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

[Bateluer]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2851...t-to-a-bleak-future-for-budget-pc-gamers.html

Now, this isn’t a complete surprise. Far Cry 4’s minimum specifications call out the need for AMD and Intel processors with at least four cores. But in the past, games that claimed to need a quad-core processor have also managed to run on chips with fewer cores, albeit sometimes with a performance hit.

The issue indeed seems to be tied to pure thread availability. Several affected gamers managed to coax Far Cry 4 into working on Core i3 processors with hyperthreading enabled—despite the official spec's calling for at least a Core i5-750.

intel pentium g3258 processor
The impact on you at home: If games start to require true quad-core processors, it could put a hurting on gamers with a budget. Most of the gamers reporting problems are using a dual-core Intel Pentium G3258. The chip, lovingly dubbed the “Pentium K” by gamers for its beastly overclocking capabilities, costs under $75 and is able to punch far above its weight class performance-wise with some tweaking. But its lack of hyperthreading support may doom it to an early grave if top-tier games start requiring four-core hardware.

I've pointed more than a few people at that G3258 CPU and the Haswell i3s myself, they're pretty powerful chips for their price. Seeing them excluded when they actually outperform some of the multicore AMD chips and some older quad core Intel parts is interesting.

In the past, I've been a proponent of an increase in sysrequirements for games, especially when I see some people complaining that their C2D/XP machines can't run modern games. And I still maintain that philosophy, but a Haswell i3 easily outperforms the older Bloomfield/Lynnfield/Clarkdale/Gulftown skus.

Some of this may just be Ubi's poor job at coding, but it rubs me wrong when the game outright locks out what it thinks is too old. Install, run, and let the user make the call whether their hardware&performance in sufficient.

I'm sure most of us have some older games that autodetect your specs prior to install that utterly fail to detect modern hardware, which then cause it to fail to install. Makes me wonder what will happen a couple years from now when someone goes to play one of these older games, assuming they can even install it at all due to online DRM, and it can't recognize that Cannonlake uarch or GCN 2.1 uarch.

 

[ThinClient]

FarCry 4 is nothing more than a reskinned FarCry 3 anyway. In the bin it goes. Not a fan of either FC3 and certainly am not a fan of paying an additional full-price cost for more of the same.

 

[Spungo]

Maybe PC gamers should consider getting jobs.
My current computer is 4 years old and it has 6 cores. It wasn't even top of the line when I bought it. It's actually slower than an i7 920 in a lot of tests, and the i7 came out 6 years ago.

So basically this is like someone complaining that they can't play PS4 games on their PS3.

 

[postmortemIA]

this sounds like poor port from consoles where 3rd or 4th cpu was utilized for the processing, and rest of them for something else.

there are reports coming in that 3rd core does most of the work

 

[Skott]

Time for gamers to start buying quad core CPUs maybe. Not all are extremely expensive. We knew it was to happen some day technology being what it is. Perhaps that day is now? The good news is as time goes on quad cores will get cheaper as they push out the dual core CPUs.

 

[tential]

Time for gamers to start buying quad core CPUs maybe. Not all are extremely expensive. We knew it was to happen some day technology being what it is. Perhaps that day is now? The good news is as time goes on quad cores will get cheaper as they push out the dual core CPUs.

So, if a game works on an i3 (COD Advanced Warfare)
And the Developer locks you out and refuses to let you play.

You believe that's ok? The game works and is capable of running on an i3, but they decided to software lock that processor out?

That makes zero sense...

If a game doesn't run on dualcore well, then fine. But give the user a "warning" instead of locking them out.

 

[ThinClient]

Of course it's okay. It's their intellectual property and they can do whatever the flying seashells they want to do with it.

Who the stupid cheesy burrito wants to play that elephant abortion of a game that is Call of Duty, anyway?

 

[postmortemIA]

Time for gamers to start buying quad core CPUs maybe. Not all are extremely expensive. We knew it was to happen some day technology being what it is. Perhaps that day is now? The good news is as time goes on quad cores will get cheaper as they push out the dual core CPUs.

most of mobile CPUs are dual core, even some i7s are.

And again, it is not like the game needs all these cores, it is just a bad programming.

 

[digitaldurandal]

So, if a game works on an i3 (COD Advanced Warfare)
And the Developer locks you out and refuses to let you play.

