For those on PC, we are slowly moving towards a 64 bit platform with most of us using WIn7 going to 64 bit rather that 32 bit. Do you think we will get a 64 bit version? I know it is unlikely. I also wonder if we will get a version that will utilise more than 1 core and hopefully 4. It will give my i7 something to do.

The game should be highly threaded, it has to run on the PS3, which relies heavily on multiprocessing, so it's somewhat of a prerequisite. As for the 64bit version, the only real reason to compile for 64bit is to use more than 2GB of RAM - and as neither console has anywhere near that small amount, I wouldn't get our hopes up.

Lol I'm still running 32 bit XP.

I need an upgrade...

I would probably be happier with being heavily mutithreaded and using multiple cores than being 64bit - but here is hoping. Actually I would prefer if game developers or even software developers in general would cease products for XP and let it slowly die.

64-bit Skyrim seems highly unlikely, but I too hope it'll take advantage of multiple (4 and beyond) processor cores.

It's already beginning with Battlefield 3.

With my new pc I'm getting Windows 7 64 bit (mainly for the ram, hopefully I can get my dos games to work) but It wouldn't really make a difference for me I would rather wait for the rest of the community to have 64 bit

I posted before your post -- sorry. Its just so old and it keeps PC development back as software that can made to run on a modern system has to be compatible with software a decade old. In that regards Apple does such a good job of keeping its consumer base reasonably up to date. Its probable half the reason people cannot run games on their system due to bugs as developers have to keep on making software for a diverse number of operating systems.

Having a 64 bit build does not stop them from having a 32 bit build. It is additional, not instead of. It stops nobody from playing it.

i use windows XP... and i prefer not to spend $1,000,000 a year upgrading my damn computer every time someone craps out something new for them.

i have an idea for something we can let slowly die...

...but i'd probably get in trouble for saying it.

:slap:

XP is almost a decade old, now. You cannot think that you're still modern, and that people should support you. You are running a very old OS. You wouldn't expect people to still support the PS1, would you?

There's a 64-bit version of XP too, in any case... and it's (arguably) a hell of an OS if you don't mind doing some tinkering.

And in fairness, if Skyrim doesn't utilise any newer PC hardware or software than what is required for the consoles, newer versions of Windows won't really offer any improvements (DX10/11, greater 64-bit support) for the purposes of the game.

There is precisely zero reason for it. If it doesn't need to use more than 2GB of RAM... there is absolutely no point.

As to the person saying XP is old... so? It's not like Vista/7 are revolutionary somehow other than improving how user permissions are handled and downgrading the sound system (Only one audio output device at a time, really?). Oh yeah and as a marketing gimmick they never made an XP compatible DX10/DX11. It's just not the same thing. As a bonus XP isn't a resource hog like Vista and to a lesser extent 7. Also, the 64-bit version of XP is not made for the average consumer. This means it's probably not a good idea to use it for your games. It won't hurt anything, but Windows 7 64bit probably far exceeds XP 64bit as an appropriate gaming platform. OS upgrades shouldn't happen just for the sake of OS upgrades (though I know marketing and finances dictate this). For that matter, OS bloat shouldn't increase for the sake of it either.

There are plenty of machines that will be able to run this game that still use XP, and that would suffer performance wise with Vista/7.

I've gotten out of memory errors in Oblivion a couple times. It's easy for a program to use up the full 2gb of space.

Remember how Todd mentioned that they are very content with XP in 32 bit? I'd say that is a no.

Well, Oblivion has no issue going over 2GB RAM if you mod it enough. And yes, XP is old.
Vista and 7 pretty much *are* revolutionary, in that they've implemented many things that people using other OS' have had for years. UAC actually gives some real security, instead of XP's joke of a system, the sound system may only be able to output to one physical object but it retains much, much greater control over what that sound is, all in software, DX10/11 isn't a gimmick, many of the improvements rely on the vastly improved driver structure (Which also means that a driver crash won't take down the OS, and often can restart without interrupting the current application), and while that could be back-ported to XP, that's a lot of work. Neither OS is a "resource hog", with the possible exception of the search indexer, but that's easy to disable if you're borderline having a toaster that can't handle some disk I/O - when you say "resource hog", I imagine you're referring to people looking at RAM usage and thinking they know what's happening - but as both OS' now utilise free RAM as a filesystem cache, free RAM is wasted RAM. Consider that RAM has access times in the nanoseconds, and disk read can take noticable amounts of time to even get the read head into position, and you can see why that's useful. It's not hyperbole to say that RAM is millions, perhaps billions of times faster than your hard drive, so using every last byte of RAM to cache data is the best use of it. Oh, and that doesn't incur a performance hit, you can read or write to every byte of your RAM in microseconds.

Yes, the OS has higher minimum requirements, but while XP's performance scales linearly upwards as you give it more resources, any modern OS' performance scales exponentially. XP is an old OS that does not support modern technologies and is not built to take advantage of modern hardware. When it was released, the internet was new, and IE6 was the big thing. XP is quickly becoming the IE6 of the OS world, while it was good at the time, it is now well past its time, and is starting to hold modern technology back.

A 32-bit application can use up to 4GB. Some of that is, of course, taken up by the system (like parts of the OS kernel), but a program that is built "large address aware" has a 4GB limit instead of 2GB.

