PC Perspective have thrown up their new article which looks at the first 64-bit game to have hit retail shelves Shadow Ops! Is the 64-bit gaming revolution really here? or a AMD/Atari scam?
If you have been following PC games at all recently, you'll have noticed AMD getting into a marketing swing promoting 64-bit gaming. As the new Microsoft XP 64-bit edition comes closer to availability, AMD is getting more and more anxious to show off their 64-bit advantage before it disappears with the arrival of Intel's desktop 64-bit processors Yesterday, the very first game with 64-bit support right out of the box was released, titled "Shadow Ops: Red Mercury." Published by Atari, this game features the AMD64 logo on the box as well as during the loading of the game. 64-bit versions of several other popular games have been in development for some time, so this release seemed not too out of the ordinary, so at first it was just minor news.
However, we then received this link to a page at Atari.com: http://www.atari.com/shadowops/us/amd.html
It shows screenshots from both the 32-bit and the 64-bit version of the game side by side. What struck me was how different the quality in these screenshots appeared. In first set of images, you can see big differences in qualities of the ground, the gun and the shadows the characters are creating. The second set of images again shows the detail added to the gun, character and shadows, but this time we see the addition of items on the table in the room that do not appear in the 32-bit screenshot. The third set shows a big difference in lighting and shadow enhacements and the fourth set shows big differences in textures and lighting as well on the floorboards, characters and surrounding area.
I was immediately curious about the enhancements that Atari made to the game in the AMD64 version of that might improve the visual quality so drastically. So I began to dig deeper into the information available.
Shadow Ops -- 64-bit Gaming Revolution?
If you have been following PC games at all recently, you'll have noticed AMD getting into a marketing swing promoting 64-bit gaming. As the new Microsoft XP 64-bit edition comes closer to availability, AMD is getting more and more anxious to show off their 64-bit advantage before it disappears with the arrival of Intel's desktop 64-bit processors Yesterday, the very first game with 64-bit support right out of the box was released, titled "Shadow Ops: Red Mercury." Published by Atari, this game features the AMD64 logo on the box as well as during the loading of the game. 64-bit versions of several other popular games have been in development for some time, so this release seemed not too out of the ordinary, so at first it was just minor news.
However, we then received this link to a page at Atari.com: http://www.atari.com/shadowops/us/amd.html
It shows screenshots from both the 32-bit and the 64-bit version of the game side by side. What struck me was how different the quality in these screenshots appeared. In first set of images, you can see big differences in qualities of the ground, the gun and the shadows the characters are creating. The second set of images again shows the detail added to the gun, character and shadows, but this time we see the addition of items on the table in the room that do not appear in the 32-bit screenshot. The third set shows a big difference in lighting and shadow enhacements and the fourth set shows big differences in textures and lighting as well on the floorboards, characters and surrounding area.
I was immediately curious about the enhancements that Atari made to the game in the AMD64 version of that might improve the visual quality so drastically. So I began to dig deeper into the information available.
Shadow Ops -- 64-bit Gaming Revolution?