You believe that's ok? The game works and is capable of running on an i3, but they decided to software lock that processor out?

That makes zero sense...

If a game doesn't run on dualcore well, then fine. But give the user a "warning" instead of locking them out.

The only way to create change is when people stop buying broken products from these companies. Unfortunately the vast majority of gamers cannot make the "sacrifice" of not playing the latest COD. Until they do, they'll continue to churn out junk and make none user centric decisions.

 

[ThinClient]

most of mobile CPUs are dual core, even some i7s are.

And again, it is not like the game needs all these cores, it is just a bad programming.

If every CPU has multiple cores, it would be bad programming to limit the game to a single core. Software has to be written to be multi-core capable. It's not simple like OH HEY I THINK I'LL ENABLE MULTICORE WITH THIS HERE BOOLEAN VARIABLE AND I'M DONE!

 

[postmortemIA]

If every CPU has multiple cores, it would be bad programming to limit the game to a single core. Software has to be written to be multi-core capable. It's not simple like OH HEY I THINK I'LL ENABLE MULTICORE WITH THIS HERE BOOLEAN VARIABLE AND I'M DONE!

It does not matter how many cores you have, most OSes run hundreds of threads per core. It is called context switching and it has been here forever.

So a game made to use 4 threads will run just fine on dual core CPU. Just 2 threads will be running per CPU.

Point is that this game is badly written to lock on the 3rd core. Only way to do that is to actually write code that overwrites Windows default behavior. By default on Windows, each process has affinity to use all available cores on the system. Somebody decided to set affinity of process to 3rd core, that does not exist on dual core systems.

 

[Bateluer]

Maybe PC gamers should consider getting jobs.
My current computer is 4 years old and it has 6 cores. It wasn't even top of the line when I bought it. It's actually slower than an i7 920 in a lot of tests, and the i7 came out 6 years ago.

So basically this is like someone complaining that they can't play PS4 games on their PS3.

Many do, but not all can afford to drop the cash on high end parts. Some have to work with more modest budgets.

If every CPU has multiple cores, it would be bad programming to limit the game to a single core. Software has to be written to be multi-core capable. It's not simple like OH HEY I THINK I'LL ENABLE MULTICORE WITH THIS HERE BOOLEAN VARIABLE AND I'M DONE!

I'm far from a developer, but if I'm not mistaken, modern develop suites are working towards exactly that. I know the SDK for Unity advertises multicore support and the UDK for UE4 advertises it as well.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I am a developer, and modern programs are written to use threads not cores. And even a single core CPU can support a program with dozens of threads. A modern OS schedules threads across the core(s) and gives them time slices to work in.

A dual-core running at 3.2 GHz can do the same work as a similar processor with 4 cores running at 1.6 GHz.

Listing a requirement of X cores at any speed instead of a certain amount of CPU power is lazy, and refusing to run on Y faster cores because "we needs more cores!" is worse.

 

[davie jambo]

Minimum requirements does state a quad core ....

 

[exar333]

I am a developer, and modern programs are written to use threads not cores. And even a single core CPU can support a program with dozens of threads. A modern OS schedules threads across the core(s) and gives them time slices to work in.

A dual-core running at 3.2 GHz can do the same work as a similar processor with 4 cores running at 1.6 GHz.

Listing a requirement of X cores at any speed instead of a certain amount of CPU power is lazy, and refusing to run on Y faster cores because "we needs more cores!" is worse.

This!

A high-speed dual core is more than sufficient for a majority of games. Let he user decide if it's too slow, not the application.

 

[Skott]

So, if a game works on an i3 (COD Advanced Warfare)
And the Developer locks you out and refuses to let you play.

You believe that's ok? The game works and is capable of running on an i3, but they decided to software lock that processor out?

That makes zero sense...

If a game doesn't run on dualcore well, then fine. But give the user a "warning" instead of locking them out.

I never said it was okay. It is what it is. You can support it and buy the product or you can not support it and not buy the product as is your right.

 

[sweenish]

Many do, but not all can afford to drop the cash on high end parts. Some have to work with more modest budgets.