If neither is a resource hog then why does this computer run significantly worse under Windows 7 than it does under XP? It's a DOWNGRADE in performance to "upgrade" the OS on an old enough machine. Now I won't be playing Skyrim on this machine, but a machine only slightly newer for other potential customers will likely be able to... and the difference between it running okay and not running okay could be whether the person uses XP.

Please explain to me how performance magically scales "exponentially" with better hardware? The OS uses some resources for itself and once the computer can handle that how can it "exponentially" do better with more hardware power? Are you talking about better handling of multicored processors and such? I'm not saying Windows 7 is bad. What I am saying is that they have nothing to gain by requiring Vista/7. There are plenty of XP computers that will be able to run it unless it is horrendously optimized for the PC. (Options to turn stuff up is good though.)

I will concede this:
If they include higher quality optional texture/model versions for the PC version and that drives it up past 2GB of RAM then I could see the reason. Unfortunately when they talk about Skyrim they don't even mention the PC version most of the time other than saying "oh yeah we put lots of work into the PC version" or "All versions will look the same except for resolution/antialiasing!" Since it seems unlikely they are putting much work at all into enhancing the PC version.. I doubt those resources will be needed. If they have the audacity to say "the UI isn't intended for use with a mouse" I highly doubt they will bother with higher quality art assets, optional or not.

Again I will concede that if the RAM is needed for mods that would vastly increase the detail of the game, then perhaps an optional 64 bit executable would be a good idea as well.

I dont think I could go back to XP from Win 7. I never tried Vista. I'm doing things on my current PC what I could never do on my old one and that could run Oblivion on the highest setting without issue. Even Microsoft is slowly cutting their support for XP. Its like Microsoft and Sony expecting this game to be made for xbox and ps2 as well as for their current system. I have no issues with this game coming out in a 32 bit version as well but a company stating we are happy with the oldest technology with a complete disregard to tech advances a decade later will eventually fail as their products will look outdated.

Hehe... At first I thought the thread was about NES 64.


If a small gaming company like CD Projekt can redistribute a 64 enhanced version of Witcher two years after release, then that says something for the market demand. Shame on BGS if they ignore it.

Yes, if your computer is as old as XP, you have nothing to gain. If you have a modern machine, however, you have a lot to gain. XP was build in, and for, a time when resources were scarce and you had to do everything using as little as possible, because you have nothing else. This is no longer the case. Our desktops can be rendered entirely on our GPUs, freeing the processor from the requirement and allowing us to keep window textures in VRAM, freeing the RAM from having to store the screen texture, and allowing windows to move over each other smoothly. Our data can be cached in the RAM we now have, to take the strain off the slow drive and give applications what they want faster. Our processors can process more than one thing at once, so we can tailor our task scheduler to this and see performance improvements across the board. We now have the resources to use a little more for significant benefit, so we can isolate device drivers from kernel space, so that when one of them dies, not only does the whole machine not come crashing down, but we can probably restart it without issue. We have the extra power to index the entire hard drive to provide near instant searching, and even do that while defragmenting only what's neccesary in the background. We can sandbox every process and only allow it access to protected parts of the computer if necessary, because the overhead is unnoticeable now.

Windows 7 is an OS built for a modern machine. XP is an OS built for an 8 year old machine. Neither of them are bad at their job, it's just that XP's job is irrelevant to a modern machine. The fact that 7 runs worse on a very old machine is incidental, technology moves on, it's up to you whether you keep up. Just keep within your technology band, don't try running a modern OS on ancient hardware, and don't try running an ancient OS on modern hardware.

Damn consoles holding us back...

When fallout 3 came out i didn't know it was a game from Bethesda which resembled The Elder Scrolls, so i bought it on ps3. After playing about 10 minutes i threw it in a corner and went back to the store to buy the pc version. Best money waste ever.

If you ask me it's impossible to get the same feeling from playing TES on a beast computer on max graphics with zero lag than on a crappy console.

Consoles are great for 3rd person epic games like God Of War and Dante's Inferno though (basically the same game )

A PS3 has a single core CPU with 6 cell-processors. Multi-threading would be useless for a PS3.


Correction.

The console bashing wears everyone's patience a bit thin in this forum. Moderators doubly so.

I'm playing New Vegas now and I'm having a nightmare getting the game to run with lots of high quality texture mods, exactly like Oblivion. Once Gamebryo hits the memory ceiling after 20, 30 mins of gameplay, it's instant memory crash. Just like Oblivion. Also, there are hundreds of performance woes and general bugs reported by quad core users (and above), since the engine runs on compatibility mode and isn't friendly to all types of CPU's.

It would be highly stupid to develop a new engine and tweak it to perform well only on computers built 5-10 years ago. Wanna design that performs well on consoles? Fine. But if they're going to bother porting it to the PC, they need to keep in mind that PCs can be either 10 years old or bought today, which means EVERY rig from the minimum and past the recommended specs should be equally supported and stable, even if you're not going to take full advantadge of the latest technological advancements, extra threads and massive amounts of extra memory. An alternative 64-bit executable would be ideal, but if the UI isn't event built for mouse usage, like Todd said, what are the odds anyway? :shakehead: