Crysis QuadCore Performance

[frythecpuofbender]

Dunno if this would be better suited for CPUs forum but anyhow:

Some guys from Intel and the programmer headhoncho from Crytek did a developer presentation about the multithreading capabilities of Crysis yesterday.

Data-Streaming, audio, network physics, particle system are computed in parallel.
The physics thread runs asynchronous but game logic, AI and animations depend on physics calculation. The particle thread is run synchronous to the main thread.

The benchmark ran on a Core 2 Quad with 2,93 Gigahertz and Geforce 8800 Ultra.
It showed:
1 core -> dual core up to 60%
1 core -> quad core up to 98% improvement
This graph seems to show fps with a single core and quad core with the one on the middle being the quadcore without the physics and particle threads multithreaded.
http://blogs.pcworld.com/gameo...s_multithreading_2.jpg

 

[Ackmed]

Yeah, and at what res? Certainly not a res I game in. Low res' is where this will help. But people who play in low res' dont normally buy quad-core cpu's so...

 

[frythecpuofbender]

The whole point of the talk seemed to be, that this multi-threaded "work crew" approach was there so that some sub system can drop some of it's calculations so that the rendering system still runs smooth. Imagine a situation where you have lot's of trees and stuff on the screen, rockets and bullets everywhere. Seems that in such a case the framerate could still be smooth when the physics system just drops some frames to give the rendering more breathing space. Dunno what will happen if you game in 1900x1200+ though...
But I can imagine the video card not always being the bottleneck with such a physics heavy game.

 

[bamacre]

Great info, and it makes sense. I have been holding off doing any upgrades until Crysis is released. This just makes the Q6600 look even better.

I hope you all realize the difference strong competition is making in the cpu market. Remember people were happily forking over $300 for AMD's slowest dual core (X2 3800+) for a long while.

 

[Skacer]

So few developers code proper multi-threaded games. It really is a shame.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Skacer
So few developers code proper multi-threaded games. It really is a shame.

They aren't going to have a choice in a few short years. All consumer CPUs will be dual or multi cored, from the low end to the high end. Figure in some more time for the single cores to get filtered out of the majority of systems, and devs will have to code for multi-cored CPUs.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: Skacer
So few developers code proper multi-threaded games. It really is a shame.

They aren't going to have a choice in a few short years. All consumer CPUs will be dual or multi cored, from the low end to the high end. Figure in some more time for the single cores to get filtered out of the majority of systems, and devs will have to code for multi-cored CPUs.

For games, and other demanding applications, yes. But there will still be software out there that is user-limited. Like MS Word, for example.

 

[m21s]

Originally posted by: Ackmed
Yeah, and at what res? Certainly not a res I game in. Low res' is where this will help. But people who play in low res' dont normally buy quad-core cpu's so...

Since when did a low rez effect AI, game logic, audio and physics?

The point of the quad core would be to handle all these other tasks while letting the GPU handle what it needs to do. Regardless of the resolution.

 

[SPARTAN VI]

Originally posted by: m21s

Originally posted by: Ackmed
Yeah, and at what res? Certainly not a res I game in. Low res' is where this will help. But people who play in low res' dont normally buy quad-core cpu's so...

Since when did a low rez effect AI, game logic, audio and physics?

The point of the quad core would be to handle all these other tasks while letting the GPU handle what it needs to do. Regardless of the resolution.

From what I can gather, he's probably referencing the resolution typically because CPU performance benchmarks are most defined when playing at lower resolutions and settings. Perhaps he's hinting at the possibility the GPU will bottleneck Crysis before the CPU does therefore making dual vs. quad cores a moot point.

Forgive me if my interpretation is off.

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: SPARTAN VI

Originally posted by: m21s

Originally posted by: Ackmed
Yeah, and at what res? Certainly not a res I game in. Low res' is where this will help. But people who play in low res' dont normally buy quad-core cpu's so...

Since when did a low rez effect AI, game logic, audio and physics?

The point of the quad core would be to handle all these other tasks while letting the GPU handle what it needs to do. Regardless of the resolution.

From what I can gather, he's probably referencing the resolution typically because CPU performance benchmarks are most defined when playing at lower resolutions and settings. Perhaps he's hinting at the possibility the GPU will bottleneck Crysis before the CPU does therefore making dual vs. quad cores a moot point.

Forgive me if my interpretation is off.