AMD quad cores are cheap. That point is moot. What PC gamer buys at the low end? I get that some people are on budgets, I do. But gaming does require some horsepower, and I feel like $700 is the low end for a gaming tower. Getting cheaper means taking yourself out of PC gaming much faster, as shown here.

I see this whining as pointless. I've been behind PC games actually pushing PC's for a while.

While I can appreciate that console generations allowing PC hardware to stay viable for much longer, PC games also need to actually take advantage of PC hardware.

The majority of my readings online have just blasted companies like Blizzard for still running single threaded games, basically inflating spec requirements. Now that a game is actually requiring quad core, it's a bad thing? Make up your mind, Internet.

And like others have said, quad cores have been around long enough.

 

[darkewaffle]

Quad core is in no way "not compatible" with "budget". Hell I'm still running a quadcore phenom ii 965 that I got for something like $100-$125 four or so years ago. You can still pick up some of the quad core FX line from AMD for that same range - no they're not the fastest, best processors and do have worse single thread performance than Intel but they still do the job well and are only slightly more expensive than the Haswell Pentium line and are about dead even in price to the Haswell i3.

Personally I would never have recommended a dualcore over a quadcore just to save a few bucks because this is the kind of thing that was inevitably going to happen at some point. I know everyone here is an expert coder and can tell right off the bat that it's not true quadcore utilization because everyone hates Ubisoft, but the whole point of multi-core is making it so that you can do more with less. Four slower cores do have more theoretical throughput than two fast cores in the majority of high-load scenarios - it's just a matter of leveraging them appropriately, which is something games are actually able to do.

I don't have a problem with it, good for them.

 

[tential]

People in the thread are mistaking the recommendation of a quadcore, with locking out dual core users.

Put your minimum specs in there as a quad core if you want. Look at ACUnity's minimum specs. It says an HD 7970 is minimum yet I can still boot the game up wtih an HD7950 if I choose to.

 

[TechBoyJK]

FarCry 4 is nothing more than a reskinned FarCry 3 anyway. In the bin it goes. Not a fan of either FC3 and certainly am not a fan of paying an additional full-price cost for more of the same.

After having spent the weekend emersed in FarCry4, I can attest that it is $60 well spent. I love open world games, and Far Cry 3 was amazing for me. So 'reskinned Far Cry 3' is a great thing, imho.

I would have easily paid $100 for it. Bargain bin game it is not, at least in my experience.

 

[TechBoyJK]

most of mobile CPUs are dual core, even some i7s are.

And again, it is not like the game needs all these cores, it is just a bad programming.

I'm having trouble equating using more cores = bad programming.


Several years ago it was 'bad programming' if the game didn't use more cores.

 

[Blanky]

Far Cry 4 is absolutely a reskinned FC3. I even have the same weapon holdout as FC3: Light machine gun + sniper + bow. Crafting is basically the same, upgrades are, taking over bases are. It's the same game with some new maps and missions. If that's what you're looking for, though, it delivers. In 15 hours the only bugs on PS4 I've seen are a rhino that was dead but still moving around on the ground, and a guy who could walk in the air about 10 feet. It's actually very stable, frame rate is generally good, etc.

Oh yeah and I own a dual core, so I couldn't play it on PC even if I wanted to!

 

[TeknoBug]

Ubisoft and EA are kind of like last on the list for making their games actually run properly on PC. I'm not surprised.

Never played Farcry, never will, not my type of game (even though I like FPS games), and it's Ubisoft...

And I thought dual cores was so 2010? I avoid dual cores in anything now, even low end laptops (I'd get a N2930 over a N2840 or 1017U). But at least should expect those dual core i5 and i7 with HT mobiles to be able to handle the game.

 

[thejohnfist]

Too bad FC4 is massively broken for a lot of the PC playerbase. It likes to crash before it even loads the first part of the game. Sadly I'm one of the affected. Thankfully I didn't pay money for the game. (Came with GTX 970)

 

[Spungo]

Put your minimum specs in there as a quad core if you want. Look at ACUnity's minimum specs. It says an HD 7970 is minimum yet I can still boot the game up wtih an HD7950 if I choose to.

The worst I've ever seen on Steam were "Intel i7 or AMD equivalent"
wtf does that mean?

Companies making high end games need to release demos and benchmarks. Take guessing out of the equation. Companies are generally pretty good about this already.