64Bit Gaming

[EN4CER]

I recently purchased a new rig with 64bit Vista Ultimate. The specs are
extremely high and I have yet to hit many problems (so far). Most of my
research concludes that WOW64, which is a 32bit emulator, will do just about
anything you need it to in regards to gaming (and other applications of
course). I have installed several games:

World of Warcraft
Gears of War
Battlefield 2142 (I had to disable SoundMAX)
Battlefield 2 (I had to disable SoundMAX)
Call of Duty 4 (The Direct2Drive setup file did give me some hassle on this.
I fixed it though)
Half-Life 2 and (Counter-Strike: Source, Team Fortress 2, Portal, other
HL2.exe games)
Team Fortress 2 (Had a problem with the in-game menu displaying incorrectly.
Updates fixed it.)
Titan Quest: Immortal Throne (I had to change compatibility modes and run as
administrator.)
Supreme Commander
Crysis (Had a full screen issue but resolved it with desktop settings in
conjunction with in-game settings)
Fallout 3
Mass Effect

I have yet to hit any problem that a quick Google.com search would not
yield results for a quick fix. Always remember to run your programs as
administrator and if it is unsupported under Vista to use the compatibility
mode to run in XP SP2 mode (Right click shortcut or executable > properties.
Then go to the compatibility tab).

If you are having problems with a game in 64Bit Vista feel free to reply
to this topic and I will attempt to assist you. If I do not reply feel free
to e-mail me. I would like for this topic to entail a great deal of issues
and their respective solutions. Kind of a one-stop shop for 64Bit Vista
gaming troubleshooting. I will very soon (within the next month) be opening
a forum that will have a section dedicated to both this topic and Classic
games on the Vista 64Bit OS (Doom to DeusEx).

Best Regards,
EN4CER

 

[Tim]

I recently purchased a new rig with 64bit Vista Ultimate. The specs are
extremely high and I have yet to hit many problems (so far). Most of my
research concludes that WOW64, which is a 32bit emulator, will do just
about anything you need it to in regards to gaming (and other applications
of course). I have installed several games:

World of Warcraft
Gears of War
Battlefield 2142 (I had to disable SoundMAX)
Battlefield 2 (I had to disable SoundMAX)
Call of Duty 4 (The Direct2Drive setup file did give me some hassle on
this. I fixed it though)
Half-Life 2 and (Counter-Strike: Source, Team Fortress 2, Portal, other
HL2.exe games)
Team Fortress 2 (Had a problem with the in-game menu displaying
incorrectly. Updates fixed it.)
Titan Quest: Immortal Throne (I had to change compatibility modes and run
as administrator.)
Supreme Commander
Crysis (Had a full screen issue but resolved it with desktop settings in
conjunction with in-game settings)
Fallout 3
Mass Effect

I have yet to hit any problem that a quick Google.com search would not
yield results for a quick fix. Always remember to run your programs as
administrator and if it is unsupported under Vista to use the
compatibility mode to run in XP SP2 mode (Right click shortcut or
executable > properties. Then go to the compatibility tab).

If you are having problems with a game in 64Bit Vista feel free to
reply to this topic and I will attempt to assist you. If I do not reply
feel free to e-mail me. I would like for this topic to entail a great deal
of issues and their respective solutions. Kind of a one-stop shop for
64Bit Vista gaming troubleshooting. I will very soon (within the next
month) be opening a forum that will have a section dedicated to both this
topic and Classic games on the Vista 64Bit OS (Doom to DeusEx).

Best Regards,
EN4CER

All those games you've installed work fine with Vista x64 without doing
anything except installing those games. You seem to "create problems" with
your topic that aren't even there. Ofcourse some old games won't work, but
the ones you come up with, work perfectly fine and in fact, the work with
less minor problems as you are mentioning in your post. For example: I never
had problems with Crysis and TF2. The question is: Why should you use
something like WOW64 if almost everything works fine anyway?

And for Doom you can use Dosbox.

Tim

 

[EN4CER]

You have no choice in the matter with WOW64 unless you disable the service
via msconfig. If the application is 32bit WOW64 runs without your knowledge.
I encountered those problems in my specific setup and figured it would be
nice to let people the extremely simple troubleshooting steps I took with
each game. DosBOX for instance needs WOW64 because there is not a 64bit
version of the application. Bring up your task manager. If the process has a
*32 behind it then WOW64 is emulating a 32bit enviroment.

So for the abridged version of an answer to your question I follow the
example of old school GI JOE cartoons:
Knowledge is Power!

 

[EN4CER]

Ahh, after some research I've found that DosBOX does have 64bit compiled
code. The same still applies for other 32bit applications. If you're trying
to tell me that all of those games can run without WOW64 or a different
32bit emulator you are dead wrong. I did a monumental amount of research on
64bit before I purchased the system a month ago.

 

[Chuck Walbourn [MSFT]]

To clarify a bit of confusion here:

"Windows on Windows 64" is the bridge between 32-bit processes running on
Windows x64 and the native 64-bit OS. If you are running a 32-bit program on
Windows x64, you are using WOW64. The only time you are not using WOW64 is
if you are running a 64-bit native application.

Note that the next version of Windows Server, Windows Server 2008 R2, will
allow adminsitrators to disable WOW64 completely meaning that only 64-bit
native applications can run on that system.

Generally speaking, 32-bit applications on Windows x64 just work becuase of
WOW64. The problems come up when there are bugs in the install process (like
they hard-code the installation path or reject valid characters like "(" or
")" in path names), when the 32-bit program contains old-school Windows
3.1-era 16-bit code (usually older installers because this stuff was left in
for years after it was no longer needed), or if the program requires the
presense of a custom kernel-mode driver because all kernel-mode drivers for
Windows x64 must be provided as 64-bit native Authenicode signed drivers.
This last issue affects copy-protection schemes used in some games.

See 64-bit Programming for Game Developers
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb147385.aspx

 

[Slap]

interesting, so...should i downgrade down to a 32 bit version for now?

No. Certainly not.
--

 

[Joe]

No. Certainly not.

You could if you want too, downgrading to XP is often more difficult, but
going from Vista 64 to 32 should pose no issues.

However I have no idea why you feel you need too.

 

[James Matthews]

It should emulate 32 bit out of the box...