guess not. Now, does that mean it can see my full ram cache since the OS is 64bit?

Pardon my noobness, but theres still a disconnect in my knowledge of exactly how 64/32 bit items interact within the OS.
Click to expand...

No, it can't, but it won't need to.

In order to be able to manage more than a little less than 4GB of memory, 64-bit numbers must be supported by the operating system as well as the application. Age of Conan (and every other game out there, including Crysis) aren't going to need to use more than 4GB for quite a bit into the future.

Now, there are obviously many more reasons than expanded memory management for there to be 64-bit applications, but in the area of RAM, you're not going to have to worry.
 
From my limited knowledge on this matter, to run in 64bit mode the game needs to be complied into a 64bit exe, of which there is non (at least not yet!)

A 64bit OS can still address more than 4Gb of RAM when running 32bit apps which is of benefit to the system as a whole but I'm fairly sure the virtual memory limit of 2Gb still applies to the game. I will test this tonight.

Age of Conan (and every other game out there, including Crysis) aren't going to need to use more than 4GB for quite a bit into the future.
Click to expand...

I may be wrong here but a 32bit compiled application is subject to a limit of 2Gb Virtual memory usage with the other 2Gb of the mappable memory going to the OS.

It's very possible that games such as Crysis and AoC would want to use more than 2Gb of virtual memory, especially when you consider this includes all memory including things like the pagefile.
 
32bit apps are limited to 2gb total without adjusting the image file as mentioned or adding switches. I know a lot of people started running into this with programs like exchange 03 when he had these servers with lots of ram but it wouldnt put it to use.

Here is a guide that details the memory support of each modern windows release:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx
 
Frostex said:
I may be wrong here but a 32bit compiled application is subject to a limit of 2Gb Virtual memory usage with the other 2Gb of the mappable memory going to the OS.

It's very possible that games such as Crysis and AoC would want to use more than 2Gb of virtual memory, especially when you consider this includes all memory including things like the pagefile.
Click to expand...

Yes, that would be true if we were running Vista 32. However, there is nothing stopping devs from making 32-bit programs that use up to 4GB. They would just have to be running on a 64-bit operating system. We don't know if the guys who made Age of Conan implemented support for this or not, although we could always check to see if the program ever rises above 2GB at any specific time. Using more than 4GB would theoretically require a 64-bit application running on a 64-bit OS because the application needs to reference the 64-bit memory addresses which fall higher than it could read if it were a 32-bit app.

(BTW, I'm not sure if DirectX falls within OS mappable memory or not... if that's the case, then all 32-bit programs must use only 2GB of memory regardless of OS because the app itself needs to reference these libraries while the game is running)

Most of the time when games put things in the page file, it is precached textures and the like. The applications could use more memory and accomplish the same thing, but texture streaming in games is good enough now that we don't have to really worry about that. We could fill up the memory with textures not currently in vram, but it's like putting uncompressed sound in MGS4: it will make things slightly bit better, but not better when accounting for the fact that it would take double the amount of space. I suppose in games with really bad stuttering problems it might fix things.
 
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