Is it higher frame rates in gaming that benefit most from Hyper Threading?

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kol12

kol12

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As the title suggests, I'm curious as to what need or benefit Hyper Threading is for gaming.

With the PC game Battlefield 1 I average 66% CPU usage (peaks 80-90%) at 1920 x 1200, 60 fps and VSYNC with my i5 4690k on the 64 player conquest maps. If I uncap the frame rate to 120 fps the CPU usage sits on 100%, this is where I wondered Hyper Threading would spread that much higher CPU load?
 
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kol12

kol12

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Yes, sure. I guess then you could say that Hyper Threading is basically more processing power or headroom?

Am I understanding correctly that we are heading to a time in computing where more cores and virtual cores are going to be necessary for the average gamer/user? It's clear with a game like Battlefield 1 that 4 core/thread CPU's are starting to be loaded up very high and I guess this trend will only continue?
 
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kol12

kol12

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Yes it sure has and what a release from AMD with Ryzen? It seems as though a lot of die hard Intel users are even tempted on Ryzen...

I got my 4690k in early 2015 and understood it was the gaming chip choice for at least 5 years. I believe it is still a very strong chip but things could start changing more quickly. I understand Intel won't be releasing anything significantly CPU wise for at least two years? If I decide to do an Intel upgrade to i7 I suppose Kaby Lake is the way to go right now? If games and apps start demanding more horsepower in the next two years (before Intel's next release) I suppose it might even be necessary, what do you think?
 
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sizzling

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For 60Hz/FPS gaming I'm yet to see a benchmark where a modern i5 has issues, even BF1 is fine at that level. For average gamers I cant see that changing in the near future, while Ryzen brings lots of cores I cant seen developers building games to need more than 4, it would massively hurt sales if a game cannot be played on an average PC.

However if going for high end gaming with fps >100 there are some games that definitely do benefit from extra cores/threads.

Only time will tell, we can only speculate.
 
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kol12

kol12

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I think your right about i5 still being good for 60 fps gaming although Battlefield 1 is pushing the 4 core/thread CPU's quite high, even at 60 fps. It took various system tweaks for me a least to bring the CPU usage down to maintain a smooth game play with this game. I also understand that BF1 does utilize more cores and HT?

I think though like you say Hyper Threading + extra cores is probably going to benefit more high refresh rates and multi high end GPU's. I guess there will probably be a time when higher core CPU's actually become a necessity and as you say time will tell.
 
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kol12

kol12

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I just thought I'd share this performance monitor log I took while playing a Battlefield 1 64 player conquest map. This is at 1920 x 1200 (120 resolution scale) 60 fps vsync. Would you say the 4690k is verging on being a bottleneck in this scenario? Are the quite often spikes of 89% something to be concerned about? This is one of the more demanding maps and some maps and average out more at 65%.

Empires Edge
Perfmon_Log_BF1_Empires_Edge.png
 
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kol12

kol12

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I wondered about that. If I uncap the game to 120 fps the CPU will sit on 100% (last time I checked anyway) and fps will bounce around 90-120 fps. I figured maybe the 4690k can't keep up with GTX 1070 in this instance to maintain 120fps? I'm not overly concerned as I don't have the monitor to game at that refresh rate anyway.

How can 100% not necessarily mean a bottleneck? Is there any other or long term negative effect to maintaining high CPU usage if temps are under control? I guess the cores are there to be utilized aren't they?

Yeah average CPU usage comes in between 65-70% in Battlefield 1. A lot of people claim the game needs further optimization.

 
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Synergh

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I would recommend that you disable V-sync if you're going to cap your framerate to something higher (or lower) than that of your monitor's refresh rate as V-Sync can cause many issues both with the hardware and performance in games.

With regards to your question about hyperthreading, simply put, hyperthreading is a technology which allows the CPU to spread the workload over multiple threads which work in a similar way to cores but are slightly less powerful than a real core.

Enabling hyper threading should allow you to play games at higher frame rates, I'm unsure as to why you would have disabled this option as on your CPU hyperthreading is enabled as default.
 
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kol12

kol12

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I've experimented with higher and lower frame rate caps in this game but there is quite noticeable tearing. Other non and vysnc solutions other than the games vsync don't seem to work well with this game either and still exhibit screen tearing.



Absolutely, makes sense.



I have the i5 4690k, it doesn't have Hyper Threading... Have to say though you got me excited so I looked up whether HT can be unlocked on i5 processors and there is some talk of it around the web...



 
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