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SMP Gaming: Is It Here Yet?


Verran

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Nope. If I recall correctly, default affinity for every process is already set to run on all cores. Whether or not a certain process takes advantage of the multiple cores is dependent on whether or not it's coded to run on multiple threads simultaneously.

i think he's proposing that quad core owners set affinity to only 2 cores in order to emulate dual core performance.

 

IMO that's a great idea.

 

i haven't done any testing yet, but i'm pretty sure a quad can make up some of the framerate that ATI users are losing in games that use hardware accelerated physx. i was playing velvet assassin when i upgraded, and noticed my FPS was improved considerably. i no longer own that awful game so unfortunately i cannot present any stats, but it could be a good avenue of investigation.

Edited by psycho_terror

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KK_ clearly said "multicore" and didn't say quad-core yielded better performance than dual-core.

I didn't say that he did say that, so... :blink:

 

My point is that just because a game performs well on a multi-core system doesn't prove that it's multi-threaded. I have tons of games that kick out great frame rates on my Q6600 but I know for a fact they're not multi-threaded. As I said in the first post, I'd like to try to hold this thread up to a little bit more rigorous logic. Mere speculation is not of interest to me. As with anything, people who pay for a quad want it to be superior. If we're not looking at hard numbers and direct comparisons, who's to say we're not incorporating a bit (or a lot) of the placebo effect?

 

Regardless, it's a well known fact that the Source engine has supported dual and quad core CPUs for a couple of years now. It was one of the first to do so, either in the update when Episode 1 came out or Episode 2, I don't remember which.

That's fair, but what are the gains like? I remember back when a lot of games were releasing 64-bit patches and everyone was super excited, until they found out the gains were 5-10% tops. Nothing to shake a stick at, that's for sure, but certainly not all we could hope for, either. And I'm not saying this is the case with Source games either because I honestly don't know, I'm just asking if anyone does.

 

The Last Remnant requires a quadcore

Are you sure about that?

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My bad , i swear the orignal release of the game said it required a quad for the "high preformance" settings

Even if that were the case, it would still be misleading to say it "requires a quad" when really it's perfectly playable without one. This is what I'm talking about. If it's only required for certain things, then say that, don't say it's required period because that's misleading. I'm trying to come up with a list of SOLID information about SMP gaming.

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If I remember correctly I think Flight X supports Quad cores does it give better frame rates I am not sure.

 

So far Flight X is the only game I have that REALLY uses a Quad Core. When you do take offs/landings, turns or anything which would require lots of calculations (pretty much anything but flying straight) ALL 4 cores hit 100% load.

When I moved from my Dual to my Quad I really noticed an up in performance on FSX. Everything just got much smoother.

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i think he's proposing that quad core owners set affinity to only 2 cores in order to emulate dual core performance.

 

IMO that's a great idea.

Yes that is what I was wondering. I might try that with a few games sometime.

 

And also, wouldn't RTS games also favor quad cores? With many units on screen it would make sense to have as much cpu power as possible when the units are path-finding and whatnot.

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And also, wouldn't RTS games also favor quad cores? With many units on screen it would make sense to have as much cpu power as possible when the units are path-finding and whatnot.

 

Maybe modern ones , C&C , it may not give higher framerates but possibley stable framerates in huge battles

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Yes that is what I was wondering. I might try that with a few games sometime.

 

And also, wouldn't RTS games also favor quad cores? With many units on screen it would make sense to have as much cpu power as possible when the units are path-finding and whatnot.

Supreme Commander certainly benefits.

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An easy way to test would be to run a few tests without tweaking anything on a quad then re-running the same tests with the test process affinity set to use only 2 cores. Of course, performance will be slightly higher with the faux quad versus a real one since it doesn't have to juggle the OS but it should be close enough that the tests would be valid.

Edited by Waco

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An easy way to test would be to run a few tests without tweaking anything on a quad then re-running the same tests with the test process affinity set to use only 2 cores. Of course, performance will be slightly higher with the faux quad versus a real one since it doesn't have to juggle the OS but it should be close enough that the tests would be valid.

And that of course relates to the "hidden benefit" of multi-core processors; multi-tasking. Even if a game doesn't inherently support multiple cores, gamers may still see benefits from a dual or quad core setup simply because of the offputting of other processes to the other cores, especially if you want to run other applications while gaming, like Xfire, Fraps, AIM, a web browser, etc.

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And that of course relates to the "hidden benefit" of multi-core processors; multi-tasking. Even if a game doesn't inherently support multiple cores, gamers may still see benefits from a dual or quad core setup simply because of the offputting of other processes to the other cores, especially if you want to run other applications while gaming, like Xfire, Fraps, AIM, a web browser, etc.

This is a great selling point for a dual over a single core, however that's not really a point that needs to be made anymore. I doubt many people are out buying single-core processors for gaming. How many do they even make anymore?

 

The real question here is quad vs. dual.

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