Removing Support for 32bit Windows?

[King Dude]

Windows XP support was dropped recently by Microsoft, and that pretty much marked the beginning of the end for 32bit operating systems on modern desktop computers. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but most people these days have a 64bit operating system, so why not remove Dolphin support for 32bit Windows in exchange for fully 64bit code?

[neobrain]

Because we don't drop support for stuff just for the heck of it.

[King Dude]

Because we don't drop support for stuff just for the heck of it.

What about performance? I can imagine that 32bit Windows is weighing down Dolphin performance a little bit, at least from where the performance would be in fully 64bit code.

[neobrain]

The sole existence of a 32 bit code path doesn't necessarily degrade the 64 bit code path...

[cyrax33]

Keep in mind that people are still using 32 bit systems now and days, may sound stoneage but not by choice, but by not being well informed on the differences between them. Is like your telling these people to go out and upgrade your system to 64 bit just to use Dolphin and whatnot, which will ultimately decrease the number of users. Not to say there isn't a lot.

[delroth]

The main reason I see to drop 32 bit support soon-ish is that nobody tests it anymore and nobody develops for it. We had critical 32 bit bug(like, all games crashing at boot time) being unreported for weeks.

[King Dude]

Keep in mind that people are still using 32 bit systems now and days, may sound stoneage but not by choice, but by not being well informed on the differences between them. Is like your telling these people to go out and upgrade your system to 64 bit just to use Dolphin and whatnot, which will ultimately decrease the number of users. Not to say there isn't a lot.

I don't personally know a single person who currently runs a 32bit operating system on their own personal computer. I've only seen the local schools using 32bit Windows XP. And I'm pretty sure people are technologically literate enough to know the difference between 32bit or 64bit.

What about the graphics drivers? Windows XP, the last retail operating system I know of that offered a 32bit version to the public, has been dropped. Eventually graphics card drivers will no longer be compatible with the aging operating system. Windows 7 has a 32bit version, but that's primarily for business I believe, and Windows 8/8.1 does not have a 32bit version I don't think. 32bit operating systems are fading away.

[cyrax33]

Keep in mind that people are still using 32 bit systems now and days, may sound stoneage but not by choice, but by not being well informed on the differences between them. Is like your telling these people to go out and upgrade your system to 64 bit just to use Dolphin and whatnot, which will ultimately decrease the number of users. Not to say there isn't a lot.

I don't personally know a single person who currently runs a 32bit operating system on their own personal computer. I've only seen the local schools using 32bit Windows XP. And I'm pretty sure people are technologically literate enough to know the difference between 32bit or 64bit.

What about the graphics drivers? Windows XP, the last retail operating system I know of that offered a 32bit version to the public, has been dropped. Eventually graphics card drivers will no longer be compatible with the aging operating system. Windows 7 has a 32bit version, but that's primarily for business I believe, and Windows 8/8.1 does not have a 32bit version I don't think. 32bit operating systems are fading away.

If you don't personally know them than you can't possibly say you know the entire population doesn't use it. If you've only seen local schools using them then there are still people left using it trust me, not to an extent such as 64 bits are used but that still does not justify the general point of just dropping it.

There is in fact a Windows 8 32 bit version look it up, but don't take my word for it =)

[AnyOldName3]

A) There is 32 bit Windows 8, and it's recommended on systems with under 2GB RAM as the 64 bit version takes slightly more up, which programs then can't use.

B) Lots and lots of people, including those you'd expect to know stuff, don't know of any other advantages of x86-64 other than the obvious more memory one. Combined with the fact that it allows poorer programming to have fewer repercussions (as you won't notice when your excessively large array of nothing starts getting filled with somethings and taking up tonnes of RAM etc), certain people disapprove of having more memory space. In fact, Boris [something] who writes ENB (the famous D3D shader overrider which is commonly used to make games prettier, especially Skyrim) had a tantrum at Dolphin's devs for making the 64-bit version faster when it was asked if he could make 64-bit builds.

C) Lots of Android devices don't have 64-bit instruction sets, so it might stall Android Dolphin development.

[delroth]

Well, this guy is stupid if he thinks we're willingly making one version faster than the other. There are good and simple reasons why the 64 bit version of Dolphin is faster: with a 64 bit address space we can reserve a 4GB area that maps to the GC memory (== requirement for proper fastmem == +10-15% performance), and we have way more registers at our disposal (on x86: eax ebx ecx edx esi edi esp ebp, on x64: rax rbx rcx rdx rsi rdi rsp rbp r8 r9 r10 r11 r12 r13 r14 r15), which is critical when you try to emulate an architecture that has 32 GPR.

More minor reasons: DSPLLE requires emulating 40 bit registers, which can fit in a 64 bit x64 register but requires two 32 bit registers on x86 (and remember: we already have 2x fewer registers), compilers generate slightly better code because they can use 64 bit memory operations without requiring special alignment, and probably other stuff I don't know / can't remember.