im just pretty curious and excited. the quads have been out for over a year already. but we still aint seeing games that fully utilize all these extra cores. ive been seeing people saying that multi-core gaming is the future, im just wondering when will that future come?
i recently bought a new pc and put my money on a q6600 believing that when the time comes these quad-ass baddies will pull away from its dual-gun brethrens in terms of gaming performance (even though the duos can overclocked 1.5ghz higher ).
i remembered crysis was suppose to be multi-core capable, but as it turns out, it isn't, which was a dissappointment because we couldve churn 10-20 fps if it did, probably.
know any up and coming game where we'll see multi-core utilization?
I wouldn't be too concerned with "When will games use 4, 8, 16 cores". Currently the limitations are on the GPUs. Even if Crysis was fully using 4 cores it still wouldn't have made much of a difference in FPS because current graphics cards just can't keep up.
Until multiple cores are needed, programmers won't bother coding for them. It is significantly more complicated to program for multiple cores than for one.
even crysis doesn't use multicore properly, when running the game, it hovers around using 55% of each of my 2 cores
second life does this also
as well as some other games
the problem with the gaming industry seems that programmers either don't want to make their games more multithreaded, or they don't know how.
and theres almost no way for the people who actually know how to get a job working for companies like EA
it would be better if video hardware had a similar upgrade schedule like consoles, no one likes upgrading every month or 2 in order to run the latest game (that becomes extremely expensive very fast )
another reason why console gaming is so popular, game developers are not able to make special system requirements, it just has to run with the given hardware, because of this, the games will always run lag free and they cant really compete with other companies in terms of graphics because the console wont do much better with out lagging
even crysis doesn't use multicore properly, when running the game, it hovers around using 55% of each of my 2 cores
Doesn't the second part of your statement contradict the first part? If the game is using each core equally, isn't that what you want. In this case 55%+55% = 110% or more than a single core maxed out. Just because it's not running every core at 100% does not mean it's not working. It's just proof that the workload put on the GPU is much more than the CPU.
i tried graphing it with rivatuner and no matter what i did, i couldnt get crysis to use full cpu usage.
i have video converters that are single threaded but they will use 50% of both cores (winavi for example, their codec is extremely good but they have nor released a multithreaded version yet, while it will convert at well over 300FPS when using 50% of both cores, it could be faster if it used 100% of both cores,
MAYA has no problem using 2 cores, it will even use more than more than 8 cores if needed (seen it used with networked dual quad core (8 core) render slaves and it will scale between them well )
photoshop will also make good use of multicores and will use 100% of multiple cores if needed but for some reason, crysis doesn't want to use that much,
and it doesnt seem right that crysis and second life can both have the same CPU usage
crysis has a much better AI, much better physics, much better sound, much better everything
when compared to second life
the videocard doesn't process AI and physics and other elements like that for crysis SL has only extremely basic phyiscs and no AI
PS crysis runs smoother than SL
Message edited by Razor512 on 06-07-2008 at 12:11:04 AM
I don't have UT3 or a quad core set up right now to check the usage but if you look at the benchmarks below from xbit labs, the UT3 engine seems to like quad cores.
I think it is on the horizon for games to start taking advantage of the cores but a problem is that 4 core utilization might get put on hold with all of this PC gaming drop out. If we keep seeing console-to-PC type of games like Halo 2 and Far Cry 2, there will be a delayed push to move into quad core technology.
Good point above though too...GPUs are still a bottle neck. That is why I feel that the old 65nm and newer 45nm quads have such a long life right now. The CPU technology is there and waiting but the GPUs and game developers need to catch up.
Um, isn't Second Life an online game? Do you not realize that of all the potential bottlenecks in a PC the network connection (especially to the internet) is probably the worst?
Um, isn't Second Life an online game? Do you not realize that of all the potential bottlenecks in a PC the network connection (especially to the internet) is probably the worst?
my pings are good and it doesnt have much to do with crysis having much better graphics and a higher FPS than Sl
SL is pretty much hundreds of games in 1
the only problem is that it can be considered to be the definition of poor programming
there is generally 10-15 server problems today on their end and when there not having server problems, there having a "rolling restart" where they constantly restart their servers to kick all of the idlers off
then when thats not happening, everything is generally fine.
just sucks when your in the middle of a team battle and they restart the server with out warning, or put a warning that the sim will restart in 30 seconds
Message edited by Razor512 on 06-07-2008 at 03:24:07 AM
im just pretty curious and excited. the quads have been out for over a year already. but we still aint seeing games that fully utilize all these extra cores. ive been seeing people saying that multi-core gaming is the future, im just wondering when will that future come?
i recently bought a new pc and put my money on a q6600 believing that when the time comes these quad-ass baddies will pull away from its dual-gun brethrens in terms of gaming performance (even though the duos can overclocked 1.5ghz higher ).
i remembered crysis was suppose to be multi-core capable, but as it turns out, it isn't, which was a dissappointment because we couldve churn 10-20 fps if it did, probably.
know any up and coming game where we'll see multi-core utilization?
