Any advantage of 64 bit apart from RAM ?

[basic channel]

Hi

Is there any advantage for a DAW using 64 bit Win 7 (vs 32 bit) apart from being able to address more RAM ?


Thanks

[BertKoor]

If all your plugins are already 64bits, then it's an advantage not having to bridge them. And vice versa...
But otherwise I don't see any direct advantages.

[egbert]

There were a bunch of CPU architecture improvements with the x64 extensions to X86 that AMD created over a decade ago - extra registers for example. The benefits of these to DAW and plugin performance are not particularly obvious. There were claims that these could speed some operations by 20 - 30%. Part of the shift to 64 bits was the end of x87 code which had been pretty central to a lot of audio plugin coding. Plugins had to be re-written very substantially to use the available instruction sets for the new 64 bit architecture.

[dsan@mail.com]

FWIW - there are multiple disadvantages for going 64 bit if your DAW does not support 32 bit plug-ins.

Investigate and decide before you make the move what you are willing to lose for what you will gain.

In my experience, for the gain in ram, the move was worth it but I do miss some of my 32 bit plug-ins.

If more ram is not important to you, stay with 32bit for now.

Happy Musiking!
dsan

[musical android]

Depending on DAW to. As the 32 bit plugins I have works perfectly in Reaper 64 bit...

[mhog]

32 bit: obsolete or vapourware
64 bit: new, modern

(expecially in the next future). I would go 64 bit and abandon 32 bit (unless you like retro-nostalgia, old computers, vintage x86 OS and such).

[billcarroll]

Andrew Simper of Cytomic posted on another forum that there are additional performance gains made when moving your DAW and plugins to 64-bit.

You should run your DAW and plugins in 64-bit mode. This doubles the number of SSE2 registers that can be used by applications, so speeds up plugins even if they don't use large amounts of memory.

[ZenPunkHippy]

Aside from the obvious advantages to RAM - bigger sample libraries and more of them in a single project, the other reasons for going 64-bit are:

- no RAM limit improves host stability
- effectively unlimited number of plugins in a single project
- small CPU improvement according to some developers

These first 2 are very significant if you are hitting RAM limits when trying to use lots of instruments of effects in a single project e.g. 32-bit Cubase / Logic will crash at around 1.5 - 2 GB of RAM. This does not happen with 64-bit versions of either host.

Peace,
Andy.

[hueynym]

My understanding of the 64bit memory system isn't *specifically* linked to "more RAM" - just that it can address more THAN 4 gig of RAM. There are programming considerations, but ultimately, unless your setup requires addressing more than 4 gig of RAM at a time, or you're working with pre-vis or video (which is why we needed 64bit in the first place) I really don't think it's REQUIRED. I don't remember the exact specifics, but when I switched to 64bit 18 years ago, The explanation I got was: with 32bit memory space, you can render up to 2 weeks of video; in 64bit, it's about 4,800 months. Since we're talking about plugins and DAWs here, I'd probably equate it to something like running 8 oscillators per track with 64 tracks. But you'd still need a pretty powerful machine to do that - whether it was running in 32 or 64bit. These transition years will be difficult, but so will the transition to the 96bit systems we'll need for virtualization. In the near future, I am not convinced (from a USER perspective) that we need to go 64bit just because it's "new" (which it isn't).

[mhog]

Are you sure? 64 bit "plugins" and "DAWS" are not that old... (maybe 3-4 years?). I did not even know 64 bit technology is not "new" (Wikipedia says "IBM 1960", right?). I guess it is considered "new" for commercial reasons, just because AMD and Intel introduced the 64 bit CPUs not longer than 8-10 years ago on (consumer) PC. So, nowadays when you enter a store you find computers with 16-32-64 GB RAM and 64bit CPU. A computer based on 32bit CPU and 4gb RAM is considered "obsolete" (and its OS, too). Of course one can make music with everything, Commodore 64 included... Otherwise, why Logic and Ableton have not even native 32-64 bridge anymore? Is it a commercial strategy?

[RunBeerRun]

You might be at a disadvantage for drivers, if available, I've heard more bad stories on x64 drivers, while x86 have been around longer, not sure if by DAW you mean host or actual computer.

[aciddose]

Plugins had to be re-written very substantially to use the available instruction sets for the new 64 bit architecture.

That isn't a correct assertion unless you add the specifier: "Plugins written in hand-made highly focused assembly language designed specifically for the x87 fpu had to be re-written ..." and you'll need to change to "in a generic format" rather than "re-written", assuming the generic code didn't exist in the first place.

Also I believe a majority of the issue was certain compilers having dropped support for inline assembly language to be replaced with intrinsic code.

A better description is "obsolete optimizations had to be undone and new optimizations made with modern methods for optimum performance on x64." Although in most cases the "naive" implementation on x64 will out-perform the optimized fpu code by a significant margin.

Updating code to x64 is mostly about fixing bugs or poorly written code. If it were written correctly in the first place, x64 compatibility would involve flipping a switch.

My code runs 30% faster on x64 and I did absolutely nothing. I flipped a switch to enable x64 and that was all.

[egbert]

Plugins had to be re-written very substantially to use the available instruction sets for the new 64 bit architecture.

That isn't a correct assertion unless you add the specifier: "Plugins written in hand-made highly focused assembly language designed specifically for the x87 fpu had to be re-written ..." and you'll need to change to "in a generic format" rather than "re-written", assuming the generic code didn't exist in the first place.

I'm commenting on stuff like Voxengo's earlier plugins which, like many plugins from that time, used optimized x87 code and in many cases have yet to move to 64 bit environments. Alexsey stated that he was moving to new frameworks and released no new work for 18 months while he did a very substantial rewrite of his code base. After this substantial rewrite (I gather in a new programming environment) was completed, he was able to support 64 bit Windows and OSX on his revised plugins - new 64 bit versions have appeared for Elephant and Gliss Eq and others.

Older VST2 plugins were not all about SSE instructions. They might have been written to run on Pentiums and Win95/98. If you are writing more modern stuff and using coding environments like C++ which supported both 32 bit and 64 bit environments I am not surprised that your migrations were pretty easy.

[hibidy]

Hi

Is there any advantage for a DAW using 64 bit Win 7 (vs 32 bit) apart from being able to address more RAM ?


Thanks

No, but that is big enough.

At some of the rest of this thread, lolzes.

I went x64 years and years ago. It's like Western airlines used to be, the only way to fly.

[aciddose]

No, I was writing plain old c code and optimizations were done on top of, based upon that generic code.

Reverting to the generic code was as simple as commenting out the optimizations.

You're being misled by developers who were caught off guard writing poor code. As for what went on in the specific case you give as an example, who knows really.

In any case the code I'm using today is some cases the very same unmodified code I've used for years. Nothing has changed, nothing. If you obey the rules you would not need to put in any additional effort.

The idea anyone should need to is bogus. In reality nobody should need to and the fact they do shows you something went wrong at some point.