Quad core useless for games

[krazykarl]

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34916

This is kindof a blind statement of the obvious, but incase you were hoping that somehow in the near future games could take advantage of quad cores, here is the word from the horses mouth.

Games by nature are not very multithread friendly apps, because of thier linear nature, frankly I find it amazing that devs can make decent use of dual cores. Its annoying that the X86 microprocessor industry seesm to think that more cores are the best thing since sliced bread. I for one would prefer more effort be put into designing cores with better, faster ALU and FPU units, which we can put to good use. Hopefully with the AMD-ATI aquisition we will be able to see SSE-esq CPU instructions that improve 3d preformance and the like, as despite all of there programability GPU's still require some stuff to be done on the CPU.

[Arakorn]

Just a slight correction, devs doesn't make use of dual cores :wink:

[Shaun]

Future and this Christmas's games make use of Dual core.

[Arakorn]

Yep, but yet hey haven't made any :wink:

[Coor Blimey]

Sorry if this is a bit of a n00bish question but would this mean that if I were getting a new pc for nothing but gaming I should go for a single core processor with more GHz or a duel core but with lesser GHz?

[Erik]

Sorry if this is a bit of a n00bish question but would this mean that if I were getting a new pc for nothing but gaming I should go for a single core processor with more GHz or a duel core but with lesser GHz?

For todays games a single fatser core is usually the best option.
(however there are some exceptions, like Quake 4, as freddie pointed out so)

But I'm convinced that many, if not most, future games wil benefit a lot from dual cores.
So I would say it's best to spend your hart earned money on a decent dual core processor.

But I think quad cores are just a gimmic: intels way to show how much faster their processors are compared to AMD's, with little or no practical uses.
I fully agree with the article that It's unlikely that games wil benefit from more than two cores in the near future.
The only truely scalable part of games is the AI.
Quad cores could be wonderfull for Total War games, where you have thousands of units all with their own AI, so they should be able to distribute the AI workload over multiple cores.
But for as long as 90+ of the PC's are equipped with just one or two cores it makes no economic sense to develop a quad core version.

[Arakorn]

Well, ATM you won't need Dual Core in gaming, but in the future the programmers might program it for dual core. But for multitasking Dual Core is, even though my suspicions, great. It's faster, and you get lesser freezes while loading huge programs :wink:

[krazykarl]

If you read the article, it states that some devs have started using the 2nd core to do things like physics or AI, rudimentry use, but use none the less.

[Incinerate_IV]

Dual core is enough, quad or more is just a waste of money. It's good to see some games start to take advantage of dual cores, but it will be a long time before they actually take advantage of Quad cores. Dual core just came out and quad already!?

[krazykarl]

the reason why they are going from dual to quad so quickly is that the hard part was getting past one core. It is pretty easy to use the same tech to move from 2 to 4 cores and from 4 to 8 cores. Multicore parts have a use, in servers as databases are very mutithreaded in nature, and I think that server tech is what is ultimately driving the cpu industry as the margins are sooo much higher. Desktop chips are meerly cut down versions of thier server counterparts.

[snuff]

Isn't AMD moving to 8-cores next year or 08?

I would think once game makers get dual core down, then quad and so on wont be that hard.

[Freddie]

Quake 4 already makes excellent use of dual core technology (via a patch), it has imporved frame rates by 40-50%. I must have said this 3 times already but it seem to land on deaf ears.

[Peter]

Even so, i fail to see a dual core perform likewise to a quad core in the same application its about performance not about how the software runs.

[Freddie]

Even so, i fail to see a dual core perform likewise to a quad core in the same application its about performance not about how the software runs.

Most likely Quad core will run faster since it's clocked higher. Also 'how the software runs' is extremly important, without the right coding apps and games won't take advantage of the extra cores.

[Incinerate_IV]

Most likely Quad core will run faster since it's clocked higher. Also 'how the software runs' is extremly important, without the right coding apps and games won't take advantage of the extra cores.

Not exactly. The more core you have the lower your clock it will be. The best version of the quad core is a 2.66ghz version, compared to the 2.9ghz dual core. I think its obvious which one performs better in games.

[Freddie]

Not exactly. The more core you have the lower your clock it will be. The best version of the quad core is a 2.66ghz version, compared to the 2.9ghz dual core. I think its obvious which one performs better in games.

I've heard the extreme kentsfiled will be clocked at 3.75Ghz (just image if all apps and games could use that raw processing power ) , althoguh I might have picked that up form the Intel roadmap shown at the IDF. If so that will be fast then any single or dual core CPU.

[Peter]

Yes correct. but i meant if that piece of software is missing then raw power is next on the list which quad must have an advantage on over an dual core?

[krazykarl]

The lower clocks have 2 reasons, the first one being, the higher the clock (on identical cores) the more power required and heat produced. going from dual to quad core also doubles the power and heat, thus you have to reduce the clockspeed to get a quadcore chip to within the same thermal and power envelope. The second major reason is that with a single core, you can clock it at pretty much whatever it can do, with a dual or quad core you have to go to the lowest common denominator, ie the core that will works at the slowest clock rate, this makes good yields much more troublesome.

[Erik]

The second major reason is that with a single core, you can clock it at pretty much whatever it can do, with a dual or quad core you have to go to the lowest common denominator, ie the core that will works at the slowest clock rate, this makes good yields much more troublesome.

The Core 2 Quatro consists of two seperate Core 2 Duo chips.
ie: it's made from two seperate pieces of silicone glued onto one package.
So not considering heat/power issues, if they mix and match correctly they should get the same performace and yield.

Next year they wil make quad cores into one piece of silicone, and that point you wil get a different yield between quad and dual cores.

BTW: I've also read that intel is going to make a 80 core processor for PC's.
YEs, that eight-zero.
It won't be suitable for games though, only for scientific research.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/09/27/idf_fall_2006/

Buying a top of the line quad core the now is a smarter move than a top of the line single core, as the quad will actualy improve with age as more programs and apps are written with them in mind.

Future proofing if you will.

Buying future technology is al almost always a bad idea.
A quad core processor wil cost about twice as much as a dual core.
I haven't seen prices yet, but I expect the top of the line quad core to cost about $1500 to $2000.
But this price wil drop dramatically in the comming years as newer, even faster, processors become available.
So if you buy a $1000 top of the line dual core today you can sell it on e-bay and buy a new quad core for far less by the time you need it.

plus: by the time you get your first quad core game you want to have a new mobo with DDR4 and PCIe-64X, and I doubt this future mobo wil be compatible with your present day quad core.

[Lee1026]

Games by nature are not very multithread friendly apps, because of thier linear nature, frankly I find it amazing that devs can make decent use of dual cores. Its annoying that the X86 microprocessor industry seesm to think that more cores are the best thing since sliced bread. I for one would prefer more effort be put into designing cores with better, faster ALU and FPU units, which we can put to good use. Hopefully with the AMD-ATI aquisition we will be able to see SSE-esq CPU instructions that improve 3d preformance and the like, as despite all of there programability GPU's still require some stuff to be done on the CPU.

Well, by nature, games are very multithreading friendly apps. About as friendly as they get, actually. Think about what you actually use the CPU for: AI, which in theory can be moved to another process altogether. Physics, which is nearly infinitely paraillizable. The same goes for the rest.

Also, the ways things are going, we will see some very good multi-thread games soon, as programmers finally learn how to program the PS3 and the Xbox 360, as both of those rely completely on multi-core for their power. If they don't learn, then the consoles will die.

Future proofing if you will.

Prices on PC equipment is going down, not up. Buy the stuff that you need when you need them, not because you think that you will need them.
On the second thought, buy them. Cheap asses like me need people to pay for their R&D and to test first gen products.