Is there a 64-bit Steam client for Windows?

[Zhrindhar]

Steam support seems to be oblivious about its own product and has no clue, so I am asking the question here...is there a 64-bit Steam client for Windows? I hope this group is not as lacking in knowledge!! ;-)

[aiusepsi]

No, there isn't, but Steam does support launching 64-bit games.

[jinglesaw]

I dont think so but there are some 64-bit games and you can vote for some in greenlight

[Satoru]

There isn't one and it's not necessary

If Steam is using more than 4GB of RAM something is wrong. We're not playing "My First SQL Server"

[Red eye Green]

The memory management is the main feature of x64 bit adressing, not the use of over 4GB...

So it is a valid request.

[XANA]

I insist on a 64-bit client. I cant use my Steam Overlay for 64-bit Java games unless I do. This includes the Technic Launcher or other similar Mod Management program for Minecraft, which I have the 64-bit version of.

[Karubo]

There certainly isn't any reason as to why there isn't a 64-bit client.

[Dusk of Oolacile]

Originally posted by Satoru:

If Steam is using more than 4GB of RAM something is wrong.

Actually not using available resources is wrong. A 64-bit client could and should use more than the available 2GB (per process) when doing updates, patching, compression/decompression etc. Sure the facebook-like features which Valve tends to prioritize these days don't need more than a web browser, but Steam used to be a downloader and manager of our games. What will Valve do when a 40GB patch comes out for The Witcher 3? Use only 2GB RAM for patching? That will be a bit slow. Patching the game for a week will anger people.

[aiusepsi]

You don't need to keep the entire patch in memory. It's a streaming process, like a production line. You take data in at one end, and you spit it out onto hard disc on the other side.

You only need to have enough memory for all the stuff that's in flight, which is maximally bounded by hard-disc bandwidth and the time it takes to get from one side of the production line to the other. Fastest SSD I can find at the moment pushes 500 MB/s, so you'd only blow through 2 GB if data spent 4 seconds winding its way through the Steam client; 4 seconds is an eternity, something like 8 billion clock cycles.

Anyways in practice, it'll more usually be bound by your download rate, which is a heck of a lot lower.

Now sure, you need 64-bit numbers to keep track of the whole patch, yeh. But you don't need a 64-bit process to have 64-bit numbers.

[Dusk of Oolacile]

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

You don't need to keep the entire patch in memory. It's a streaming process, like a production line.

Slow != impossible.

Let's say we use 16 parallel threads to decompress an update archive. Each thread works in memory, using 128MB buffers. Tell me how the whole process will fit or how the HDD speed will be the limiting factor.

[aiusepsi]

You can only write at 550 MB/s (max, that's for an astonishingly quick modern SSD), so there's literally no point running your decompression any faster than that. You can't make the whole process complete any faster by doing so.

Anyways, for decompression your limiting factor is download rate, because it's downloaded data that comes in compressed. If you're downloading at 10 MB/s, you only need to decompress at 10 MB/s.

16 threads with each having a 128 MB buffer doesn't make any sense. If you have buffers that large, most of those threads are just going to be sitting on their hands for most of their time while their buffers fill. It's pointless.

What you ideally want is something like a producer-consumer queue, while one set of threads is responsible for stuffing downloads into relatively small buffers, then it punts those over to a set of threads that decompress the data.

[Bonk]

support, built a 64bit one valve. More than half of the gaming pc's supports 64bits and has 8 or more gigs of ram. It's a shame there is no 64bit version yet.

[daman4567]

The fact of the matter is that the Steam client is responsible for enabling the browsing of and managing the download of games, as well as launching them. The processor in a computer manufactured several years ago can move data from point a to point b within the computer faster than our internet connections can download it. All of these computers use 32 bit systems. All that 64 and 32 bit mean are the data width (think of it as the width of a hallway), download speed is the speed at which your modem can locate and retrieve data from the world wide web (think of this as a door leading to the hallway). No matter how wide the hallway is, the speed at which people can enter the door is the limiting factor and is always slower than the speed at which people move while in the hallway.

[aiusepsi]

Originally posted by TheKazz:

The issue is that if you have a 32 bit program installing your games you get 32 bit games.

That's not actually true. Steam does support installing and launching 64-bit games, and has 64-bit versions of the overlay etc. to support that.

[TheKazz]

my mistake then

[хХ___]

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