I play oblivion and I just found out there's a way to tweak oblivion to increase thread usage. Basically, in multi-processing, a process represent the application. A thread is a fork in the process to do parallel task. Each application has one process. Each process can have one or more threads. A process can have 1 or more threads. A process with zero thread is equivalent to a process with 1 thread. The atom of all "processes and threads" is a thread. In other words if you are writing a code for a thread it is possible that this thread can never be split to run on as multi-processing, thus the term "atom" thread. It is wrong to say and think "atom process", you must say and think "atom thread". Technically, a process can be multi-threaded and not exclusively single threaded. I dunno how today's view on multiprocessing is as taught in university, but I just gave you a decade old understanding of processes and threads as understood by multithreaded or multiprocess programmer.
Anyway, if you want to test oblivion and see if it is fast on quadcore cpu, you need to download users made utility to tweak oblivion. You can download here: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2780
Go throught the ui that comes with it, and you will find options to increase threads usage. there is a specific checkbox that says "increase number of cpu threads" , another checkbox that says "increase game threads usage", another checkbox that says "enable background path finding". and another unrelated checkbox that says "increase pre-load buffer for >2gb machines".
Cool huh? I am unable to test it since I add another 80+ mods (total 180+). I am currently scanning the readme to determine load order. Painful times, but then I can fly the flying dragon again.--simply amazing view from the sky...
Yes, you summon a dragon, mount the dragon, and take-off to the sky all in 3-D (flapping wings too). This time I hope to be able to throw a fireball at the lurking monster below. This is done with user made mod in oblivion.
I am humble by this game. It is very hard for me to go back to the good poor old days when I can update my system every 18 months... Today, I buy cheap cheap price upgrades every 24 months. Yet, this oblivion game gives me the urge to splurge on a super system, premium price items that lose their value in six months.
crysis does a pretty good job with multiple cores... I know this because I use core temp to check the temps on the cores after playing in a hot room.
The cores warm up pretty evenly (q6600), as oppossed to some programs that are single or two thred applications.
It's not as simple as saying "Okay let's make all our games optimized for multi-core CPUs by noon tomorrow. Even now most games are not even optimized for dual cores. Yes, games can take advantage of the second core, but the coding hasn't been optimized yet.
Optimized or not, if it can fork, it can already take advantage.
To be able to do a fork is a fundamental code instruction existing in the current software release. How can you have an option for increase multi-thread without fork? How can you writing or include code to fork or to create a thread in existing software release without planning for it?
Symmetroc multi-process programming is not new. It exists when unix was born. I idea of using or including multi-process code like fork can not just suddenly appears in existing software or existing game engine. Like you said, game develop takes years, the option to enable increase threads mean option to allow current code to do more forking.
If such an option is available for your game, do you think the years have already been checked off?
Optimized code, optimized for what? What does optimized for dual cores mean? Are you saying you need separate code for dual cores optimized? another separate code for quad core optimized? another separate code for unicore optimized?
If you answer yes to anyone of the above, then you need a separate system software for each separate optimized code. That's layman's term for you need a windows optimized for dual core to run optimized dual core code. And you need a windows optimized for quad core to run optimized quad core code. SEE?
Basically, if a game gives you option to increase threads, it means the os can load balance threads to each cpu. The only way os can load balance threads to each cpu is if the application can fork more threads. The only way the application can fork (create) more threads is if the user take advantage of existing software option to increase threads. SEE?
A process or a thread is nothing more that list of instructions for the processor. Each thread can execute and finish independently from each. It doesn't matter if the threads were forked from the same parent process (singular) or thread (singular). It doesn't matter if the threads comes from different parents. All threads can execute and finish independently from each other. IF two threads depends on each other than it is by design of programmer. SEE?
So what does optimized mean by you? You are wrong to say any games can take advantage of second cpu.
Only the games that can do fork can have more threads. IF a game doesn't fork, it's code is executed sequentially, even with all the compiled time link libraries, even with all the run time dynamic link libraries, even with all the libraries of the universe, and all all the bad ass super programmers and game designers. The game gets executed sequentially (single core style). SEE?
More threads means more cpu time in a multi-tasking os on a one core processor. More threads means more cpu time and thus get to be load balance by os on multi-core processor. This is generic info, specific info comes when you read msdn documents for NT or vista. For unix, you have to read programmer's manual from vendor of unix flavor os, best just to ask vendor software engineer. For linux, you have to read source code, or faq out there somewhere. In summary, you want specific, you need to know specific to begin your discovery.
Or be like me, try to understand fundamental computing models. I still don't call myself a guru, but I try to pickup every computing models to exist on planet earth. I been doing it since playing games on apple iie computers.
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second life
