Few games are coded to take advantage of four cores, at this point. What's more, games are generally GPU- rather than CPU-limited (Supreme Commander is a game often CPU-limited). I remember reading tons on this a few weeks back when I was PC shopping. Here're a few game benchmarks from Anandtech with some Intel and AMD 2- and 4-core processors tested side-by-side: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3272&p=12
I think you'll have to wait a bit before you can really push all four cores, meaningfully, whilst gaming. I guess that's a good thing ...
"His eyes were cold. As cold as the bitter winter snow that was falling outside. Yes, cold and therefore difficult to chew." -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
You do get a slight performance boost even if the game isn't taking advantage of the four cores, because all the background processes can be offloaded to the less utilized ones. So you don't have to worry as much about running more things at once.
I'm like a flashing lightning and a rolling thunder, I'm like a stepping razor
Location: Standing over a stained copy of an old Ronald McDonald ad, masturbating furiously screaming MY WAY!
Sunday, May 4th, 2008 - 11:40pm
I don't care how hard it is, just use all my gyat daym cowrrs >_<
Yeah, I think for a regular user like me, a quad core is kind of overkill. Most I use it for is opening 8 simultaneous windows with different porn videos on each.
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
And so far there isn't, but I think we'll both be a LOT happier when there is. That would get me in bed at a decent hour, and she can sleep through it anyway.
Obviously, Crysis and Supreme Commander should be first.
I don't think those two even have quad core support, I could be wrong though. I think gaming is just getting to dual core support.
There's always Photoshop and Sony Vegas!
"We are at war, and the enemies are...the publishers. No, they're not. It's not that easy. The enemies are mediocrity, laziness, and fear, and they exist in all of us." - Tim Schafer
I trully doubt that there would be exclusively dual core support. It's either multi-core supported or not. Your application is either multi-threaded or it's single-threaded. There is no dual-threaded or quad-threaded. So anything that runs significantly better on a dual core may see improvements on quad core.
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow and without a puppy
Monday, May 5th, 2008 - 2:12pm
MoonDragon wrote:
I trully doubt that there would be exclusively dual core support. It's either multi-core supported or not. Your application is either multi-threaded or it's single-threaded. There is no dual-threaded or quad-threaded. So anything that runs significantly better on a dual core may see improvements on quad core.
P.S. Semaphores FTL!
There can be. A program can be written so that it only executes on a certain amount of threads. Some solutions to multi-threading that have been done is too offload certain aspects of the code to another core. These can be anything from sound, physics, or really anything that isn't the "main" code. If the program has been designed to only offload a particular system, then they will not utilize more cores than what they were programmed for. However, truly multi threaded applications that have been built from the ground up with multi-threading in mind will generally do more than just offload a particular type of code to the extra core(s). They will actually spread out the program's tasks across an indeterminate number of cores.
Chumpy wrote:
I'm just happy I was able to blow Jake
Malor wrote:
but the fact that sh*t is really f*cking weird is highly testable.
Obviously, Crysis and Supreme Commander should be first.
I'm like a flashing lightning and a rolling thunder, I'm like a stepping razor
Few games are coded to take advantage of four cores, at this point. What's more, games are generally GPU- rather than CPU-limited (Supreme Commander is a game often CPU-limited). I remember reading tons on this a few weeks back when I was PC shopping. Here're a few game benchmarks from Anandtech with some Intel and AMD 2- and 4-core processors tested side-by-side:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3272&p=12
I think you'll have to wait a bit before you can really push all four cores, meaningfully, whilst gaming. I guess that's a good thing ...
"His eyes were cold. As cold as the bitter winter snow that was falling outside. Yes, cold and therefore difficult to chew." -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
You do get a slight performance boost even if the game isn't taking advantage of the four cores, because all the background processes can be offloaded to the less utilized ones. So you don't have to worry as much about running more things at once.
I'm like a flashing lightning and a rolling thunder, I'm like a stepping razor
Just as an interesting note... I'm a developer (not games) and I can't express how hard threading really is.
It's a real SOB to get done right and threading bugs are some of the worst!
I think you'll just now start seeing the use of threading, as most new computers nowadays have >1 core.
I will open one of my six mouths, and sing the song that ends the Earth.
I don't care how hard it is, just use all my gyat daym cowrrs >_<
Yeah, I think for a regular user like me, a quad core is kind of overkill. Most I use it for is opening 8 simultaneous windows with different porn videos on each.
The man wears a bucket of KFC on his head. I wouldn't expect anything less. - Pred
I will agree with you wholeheartedly there. Semaphores FTW
I'm like a flashing lightning and a rolling thunder, I'm like a stepping razor
Or, do it the right way.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
Aperture Science wrote:
I don't think those two even have quad core support, I could be wrong though. I think gaming is just getting to dual core support.
There's always Photoshop and Sony Vegas!
"We are at war, and the enemies are...the publishers. No, they're not. It's not that easy. The enemies are mediocrity, laziness, and fear, and they exist in all of us." - Tim Schafer
XBL- Devmani
PSN - Devmani
Steam - Devmani
WoW - Devmani/Calthais
I trully doubt that there would be exclusively dual core support. It's either multi-core supported or not. Your application is either multi-threaded or it's single-threaded. There is no dual-threaded or quad-threaded. So anything that runs significantly better on a dual core may see improvements on quad core.
P.S. Semaphores FTL!
(@)
There can be. A program can be written so that it only executes on a certain amount of threads. Some solutions to multi-threading that have been done is too offload certain aspects of the code to another core. These can be anything from sound, physics, or really anything that isn't the "main" code. If the program has been designed to only offload a particular system, then they will not utilize more cores than what they were programmed for. However, truly multi threaded applications that have been built from the ground up with multi-threading in mind will generally do more than just offload a particular type of code to the extra core(s). They will actually spread out the program's tasks across an indeterminate number of cores.
Chumpy wrote:
Malor wrote: