Originally posted by: toattett
Originally posted by: Sunner
I think he was referring to the fact that dual core CPU's will lag single core CPU's in terms of clockspeed, so for any current gaming needs, single core CPU's will be faster for some time.
Right, I simply can't play my games on a 3.2GHz P4 anymore.
Originally posted by: stevty2889
I'm just curious how a dual core setup would run 2 MMORPG's at once. Since I have dual monitors I do that sometimes, I would think dual core could help run them more smoothly, dedicating a core to each game. Dual core with an SLI setup could make that interesting..
Originally posted by: Googer
Originally posted by: Zucarita9000
Dual core will be extremely usefull as more application become multi threaded. You can benefit from dual core systems right now if you use 3ds max, Photoshop, Autocad, etc. But if a gamer is all you are, then no it'll be some time before game developers start to multi-thread them.
Dual core is intended for multitasking, and you can see from the reviews that is excels at it.
A lot of people here will say that dual core is useless and not worth it, but that's because all they do with their computers is play games. I would definetely benefit from dual core, as I multitask like hell. However, I just bought a new system on december 2004, so I'll just wait till Pressler or the next generation comes out.
Quake 3 suports SMP. I don't know how it really panned out, but while it was in devlopment a yeas or two ago John Carmack said the Doom 3 engine would be SMP capable. Does anyone know if this ended up as truth or not?
Originally posted by: Sunner
Originally posted by: Excelsior
Originally posted by: EndGame
Dual core offferings from both AMD & Intel will be significantly slower in gaming than their single core brothers. Dual core will benefit multitasking and choice aps. until games are coded to take advantage of it better.
*ahem* Explain to me how a single core machine running at 2GHz would be faster than a dual core machine running at 2Ghz (each core). That makes no fvcking sense...
Therefore I believe you are wrong.
I think he was referring to the fact that dual core CPU's will lag single core CPU's in terms of clockspeed, so for any current gaming needs, single core CPU's will be faster for some time.
Originally posted by: ribbon13
Its only a matter of time before gamers will actually want SMP, as newer game engines will support it. UnrealEngine3 is going to, and Bioware is going to use that for thier newer RPG titles.
Originally posted by: Wicked2010
Originally posted by: ribbon13
Its only a matter of time before gamers will actually want SMP, as newer game engines will support it. UnrealEngine3 is going to, and Bioware is going to use that for thier newer RPG titles.
Yah yah yah.
Let's just face it that games are really never going to have *HUGE* gains in performance from a dual core CPU system. Even if the application is designed to use many threads, games by nature follow a single threaded execution path.
Think about it. You're playing HL2, you walk into a room full of enemies, all of the enemies see you and react accordingly to the way the AI is programmed, then you shoot, then they get damaged inflicted, then someone dies ... you or them. I mean, all of this stuff happens in a sequence. The sounds and video are presented based on your choices in the game... you can't do anything up front or in parallel. It's all in sequence. They will try to optimize certin parts of the gaming engine... but in my opinion, you will not see anything worth writing home about when playing a game on a dual core platform as opposed to a speedy single core system possibly ever.
It has more to do with then just clockspeed. As the article pointed out, in order to raise yields for dual-core CPUs, slower transistor types are used. Additionally, dual core CPUs use a more conservative FSB than their single-core brethren do, which lowers memory bandwidth, which is very important in some games. Those two factors combine to make the dual core chips slower than their single core speed equivalents for games, which are primarily single-threaded apps.Originally posted by: Sunner
Originally posted by: Excelsior
Originally posted by: EndGame
Dual core offferings from both AMD & Intel will be significantly slower in gaming than their single core brothers. Dual core will benefit multitasking and choice aps. until games are coded to take advantage of it better.
*ahem* Explain to me how a single core machine running at 2GHz would be faster than a dual core machine running at 2Ghz (each core). That makes no fvcking sense...
Therefore I believe you are wrong.
I think he was referring to the fact that dual core CPU's will lag single core CPU's in terms of clockspeed, so for any current gaming needs, single core CPU's will be faster for some time.
Originally posted by: Zucarita9000
.................A lot of people here will say that dual core is useless and not worth it, but that's because all they do with their computers is play games. ...............
Originally posted by: beany323
Originally posted by: Zucarita9000
.................A lot of people here will say that dual core is useless and not worth it, but that's because all they do with their computers is play games. ...............
you can do more then play games on a pc? wow... think i'll have to look into that!!
:shocked:
Originally posted by: Acanthus
Originally posted by: Wicked2010
Originally posted by: ribbon13
Its only a matter of time before gamers will actually want SMP, as newer game engines will support it. UnrealEngine3 is going to, and Bioware is going to use that for thier newer RPG titles.
Yah yah yah.
Let's just face it that games are really never going to have *HUGE* gains in performance from a dual core CPU system. Even if the application is designed to use many threads, games by nature follow a single threaded execution path.
Think about it. You're playing HL2, you walk into a room full of enemies, all of the enemies see you and react accordingly to the way the AI is programmed, then you shoot, then they get damaged inflicted, then someone dies ... you or them. I mean, all of this stuff happens in a sequence. The sounds and video are presented based on your choices in the game... you can't do anything up front or in parallel. It's all in sequence. They will try to optimize certin parts of the gaming engine... but in my opinion, you will not see anything worth writing home about when playing a game on a dual core platform as opposed to a speedy single core system possibly ever.
umm, except that the physics, graphics, sound, and AI of each mob can be on seperate threads.
Physics engines and threading models
ONE OF THE COOLEST DEMOS at IDF was a game called Robohordes from Naked Sky Entertainment. I say demo not game because it was meant to show off the dual core capabilities of the P4/Smithfield, and if you spend the time to talk to the developers, it actually does so fairly well.
