Game Development Community

MASM vs. NASM

by Jane Austen · in Torque Game Engine · 01/04/2002 (2:30 am) · 3 replies

Actually I am confused about why use NASM but not MASM (Microsoft Macro Assembler).

MASM supports the latest Intel and AMD's command sets, and provide more readable syntax. Furthermore, I guess it should be more compatible to use MASM with Visual Studio.

So I am wondering why the engine uses NASM. Is there a specific feature provided by NASM that MASM couldn't support?

#1
01/04/2002 (11:12 am)
NASM is Free
NASM supports all the CPU extensions
NASM runs on PC, Mac and Linux (and virtually everything else with a CPU in it)

MASM is part of VC++ (ie not free)
MASM is proprietary
MASM only runs on Windows
#2
01/05/2002 (12:35 am)
Does NASM support the latest instruction sets, such as SSE2 in Pentium 4?
#3
01/05/2002 (8:05 am)
After looking at their page it appears NASM does not support SSE2 yet.