PeterScott
Platinum Member
- Jul 7, 2017
- 2,605
- 1,540
- 136
I don't really expect to see it in PCs (except maybe in mobile targeted SoCs, like Intel's supposed Lakefield chip). But I was wondering whether we might see it in the next generation consoles.
And having to briefly change process is still a big cost, even for a nice big CPU. All the branch prediction and execution units in the world won't help when you need to flush the pipeline and dump branch predictor state because you switched process. There's a reason why Game Mode can help with minimum framerates.
It's not about context switching it's about overall load. Context switching is unavoidable. Games don't have 4 threads that can get exclusive use of 4 cores, Games have ~40 threads, constantly switching in and out.
Game mode is garbage. Does nothing for high end PCs, and only helps on low end PCs if you are dumb enough to trying running other applications while gaming on it. It really isn't about minor OS background processes.
What it really does is help in situations were you are essentially at 100% CPU utilization while attempting to game an stream video at the same time (or whatever other application your run while gaming). What it does is starve those applications of CPU.
In these kinds of fully loaded situations, losing a big powerful core to replace with smaller cores, makes things worse, not better.
Load matters much more than context switches today.