Author Topic: Native x64?  (Read 3057 times)

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ommy

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Native x64?
« on: November 01, 2011, 09:37:42 AM »
Hello.

Are you thinking about native x64 version of Avast?

Offline igor

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Re: Native x64?
« Reply #1 on: November 01, 2011, 10:39:22 AM »
Not at the moment, as it wouldn't bring any real benefits.

Hellion

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Re: Native x64?
« Reply #2 on: November 01, 2011, 10:49:43 AM »
Hi Igor,      (Sorry Ommy for high jacking your post!)

Will a 64bit Avast not be a speed and compatibility improvement for x64 Operating systems?

Offline igor

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Re: Native x64?
« Reply #3 on: November 01, 2011, 11:26:09 AM »
Well, do you have any compatibility issues with the current build? :)
As for the speed... not really, the difference would be negligible.

Hellion

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Re: Native x64?
« Reply #4 on: November 01, 2011, 11:33:45 AM »
Hi Igor,

No, my Avast is working perfectly and always has.

Thanks for clearing that up.

I was always under the impression that 64bit applications work better than x86 when on a x64 OS.

Offline igor

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Re: Native x64?
« Reply #5 on: November 01, 2011, 11:43:43 AM »
Very specific algorithms can benefit from having wider (and more) CPU registers, but...
1. It's not a very common case that the difference is significant
2. You might have to write the implementation in assembler to have that advantage - when using a higher language (avast! is mostly written in C/C++), it depends on the compiler how it deals with the optimization - and it can easily happen that the 64bit version will actually be slower (some time ago, I did some benchmarks on the decompression algorithms, and for some archives the unpacking was a bit faster, but for some also a bit slower)
3. The executables are a bit bigger, consuming more memory - which can cause slight slowdown, compared to 32bit version
4. The limit for avast! (the weakest part of the chain) will usually be the data source (hard disk, network), not the CPU itself - so faster processing won't really speed up the scanning

Hellion

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Re: Native x64?
« Reply #6 on: November 01, 2011, 11:59:10 AM »
Hi Igor,

Very interesting!

ommy

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Re: Native x64?
« Reply #7 on: November 01, 2011, 01:35:33 PM »
Well ... did you hear about Kernel Patch Protection? It's special layer of protection in x64 ... Unfortunately, it's not as good as Microsoft wanted.. Nowadays, malware can omit that, but protection software can't give you good security level.

That's the reason why I asked about native x64 version...

Offline igor

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Re: Native x64?
« Reply #8 on: November 01, 2011, 01:39:42 PM »
That's unrelated to 32 or 64bit version of the AV though - that's a feature of the OS.
Of course, avast! has 64bit drivers for x64 OSes - it wouldn't work at all without them.