I think you're spot-on with what Ackmed was saying. And, while I'm interested in seeing some benchmarks to (dis)prove the idea, I have the same feeling as he does. We see this right now in games at high-res when we compare single and dual core. It probably won't be any different for dual vs. quad (with the few exceptions, such as Supreme Commander, which crave CPU power moreso than GPU power). Who knows... Crysis could become the poster-game for quads.

That being said, with the q6600 as cheap as it is, I will likely be using it in my next build (Oct/Nov). It won't happen often, but the idea of encoding a dvd *and* playing games sounds appealing. I will probably take up some distributed computing too (long overdue) in order to make some use of those cores when nothing else will.

 

[Skacer]

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel
I think you're spot-on with what Ackmed was saying. And, while I'm interested in seeing some benchmarks to (dis)prove the idea, I have the same feeling as he does. We see this right now in games at high-res when we compare single and dual core. It probably won't be any different for dual vs. quad (with the few exceptions, such as Supreme Commander, which crave CPU power moreso than GPU power). Who knows... Crysis could become the poster-game for quads.

That being said, with the q6600 as cheap as it is, I will likely be using it in my next build (Oct/Nov). It won't happen often, but the idea of encoding a dvd *and* playing games sounds appealing. I will probably take up some distributed computing too (long overdue) in order to make some use of those cores when nothing else will.

There are plenty of scenarios like Supreme Commander where a game can bottleneck on a CPU. The problem is that we often don't have very good benchmarks for these things. Standard flyby benchmarks will never be good at stressing the CPU.

It just so happens that the SupCom devs made a demo that specifically stresses the CPU so you can figure out what benefits you are gaining. Another game that really hits the CPU hard is Civ4 in late game. Or really any other RTS for that matter.

CPU power means a lot in games that rely on random generation too, like even Incursion which is a text based game can bottleneck a single processor while generating new maps, dwarf fortress too. Unfortunately not many 3D games have used randomly generated maps, I think Hellgate London may.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Skacer

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel
I think you're spot-on with what Ackmed was saying. And, while I'm interested in seeing some benchmarks to (dis)prove the idea, I have the same feeling as he does. We see this right now in games at high-res when we compare single and dual core. It probably won't be any different for dual vs. quad (with the few exceptions, such as Supreme Commander, which crave CPU power moreso than GPU power). Who knows... Crysis could become the poster-game for quads.

That being said, with the q6600 as cheap as it is, I will likely be using it in my next build (Oct/Nov). It won't happen often, but the idea of encoding a dvd *and* playing games sounds appealing. I will probably take up some distributed computing too (long overdue) in order to make some use of those cores when nothing else will.

There are plenty of scenarios like Supreme Commander where a game can bottleneck on a CPU. The problem is that we often don't have very good benchmarks for these things. Standard flyby benchmarks will never be good at stressing the CPU.

It just so happens that the SupCom devs made a demo that specifically stresses the CPU so you can figure out what benefits you are gaining. Another game that really hits the CPU hard is Civ4 in late game. Or really any other RTS for that matter.

CPU power means a lot in games that rely on random generation too, like even Incursion which is a text based game can bottleneck a single processor while generating new maps, dwarf fortress too. Unfortunately not many 3D games have used randomly generated maps, I think Hellgate London may.

I actually noticed this accidentally the other night, Civ 4 appears to utilize 4 cores.

On the rig in my sig all 4 cores were running at about 35-55% on the performance tab of the task manager while only running civ4.

 

[jdoggg12]

I think a lot of people are missing the point.... what this effectively means is that the equilibrium point for performance where the cpu isn't bound by the gpu and vice versa is raised.

You don't NEED to game at 1600x1200 with full AA and all the bells and histles... but what it DOES mean is that when the sh*t hits the fan, you're much less likely to need to worry about anything but your video card in thick fights with tons of physics, AI, etc as that card will be the only limiting factor.

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: Skacer
So few developers code proper multi-threaded games. It really is a shame.

They aren't going to have a choice in a few short years. All consumer CPUs will be dual or multi cored, from the low end to the high end. Figure in some more time for the single cores to get filtered out of the majority of systems, and devs will have to code for multi-cored CPUs.

For games, and other demanding applications, yes. But there will still be software out there that is user-limited. Like MS Word, for example.

Even stuff like that can take advantage of multiple threads as they can add more functionality that can run in the background on another CPU thread like indexing.

 

[the Chase]

Does anyone know what resolution that they did use for the benching?