64-bit players: new chips spell relief from huge datasets.(Processors)

Momentum for 64-bit computing in the digital content creation arena has been building since AMD released its 64-bit Opteron chips last year. It's easy to figure out why: Special effects houses, game development studios, and other companies that create entertainment-based digital content are slaves to increasingly huge datasets, the result of the more complex and realistic graphics that audiences expect to see in movies, television programs, and games.

For the most part, servers and workstations based on the new 64-bit processors are able to whip through these datasets far more quickly than their 32-bit cousins. What this means to a film studio, for example, is ...