Does this impact performance? On PC (Win10), the game installs under Program Files (x86) folder.

[VelWu]

Hey there,

With pre-loading starting today, I notice that the default setting which GOG Galaxy gives just installs the game under "Program Files (x86)" on Windows 10 which is usually where 32-bit applications go.
Far as I understand, CP2077 is a 64-bit software. But I thought it'd be safest to abide by the default settings.

As the installation is in progress, I wanted to make sure that installing CP2077 under the 32-bit folder as default suggests won't prevent the game from utilizing 64-bit utilities. That it won't run slower or become unable to get the most out of performance, etc.

Any comment or enlightenment is welcome. Thank you.

 

[Sardukhar]

Windows prefers to put things in that folder, regardless. You will be fine.

 

[superpunked2077]

Its just the default location. Its fine.

 

[tcarlisle]

No., the directory you pick won't have a significant impact on performance. because of the name of the directory, path, or whether it falls under "program files" or "program files (x86)"

That said, there will be a performance impact if "program files (x86)" is on storage that is not appropriate for gaming in 2020. By that, I mean a single disk windows system on spinning disk. If you happen to have two drives (physical, not logical) and you compare performance between installs under "c:\program files (x86)", and "e:\program files" where "c" happens to be a HDD disk and "e" happens to be SSD, NVMe, M2, etc. there will be a performance increase for disk i/o operations. BUt that isn't because of the name of the parent directory.

Also, that said, there technically is a compute cost when parsing the directory name c:\program files (86) versus c:\program files. It has to take fewer compute cycles to work with the longer path name. But that is not going to be significant at the game level.

Another case where performance might appear to be better because of parent directory name, would be if c:\program files has already been defined with an exclusion for real time virus scan, and c:\program files (x86) has not. In that case, installing under c:\program files might give increased disk i/o performance, but that is because the anti-virus is disabled and thus the compute cost of the AV overhead is less.

I personally hate to see 64-bit applications under "program files (x86)" but that is just a personal preference which comes from wanting 32-bit legacy stuff to be gone already. But there is no rule that says 64-bit application data can't go under (x86). I just don't like it, and hence I will manually choose my installation path.

 

[Bloodartist]

Any comment or enlightenment is welcome. Thank you.

There is zero chance that this has an impact on the performance.

However, you should be able to simply change the directory. An SSD is recommended.

 

[the_underw0rld]

Install a dedicated NVMe drive and run the game from it

 

[VelWu]

However, you should be able to simply change the directory. An SSD is recommended.

Got the latter part covered.

Install a dedicated NVMe drive and run the game from it

You know what. Mine is a MSI GE66 which is built around a dedicated NVMe drive.

Thank you all.

 

[Suhiira]

Unless, like me, you have both an SSD and a regular hard drive it makes no difference at all where CP2077 is installed.