FarCry 4 and the death of the dual core CPUs in gaming

[SPBHM]

lol ok. U win. Thank u for coming on an enthusiast forum & supporting we need to have dual cores for gaming in 2014. Nevermind that my Samsung Note3 smartphone has an octacore CPU, we need dual cores for desktops to continue accommodating last decades hardware.

if the dual core can run the game at 10fps, let it run at 10fps
and it's not even that bad, latest COD had the same artificial limitation and it actually is playable with a dual core...

anyway, dual cores are so outdated and bad that the newest Iphone 6 is running a dual core CPU, which is better than most other quad core and 8 core ARM CPUs

you can't just compare the number of cores.

 

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[SPBHM]

Why is Far Cry 4 suddenly associated with the "death of dual core gaming". There have already been other games that are effectively a lost cause on dual core CPUs like BF3 and Crysis 3.

because the game would not start properly with a dual core CPU, but apparently they are fixing this bug.

 

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[RussianSensation]

so?

quad cores are from 2006,

and 2005 vs 2013/2014 dual core
http://anandtech.com/bench/product/93?vs=1256

OK but you are linking Cinebench scores which ran faster on Intel for a decade now on a per core basis and heavily favour Intel architectures.

Look at FC3 at 1920x1200 with a 680. i7 965 @ 3.75Ghz keeps up easily with 3770k @ 4.5Ghz. 3.75Ghz is stock voltage overclocking on a Core i7 920 $284 from 2008. Right now a 4.0Ghz i7 920 will destroy a G3258 in 95% of games. That's the point.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/far_cry_3_graphics_performance_review_benchmark,7.html

G3258 is THE most overhyped Intel CPU I've seen in the last 6 years. It has little chance of beating an overclocked 4.0Ghz i7 920/860 from 2008/2009 era in most modern titles. Those are ancient quad-core CPUs!

All you need is to fire up a modern game to see how crappy the G3258 is. I have little positive to say for a 2014 CPU that will get owned by a 2008 i7 920 @ 4.0Ghz. In this case, you get what you pay for.

G3258 is nowhere close compared to the legendary $89 E2160. That one was an EPIC budget Intel CPU.

 

[SPBHM]

OK but you are linking Cinebench scores which ran faster on Intel for a decade now on a per core basis and heavily favour Intel architectures.

I think your are missing the point, the link I posted was just to show the g3258 does not belong in 2005 just because it's a dual core CPU.

the 2005 pentium extreme (also from Intel) with 2 cores and 4 threads is destroyed by the g3258, oh and I could use the i3 4370 as a current dual core to show it's nothing like 2005.


sure nehalem i7 is much faster overall, but it was never an $70 CPU when new, and it will be beaten for some games

I'm not defending the g3258(and the locked haswell dual cores) as amazing, just as "OK" to play games without expecting the best experience, with no good reason to get locked out from running games like far cry 4.

 

[ShintaiDK]

FC4 runs fine on a dualcore after patch 1.4.

 

[Bateluer]

FC4 runs fine on a dualcore after patch 1.4.

Err, tell me they haven't gone through 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 already.

 

[Spjut]

FC4 runs fine on a dualcore after patch 1.4.

Are there any benchmarks yet that now include an actual dual core CPU?

 

[BSim500]

Are there any benchmarks yet that now include an actual dual core CPU?

Haven't seen any for Pentium's. Here's one that includes an i3 though:-

Which yet again highlights how utterly absurd "core count as a metric by itself" is...

Edit: Youtube vid of G3258 working on Far Cry 4. Real-world game performance is better due to impact of FRAPS recording being far greater on duals than quads (plus it's only on a 260X). In short - as with pretty much every other game, a G3258 is no worse than a similarly priced AMD X4-750K.

 

[tinmann]

Well PC Gaming is about evolving technology. You have to roll with the tech or get left behind on the short bus. I bet you still don't have a clamshell phone now, or do you?

 

[exar333]

Well PC Gaming is about evolving technology. You have to roll with the tech or get left behind on the short bus. I bet you still don't have a clamshell phone now, or do you?

The G3258 IS a modern CPU, just not a lot of cores. What about AMD? Should they get a pass for using slow, inefficient cores just because they put more on a specific CPU, like the X4 750??

 

[DaveSimmons]

Well PC Gaming is about evolving technology. You have to roll with the tech or get left behind on the short bus. I bet you still don't have a clamshell phone now, or do you?

