do you think consoles having 8 cores will effect how pc games are developed?

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celtic34

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Just bought a new haswell i5 4 core processor. It's running at twice the clock of these 8 core processors in the consoles but we are still talking about untapped potential with pc processors running at faster clocks with 8 cores. Will these i5 chips survive this generation and excel with the right graphics card?

I have an i5 4430 with a gtx660 graphics card which puts me about on par with the latest and greatest at a good price and it also should overpower a lot of stuff. I just hope im not sinking money into something thats going to have issues.

I went with intel and nvidia which are designed differently than amd...... more expensive too. I'd like to think it will be worth it?
 
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Lee-m
There are a few things to remember when thinking about the new consoles.

First off, they wont be using 8 cores for games. Two of them will be taken up looking after playstation os/xbox os, and other stuff the user has running.
Leaving 6 cores for the main game.

The second thing to remember is the CPUs in the new consoles are garbage when compared to the average i5. Threading scales down as well as up (within reason). The i5 will get the work done on each thread and be on to the next faster than the consoles with more cores.

The third is, people have the perception that games will be using the consoles cores 100% all the time. Thats not true. Games are full of things that hold up starting a new task/thread. Like waiting for user...
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JOOK-D

JOOK-D

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It maxes games now, and will play at least on high for a few years yet. it will not become obsolete that quickly.

As for the 8 core console CPUs and PC CPUs, yes; they may become optimised and spread the workload better on 8 cores, but we don't know. Regardless, considering how architecturally sound those haswell i5's are they're not going anywhere - their IPC and single-core performance is so good that even if games run better on 8 cores they'll still be right there - maybe not as good, maybe better.

Also it's difficult to compare PC clockspeed to that of consoles - games are so well optimised for consoles that each console core will act as being much more powerful and efficient than its hardware actually is.
 
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celtic34

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the thing is a lot of i7's are still quad core. I was looking at the i7 4770 as well but it's still a quad and the difference in price is pretty big between that and an i5. I wanted to keep the price somewhat down and get a nice graphcis card so the i5 and 660 seemed like a good bet.

i've had amd processors in the past. They are cheaper. Specwise they seem to match up but they also overheat and aren't that efficient in their design from experience....

for pc's i've had both and it seems like intel is somewhat more reliable.....
 
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celtic34

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this is where i'm not seeing the advantage to the pc right now. I'm guessing and i'm also spending more for something that basically has the same parts in it that these new consoles have for $400 plus games are going to be developed specifically with the consoles hardware in mind vs having to brute force it with a pc..

all these consoles are are glorified pc's at this point. the cell processor was actually the last true console processor imo and odd duck where games are going to be ported back and forth because they are all the same thing.

Same architecture. CPU, a lot of memory bandwith and a gpu....... The cell processor was different where developers really had to get in and develop for it. It didn't really have the benefits of a pc as far as bandwith and general purpose tasks why the ps store was so slow.... Funny the cell is still more powerful than a lot of this new stuff as far as just raw calculations and being able to offload different tasks on each spe. It was just a totally different design because there wasn't a whole lot of bandwith.
 
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Lee-m

Lee-m

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There are a few things to remember when thinking about the new consoles.

First off, they wont be using 8 cores for games. Two of them will be taken up looking after playstation os/xbox os, and other stuff the user has running.
Leaving 6 cores for the main game.

The second thing to remember is the CPUs in the new consoles are garbage when compared to the average i5. Threading scales down as well as up (within reason). The i5 will get the work done on each thread and be on to the next faster than the consoles with more cores.

The third is, people have the perception that games will be using the consoles cores 100% all the time. Thats not true. Games are full of things that hold up starting a new task/thread. Like waiting for user input, waiting for buffers to be flipped, waiting for the gpu to finish tasks. The list is endless.

bottom line is, the i5's 4 cores are far better than the 6/8 the consoles have. I dont expect to see a massive bias towards more than 4 cores by games running on a pc.
The gpu might be a slightly different debate.
 
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Darkresurrection

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They have already started in the future fx 8350> i5 4670k, wanna bet!? just look at these links
* where is the i5 in UBISOFT's system requirements!? http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=4546&game=Watch%20Dogs Ubisoft has confrimed that this game is heavily threaded, and has promised i5 owners can hit ultra sttings!! NO ULTRA SETTINGS
* When Capcom says its new engine takes full advantage of i7, which is good news for fx owners, Capcom really means it http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132533/sponsored_feature_resident_evil_5_.php?print=1
* Epic says the more cores the better http://www.shacknews.com/article/70348/epic-talks-unreal-engine-4
I don't wanna talk about doom and gloom on your side, I really hope you do fine in the future as well
just have a feeling that we should get used to seeing these benchmarks http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Crysis-3-PC-235317/Tests/Crysis-3-Test-CPU-Benchmark-1056578/ or maybe worse
 
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Lessthannil

Lessthannil

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Scaling with using more cores isnt perfect. Combine that with the fact that the 8350 doesnt have great floating point performance or per core strength relative to Haswell, a lot is left to be proven in that statment.

 
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Darkresurrection

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We could that, maybe a year ago!! but not after games like Crysis 3, I am pretty sure in the close future, i7 and fx 83-- will be legit, high end alternatives for PC gamers, I mean I knew this as soon as I noticed the CPU load in Crysis 3 fx 8350 at 60% load had surpassed both i5 3570k at 80% and i7 3770k, how will that be in crysis 4!? fx 8350 at 80% load and i5 3570k out of resources!?
 
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Darkresurrection

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http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Crysis-3-PC-235317/Tests/Crysis-3-Test-CPU-Benchmark-1056578/ yeah they are collecting dust!!! uh-oh I copied the wrong benchmark!!! Intel is good!!! where is the intel dark!? I don't know it is collecting dust!!!
http://www.techspot.com/review/591-medal-of-honor-warfighter-benchmarks/page6.html (MOH warfighter fx 8350 performs as well as i7-3960x)
http://www.techspot.com/review/601-black-ops-2-performance/page5.html (call of duty black ops 2 fx 8350 performs as well as i7-3960x)
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Crysis-3-PC-235317/Tests/Crysis-3-Test-CPU-Benchmark-1056578/ (crysis 3- fx 8350 better than i7 3770k and just below i7-3950x)
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1598/pg6/amd-fx-8350-processor-review-battlefield-3.html (bf3 fx 8350>i5 3570k)
http://www.hardwarepal.com/batman-arkham-origins-benchmark/8/ (batman Arkham Origins fx 8350= i7 4770k after AMD's catalyst release)
http://www.hardwarepal.com/battlefield-4-benchmark-mp-cpu-gpu-w7-vs-w8-1/4/ ( battlefield 4 ultra HD FX 8350 equal to i7-4770k)
http://www.hardwarepal.com/battlefield-4-benchmark-mp-cpu-gpu-w7-vs-w8-1/8/ ( battlefield4 full HD the same scenario)
http://www.techspot.com/review/645-tomb-raider-performance/page5.html (Tomb raider 2013)
where is the superiority of i5 even in this generation dark!? sorry I missed them at home
 
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