Robohordes is notable for two things, it is truly physics based and the devs actually care about real physics. The technical specs are no less impressive, it is based on Unreal Engine 3, the latest and greatest next gen engine to almost be out. UE3 does pretty much everything, and it takes a really high end card to run well.
The thing that makes it a good multicore demo is the threading model. Robohordes immediately spawns four threads for physics, allowing them to run the physics model at 200FPS. This means that things bounce realistically and happen at a more granular level than the display can show. For the end user, items don't get caught in walls, you fall like you think you should fall, and everything works. If you drop it to a single core, the physics engine drops to 100FPS so things get less real. You also lose terrain deformation.
The gameplay is old arcade style, you are a robot in an arena, doors open, and tons of bad guy robots come out. Your job is to pick up weapons, shoot them all, and then shoot the next round of them. You get guns, machine guns, powerups, and even a piano. There is one special weapon that drops a piano on the robotic hordes coming at you.
The robot is a little guy with a ball for legs and guns for hands. Not much more to say there, it looks fairly ordinary. The trick is he is realistically modeled with the physics engine. If you are going one way and make a sharp turn, he leans, bobs and 'steers like a pig'. If something comes at you from the side and you do a sharp turn, your view snaps over but your arms and body have to move more slowly. Your guns take a bit of time to arc across, so you end up blasting lots of walls. It takes skill, and shows off a lot of what game designers tend to overlook.
The game is a bit early, just a few months into development, so don't look for it on the shelves next week. I could not even get a rough date from the devs, so nothing more to say on the when front. On the day that it does come out, it will be well worth a long look, especially if you have a fetish for old arcade games. Naked Sky seems to have gotten the style of gameplay right, and that is the most important bit.
CURRENT GAMES don't care much about multithreading and dual core processing. That's the biggest problem that Intel has to face now at the dawn of its dual core CPU generation.
Intel's soon to be announced Smithfield is going to work at 3.2 GHz only and even though it will have two cores it will eventually end up slower for gaming. Most of today's games engines don't have any kind of support for dual core processing and won't benefit much from the second core.
We strongly believe that Intel will work hard with game developers to ensure that future games will end up with support for dual core as we are sure that if you program it right you will be able to use the second core for some of the operations. I bet that Intel is pushing developers to take benefit of the second core as we speak.
Officially branded as the Pentium D, CPU codenamed Smithfield is 3.2 GHz CPU times two. You will end up with 3.2 GHz versus an existing 3.8 GHz single core CPU. We learned that existing single core CPUs, such as 570 and 670, both clocked at 3.8 GHz might end up much faster for current games and benchmarks.
The second problem comes for Intel's Extreme Edition, again clocked at 3.2GHz, but a dual core with its FSB down clocked to 800 MHz that has to compete against FSB 1066MHz 3.73GHz CPU.
It's going to be nasty but dual core is the path that Intel and AMD have both chosen. It may be difficult for the chip firms to explain why those CPUs are actually slower in games but for most of the other applications dual core CPUs are the right thing, and will boost multithreading applications big time. AMD, on the other hand, might not face such a big problem as it will start at 2.4GHz with its dual core chips which is the shipping speed of its flagship 4000+ now.
Originally posted by: TastesLikeChicken
It has more to do with then just clockspeed. As the article pointed out, in order to raise yields for dual-core CPUs, slower transistor types are used. Additionally, dual core CPUs use a more conservative FSB than their single-core brethren do, which lowers memory bandwidth, which is very important in some games. Those two factors combine to make the dual core chips slower than their single core speed equivalents for games, which are primarily single-threaded apps.Originally posted by: Sunner
I think he was referring to the fact that dual core CPU's will lag single core CPU's in terms of clockspeed, so for any current gaming needs, single core CPU's will be faster for some time.
However, if you're doing something in the background like decoding/encoding or burning a CD, a dual-core setup will probably allow you to play your game and run that background task whereas it'd be pretty dicey doing the same on a single-core setup, no matter how fast it is. So dual-core and could have some advantages in regards to gaming. I'd rather be gaming than watching the progress bar inch up. YMMV.
for intel only . . . AMD starts with 2 x 2.4Ghz . . . . at it's current highest clockspeed.Originally posted by: Sunner
Again, I'm not arguing about the usefulness of CMP, just saying that for the time being, single core CPU's will be faster for some things, primarily games.
Originally posted by: Duvie
Except for the fact AMD is at 2.6ghz with the FX55 and likely will be 2.8ghz with the FX57 by the time dual core desktops arrive...Also should have the venice 4200+ (2.6ghz) out by then as well....
AMD will be in same boat...fastest gaming machine will be the FX models....fastest everything else with be dual core....however it is nice to know you can get with 10-15% of highest performance and actually can have that while using the other cpu to fold or to encode an AVI movie to Xvid without losing that performance....
Originally posted by: Duvie
Except for the fact AMD is at 2.6ghz with the FX55 and likely will be 2.8ghz with the FX57 by the time dual core desktops arrive...Also should have the venice 4200+ (2.6ghz) out by then as well....
AMD will be in same boat...fastest gaming machine will be the FX models....fastest everything else with be dual core....however it is nice to know you can get with 10-15% of highest performance and actually can have that while using the other cpu to fold or to encode an AVI movie to Xvid without losing that performance....
Seeing as my man Anand was waiting for another NDA to expire and has gaming benchies posted! I'd say the Inq dick is a clueless loser who needs a good ass whupin'! :light:Originally posted by: Alastria
Anyone see the this article at The Inquirer?: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22332
He's basically calling out Anand, and says Anand's a sellout and his reviews are for sale. Yikes.
Rebuttal?