Yes I do . I don't walk around talking or surfing so a $35 phone and $3 a month cell plan lets me send another ~$80 a month off to my brokerage account. Or buy that fancy dijon ketchup.

I also have a quad-core i5, but like I posted earlier using X cores instead of Y amount of CPU power (cores * clock * IPC) is lazy requirement-setting for a game.

 

[justoh]

Guess this means single core is out too. Probably doesn't deserve a thread though

 

[BSim500]

I bet you still don't have a clamshell phone now, or do you?

It's surprising the number of people who do still own sub $80 "dumb phones" (with their 'backward' 14-28 day battery life...)

 

[exar333]

Yes I do . I don't walk around talking or surfing so a $35 phone and $3 a month cell plan lets me send another ~$80 a month off to my brokerage account. Or buy that fancy dijon ketchup.

I also have a quad-core i5, but like I posted earlier using X cores instead of Y amount of CPU power (cores * clock * IPC) is lazy requirement-setting for a game.

This.

The fact of the matter is that the game will not boot out-of-the-box for a modern 2-core CPU, but will for a much-slower quad (Q8200, Phenox X4, etc).

It is absurd and lazy. Period.

 

[moonbogg]

Guess this means single core is out too. Probably doesn't deserve a thread though

LOL. Safe to say I suppose. Also, looks like FC4 does worse with HT. Maybe i'll turn it off when I buy the game. I'll probably get it this weekend maybe.

Also, according to some slides it looks like I'm shafted with 2gb Vram even for 1080p regardless of settings. Hope that's not true.

 

[werepossum]

No, it's like I said. People are defending a too cheap choice for playing the newest AAA games. It's a backwards proposition from the beginning.

If all you can afford is an i3 for your gaming rig, FC4 and newest AAA action is probably not what you should be playing.

I had said in spite of FC4's implementation. The future is moving towards quad core, especially now that the new consoles are out. It's a lousy recommendation, and always has been. I have never recommended an i3 for anyone who wants to game.

Can't be cheapness, one can buy an AMD quad core and mobo more cheaply than an i3 dual core and mobo, since the market recognizes their relative speeds.

Least we know this generation will never run out of first world things to bitch about.

lol True.

 

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[tential]

Like I said, single core was already out for Far Cry 3 - game wouldn't launch.



That's me, I have a Nokia 2330.



It's probably just like Far Cry 3; Negative HT scaling (and people keep trying to tell me this no longer happens) on 4 cores, but with less than 4 cores the scales tip back in 'favor' of HT. This was my rough Far Cry 3 bench with an i7-4771:

4 Cores Enabled + Hyperthreading:
Avg: 87.117 - Min: 66 - Max: 127

4 Cores Enabled:
Avg: 97.333 - Min: 77 - Max: 129

3 Cores Enabled + Hyperthreading:
Avg: 84.350 - Min: 66 - Max: 122

3 Cores Enabled:
Avg: 74.250 - Min: 61 - Max: 91

2 Cores Enabled + Hyperthreading:
Avg: 72.283 - Min: 58 - Max: 91

2 Cores Enabled:
Avg: 56.067 - Min: 45 - Max: 74

Ugh, do I turn off Hyper Threading on my 4770k or leave it on...

I HATE negative scaling on HT why isn't this fixed....

 

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[HeXen]

On or off, the frame rates are still over 60. Kinda silly to turn hyper threading off just to reach a minimum of 77 fps over 66

 

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[postmortemIA]

Considering that developers (using that term loosely here) hard coded cores to certain functionality, it wouldn't surprise if game is using HT cores instead physical ones. That is game runs on 2 physical and their two HT cores, while other two physical are idle. That would explain lower performance on hyperthreaded systems.

 

[HeXen]

You're making a hasty generalization from that one set of benchmarks. How do you know that was 'worst case scenario'? In actuality, that wasn't the most CPU heavy part of the game (I had to compromise with an area where I could conduct more predictable benchmark runs). There are places in the game where the CPU bottleneck will drive the framerate lower. In 'real world' situations (just playing the game), having HT enabled on the 4771 did result in the game missing that 60fps target noticeably more often than with it disabled.

uh, yeah I still wouldn't bother but that's me, I"m not so easily bothered because a few games miss the 60fps target here and there.