More talk about Blizzard and CPU utilization

[izoli]

Okay so Blizzard is saying that they aren't utilizing quad core cpu's at the moment because

A. There aren't enough users with quad core yet, which may be true.
B. Utilizing quad core wont provide much additional performance.

(but they will be in the future sometime when they are more common among the low performance systems)

Now I am just wondering, during game play in Starcraft2 my GPU is under like 30-50% load(50% in 4v4 with massive battles) but my CPU is under 17-23%load even when so much goes on I start to lag. Starcraft2 only uses 2-3 threads. So utilizing the other 5-6 threads and 2 cores wont improve performance much? I just cant comprehend how that is possible.

I will post screen shots of my usage during gameplay...

1. http://imageshack.us/f/716/sc2normal.png/ ...This is just regular gameplay in a 4v4 in SC2 with not too much going on

2. http://imageshack.us/f/148/sc2threadx2.png/ ...This is fast forwarding the game to x2 the game still plays perfect with no lag, but as you can see it started using 2 threads but the usage on them went up, I guess to compensate for not using 3 threads?
Also GPU usage went way down, isn;t this the opposite way which it should go? increasing speed of gameplay should make my stuff work harder...

3. http://imageshack.us/f/844/sc2thread.png/... This is x8 fast forward and it begins to get very laggy at this point, and you can see my gpu usage is almost nothing and cpu is using almost only 1 core... wtf is the deal?

I know its not my CPU, prime95 stress tests I reach 65c max in a 1 hour load and all threads run at 100%, benchmarks show very good benchmarks compared to similar systems.

Also I play Crysis2 which will bump the usage up a lot.. I play it on ultra with dx11 and high res texture package and get fluent 60fps even when explosions and stuff goes on. I will upload a screenshot if you insist.

And here is WoW with every maxed all the way.. http://imageshack.us/f/69/wow4thread.png/... As you can see it uses 4 threads but the usage on them don't go very high (never exceeds much over 20%)...

In short, do you guys think utilizing quad core will improve performance much? I think it would help a lot

 

[izoli]

Anyone have any ideas why gpu usage goes down when I fast forward replays? Is it a problem with Starcraft?

 

[cnox]

Sure, I think I can answer this.

SC2 playback files are simply 'command logs' that capture mouse clicks, hotkey presses, etc. These commands are fed into the game engine and the game engine replays the game in realtime but just taking user input from this command logfile.

When you fast forward, let's say 8X, the CPU starts shouldering more of the burden because it needs to calculate 8 seconds of gameplay down into 1 second. This takes a bit more time, and the screen updates is only now providing 10-15fps because it's just showing you unit placements at those intervals. So, less load on the GPU, more load on the CPU while you fastforward.

SC1 isn't even a 3d game so your gpu should just be at the 2d clockspeeds. I have no idea how those playback files are structured.

 

[izoli]

Best answer selected by izoli.