New Nehalem socket is... large.

[mudlord]

coders already have enough problems with their programs, no need to make it harder when in a couple years, all their optimizations would be pointless...

So your advocating bloatage then?

Optimization can be done in the coding process, it shouldnt be really left to the last minute. And optimizations IMHO, are never wasted. Its nice to have nice quality and clean code. Leaving it to the CPUs to fix is taking the easy way out.

a game isn't as important as an OS, so a high emphasis on optimization in a game isn't as important.

I beg to differ. Code quality should be a priority for any coder. No matter the target platform or background. Exercising mediocrity is just being lazy. Just look at Assasins Creed for PC.

Performance wise it's like a supah computer! But then, how about games....?

Not to mention the problems with handling that much power on a pragmatical scale...

[SCHUMI-4-EVA]

Originally Posted by Thanakil

Were those games CPU-intensive? Cause I sure as hell don't remember them being that...

Yep they are....especially NWN2....that thing brought PCs much better than mine to their knees...

Also guys have you noticed that stock clocks have not gone up at all for the last 5 years....I think 4ghz stock clocks (nvm 5) are still a fair bit further away...especially considering that emphasis is mainly on adding more cores atm....

[Borisz]

Originally Posted by Phil

In 4 years, 5ghz will be comomplace......

Yeah, that's what they said 4 years ago too.

[skid]

Originally Posted by SCHUMI-4-EVA

Also guys have you noticed that stock clocks have not gone up at all for the last 5 years....I think 4ghz stock clocks (nvm 5) are still a fair bit further away...especially considering that emphasis is mainly on adding more cores atm....

Yeah, the gigahertz clock speed race is over. Heat put an end to that race. When I said I won't buy one unless it hits 5.5Ghz, I did mean overclocked or stock.

Look at it from my point of view (as a consumer), if the new CPU runs 10% quicker on stock clock, but costs twice as much regardless of the amount of cores, why would I buy it? As a programmer, I do know that parallel programming is only beneficial under certain circumstances. Also there are complexities in managing these types of programs, for example synchronisation between the threads. I do not expect every program in the future to be multi core capable. Does that mean we are going to hit a roadblock when it comes to computing power? I don't think so.

[cottonvibes]

Originally Posted by mudlord

I beg to differ. Code quality should be a priority for any coder. No matter the target platform or background. Exercising mediocrity is just being lazy. Just look at Assasins Creed for PC.

with the salaries Game Programmers make, they already work hard enough.

they already work hours of overtime that the ******* companies don't pay them for; all to make a deadline.
if they had more time to work on games, then code optimization should be considered; but as is, coders rarely have time to finish the game without even taking optimization into consideration.

look at something like the US version of FF7, they left out alot of stuff that was in the jap. version, because of a deadline.
And i'm sure theres various more examples, because whenever i read up on game programming (which is what i want to do when i graduate from college), i always see complaints about how the companies pressure the programmers with deadlines, and they end up having to do alot of unpaid overtime to make the deadline; and lots of times end up releasing a half-finished game.

[Thanakil]

Originally Posted by SCHUMI-4-EVA

Yep they are....especially NWN2....that thing brought PCs much better than mine to their knees...

Yeah but from what I can tell with my PC, they were way more GPU intensive than CPU...
My cpu is far from being awesome (C2D @ 2.4ghz) but cpu was never really a deciding factor with those games, it was really GPU all along (7950GT).
I'm not sure they were really CPU-intensive, especially NWN2. The physics in Crysis, I guess, but the dice-rolling of NWN2, I doubt =/.

[SCHUMI-4-EVA]

Well tons of other people (with better systems as I said...and better balanced systems I might add) say that....then again those games do give their blessings to some people, you may be one of them...some of my friends had a worse PC than me and ran it with less stutter and FPS fluctuations...

I get everywhere from 0-60 on NWN2 (and my latest either game update or graphics card update screwed that game up anyways...it's all whitish and weird...)

On Oblivion I get everywhere from 0-120 FPS...my friends with a worse PC got an almost constant 20-30 (on low yes...but running the game on low for me runs worse than Medium...so I stick to medium...)

And I am not the only person to get strange performance like that...someone with a top of the line PC (well it was top of the line for the E8xxxx series) gets worse performance than me in NWN2...and the list goes on and on....it just depends on the god of Oblivion and NWN2 performance smile upon...or how much excess power you have to throw at it.