ToW and Core 2 Duo systems

[handihoc]

I'm about to buy a new pc based on an Intel Core 2 Duo cpu. I read somewhere else that ToW can't make use of dual chips and hence the game would be carried entirely on just one of the two cores. Does this mean I'm going to get a poor performance on, say, an E6400 Core 2 duo chip with 1Gig RAM and NVidia 7600 card?

[Elmar Bijlsma]

I highly doubt you'll be running it with much difficulty. I'm playing several high end games on my E6600, none of which run on both cores, yet I'm getting good performance on high settings. Besides, while the game may run on one core, users are reporting that the seconds CPU is doing stuff too. So the game runs on one and your usual windows crap seems to be doing it's thing on the other. Haven't checked it myself since things like Medieval 2 Total War run fine anyway.

[Redwolf]

Intel's Core2 chips are very fast, per core. There won't be an issue with a E6400, it will certainly not even remotely be maxed out (one of it's cores) when the video card is just a 7600.

I'd worry more about your 1 GB RAM.

[handihoc]

Thanks for that, guys. I'm actually hoping to go for 2Gig RAM and a 7900 card, but it's a case, as always, of balancing budget. But at least you've helped put my mind at rest regarding the cpu.

[criss]

most games are NOT aware of multiple processors. Quake 3 is the only game that truly utilizes multiple processors for rendering scenes . Some newer games use the second processor for sound rendering .

Graphic card and RAM should be your number 1 buy , as most modern cpu s single or duo core will easly play modern games .

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by criss:

most games are NOT aware of multiple processors. Quake 3 is the only game that truly utilizes multiple processors for rendering scenes . Some newer games use the second processor for sound rendering .

Sorry this is nonsense. About half of the games out there use multiple cores, and I have never heard of one just using the second core for sound.

However, so far all multithreaded games use a multithreading model where the cores do different tasks. That puts a limit on the usefulness of the multi-core CPUs and you usually run out of different things to do at the end of the frame composition and fall back to one single task and hence one thread. The advanced form of multithreaded programming, to have all processors work on the same thing just on different chunks of data is more useful but also harder to do. So far only Valve said they will use this model beginning next year.

In any case, each single core in a Intel Core2 is at least 20% faster than an AMD at the same clockspeed, and better for many applications. So even for non-multithreaded games it will be plenty to get a Core2 around 2 GHz.

[criss]

These are the only multithread games out that i could find , I knew there was onle a few .

Quake 4 (and Quake 3)

Call Of Duty 2 ( i think this was a patch )

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion

The biggest target audience for duel core processors has been gamers, but you will in real trems hardly see much performance advantage over single core processors . Its all marketing hype

Games simply don’t need duel core and can gain just marginal performance out of them. The chip companies are hailing duel core to be the natural evolution of chip design. And they have to, they want to sell these things, and they sure aren't gonna say multi core, it's a little bit better, sometimes .

As the public, we just have to try and stay educated about whats going on, and look past all the marketing speak .

The point is many games with high level graphics, particular complex shader-heavy effects, don't need more CPU processing power, they need more GPU processing power. It's the GPU which handles the rendering tasks, and unless these could somehow be transferred to the CPU (which they can't really as games are not designed for this, and neither are CPUs), then the gains may well be marginal.

I guess im saying get a good Graphics card over a duel core cpu

[Redwolf]

And it's "dual" core. It's not that they are fighting each other. You research lacks accuracy. Look up any random forum for a thread disussing multithreaded games.

I don't say the currently threaded games are particularly effective in the multithreading department, though.

[sebastian]

Originally posted by criss:

These are the only multithread games out that i could find , I knew there was onle a few .

I asure you that most games from the last decade use multiple threads.

Games simply don’t need duel core and can gain just marginal performance out of them.

Nonsense, games like ToW are the perfect area for multi threading. You have a lot of computing tasks, that can or even have to run in own threads: frame update, path finding, AI, sound...

The chip companies are hailing duel core to be the natural evolution of chip design.

Mulitcore is the only way to go, because you cannot increase the clock speed much more.

As the public, we just have to try and stay educated about whats going on,

You surely need some education about programing, and CPUs.

I guess im saying get a good Graphics card over a duel core cpu ...

... if you want to play graphic demos. If you like complex simulations with good AI and realistic physics, you stll need a good CPU.

[ December 07, 2006, 01:28 PM: Message edited by: sebastian ]

[criss]

Plz rattle of your list of multithreaded / duel core games .

Games like WoW multithreaded yeah it calls the graphics libraries, which are multithreaded ? The latter is a horse of a different color.

Many future games many not take full advantage of duel CPU cores this comes back to reward vs. effort. For a games developer like battlefront to put in a lot of time and effort multithreading a game without really expanding the market for that game makes as much commercial sense as commissioning a Swahili translation of a game.

Its a chicken and egg problem though. GPUs are so important because rendering takes up such an important part of modern games. If things like physics and AI became more important ( i.e., required more processing power ) then perhaps games would be more cpu limited . But most single core cpu s can easly kill very complex AI etc .

But i guess we can t very well have the AI taking all the computer resources , there s other things that have to be done drawing etc . Its hard to find out if you don t have the new hardware what can be done with AI etc . So it is very exiting that we are seeing duel core and prob quad core in the near future .

much longer winded than I originally intended but hopefully someone will find it useful/interesting.

[sebastian]

Originally posted by criss:

Plz rattle of your list of multithreaded / duel core games .

Every decent clickfest-RTS or GTA-style game, is using seperate threads for the main update loop and AI/Pathfinding computations. Thats the only way to simulate a complex map and still achive high responsivity to user input.

Games like WoW multithreaded yeah it calls the graphics libraries, which are multithreaded ? The latter is a horse of a different color.

A program using multithreaded libraries is multithreaded.

much longer winded than I originally intended but hopefully someone will find it useful/interesting.

I doubt it.

[criss]

Its fairly clear your befuddled by the mysterious issues coming from multi threaded games and duel core cpu s .

[sebastian]

Originally posted by criss:

Its fairly clear your befuddled by the mysterious issues coming from multi threaded games and duel core cpu s .

People call things mysterious if they don't understand them.

[Runyan99]

Well, I'm glad this is all cleared up.

[Redwolf]

Yeah this was a really helpful discussion