Quad-cores

[cfehunter]

Hi, i'm getting a new processor to replace my Pentium 4 3.2ghz.

I was wondering if there are any plans to make PCSX2 to support quad-cores in the future and wether or not it would be worth getting a quad-core isntead of a dual-core.

[ChickenLiver]

As you could easily have learned from searching the forums via the search button at the top (Titles only - "quad"). There are no plans to support it.

As for the second question (Which has nothing to do with PCSX2), quad cores are cheap enough that you might well want to consider getting one. However, for almost all current software (With the exception of video encoding and other specialized tasks) you'd notice no real increase in performance, unless you multi-task *very* heavily (Like compressing a rar, running PCSX2 in dual core mode, and watching porn encoded using the H.264 codec on your second monitor all at the same time).

[FenrirStikers]

*raises hand* Guilty!

anyways, you should get a quad core for future prospects.

And you can always get yourself a Scythe Infinity cpu-cooler, smack on 1 fan extra onto it, and overclock the Quad to 3 ghz (or whatever you're comfortable with).

I'm getting a Quad-Core myself, Q6600, see specs in sig. Just need to wait to see if I get a G0 revision (I better start praying).

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[xXYREXx]

i say,you should get quad core... i mean i have one myself and its great...
sorry for my bad english,im from Lithuania...

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[cfehunter]

thanks for the feedback.

[spajdr]

cfehunter : just for your info you can check my list of games that support dual/quadcore for now
ExtraHardware.cz • Zobrazit téma - Seznam her podporujÃ*cÃ*ch dual/quadcore procesory

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[Track607]

Originally Posted by ChickenLiver

As you could easily have learned from searching the forums via the search button at the top (Titles only - "quad"). There are no plans to support it.

As for the second question (Which has nothing to do with PCSX2), quad cores are cheap enough that you might well want to consider getting one. However, for almost all current software (With the exception of video encoding and other specialized tasks) you'd notice no real increase in performance, unless you multi-task *very* heavily (Like compressing a rar, running PCSX2 in dual core mode, and watching porn encoded using the H.264 codec on your second monitor all at the same time).

Wow. *Nominated for post of the month*

Absolutely everything you said was correct, self-explanitory and easy to understand.

Well done.

Originally Posted by cfehunter

Hi, i'm getting a new processor to replace my Pentium 4 3.2ghz.

I was wondering if there are any plans to make PCSX2 to support quad-cores in the future and wether or not it would be worth getting a quad-core isntead of a dual-core.

The question you have to ask yourself it if you want to play current high-end games, such as Crysis, Lost Planet, Gears of War, Bioshock, Unreal Tournament 3, etc. etc.

If you do, then a Quad-Core would be the better choice, but you'd have to overclock it to get the same level of performance in other apps.
Buy a Q6600 with the G0 stepping (important!) and a Tuniq Tower/Ultra 120 eXtreme cooler, and overclock to 3.2-3.5Ghz.

Good Luck. Oh, and you'd also need an 8800 GTX or better if you want the Quad.

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Last edited by Track607; October 6th, 2007 at 21:43.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost

[marvelous]

Quad is more for the future. Current apps don't really take advantage of it. It might change though so it's a good idea to get a quad if you have the money. Get a cheap core 2 duo and overclock if you don't have money for it. Make sure you get a board that is compatible with penryn and you are good to go.

Originally Posted by Track607

Wow. *Nominated for post of the month*
The question you have to ask yourself it if you want to play current high-end games, such as Crysis, Lost Planet, Gears of War, Bioshock, Unreal Tournament 3, etc. etc.

If you do, then a Quad-Core would be the better choice, but you'd have to overclock it to get the same level of performance in other apps.
Buy a Q6600 with the G0 stepping (important!) and a Tuniq Tower/Ultra 120 eXtreme cooler, and overclock to 3.2-3.5Ghz.

Good Luck. Oh, and you'd also need an 8800 GTX or better if you want the Quad.

Actually none of those games you mentioned take advantage of quad cores except maybe Crysis. As of now we don't know how Crysis is going to take advantage of quad cores. If it's minimal performance improvement or a big one. We just don't know it yet.

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---

Last edited by marvelous; October 6th, 2007 at 21:50.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost

[shockertwin]

Originally Posted by Track607

Wow. *Nominated for post of the month*

Absolutely everything you said was correct, self-explanitory and easy to understand.

Well done.



The question you have to ask yourself it if you want to play current high-end games, such as Crysis, Lost Planet, Gears of War, Bioshock, Unreal Tournament 3, etc. etc.

If you do, then a Quad-Core would be the better choice, but you'd have to overclock it to get the same level of performance in other apps.
Buy a Q6600 with the G0 stepping (important!) and a Tuniq Tower/Ultra 120 eXtreme cooler, and overclock to 3.2-3.5Ghz.

Good Luck. Oh, and you'd also need an 8800 GTX or better if you want the Quad.

Not a single of of those games is quad core optomized :P

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[tuanming]

Yes, go for quad core. As a matter of facts i too still get lag when running 2 application that nearly used up or is @ 100% cpu usage... Virus scanning the whole pc and other apps that eat a lot of resources.

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[Thanakil]

Crysis WILL be Quad-Optimized, they already confirmed it, it would take one core for gfx, another for sound, one for physics, and another one for... Stuff that I don't remember.

But anyway, other games, I really don't know about them, only Crysis.

[echosierra]

Originally Posted by Thanakil

Crysis WILL be Quad-Optimized, they already confirmed it, it would take one core for gfx, another for sound, one for physics, and another one for... Stuff that I don't remember.

But anyway, other games, I really don't know about them, only Crysis.

If you've got an article that states as much, I'd like to see it.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but all of my programming experience tells me that distributing the load like that is near-impossible.

The game may be optimized for 4 cores, but the idea of having the gfx on one core, sound on another, etc sounds like the reporter has no idea what he's talking about.

[Thanakil]

Originally Posted by echosierra

If you've got an article that states as much, I'd like to see it.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but all of my programming experience tells me that distributing the load like that is near-impossible.

The game may be optimized for 4 cores, but the idea of having the gfx on one core, sound on another, etc sounds like the reporter has no idea what he's talking about.

I may have been wrong in how I described it, I remember that they talked about tasks being separated between cores (especially physics, when they said that instead of using Ageia physics cards they are only using one core of the PC for it) but I can't be sure about how they are using the other cores.

It came from a interview that I read on Crysis-Online - Crysis the Game, they talk about it on many interviews, but I'd have to dig through the older news to find it.

*well, after looking up to around the 16th page, I found that*

That may have been what confused me on how they are doing it :
"How is gaming processing distributed among the cores? ex: AI, sound, effects, physics

This varies based on the type of hardware you are running on. In theory the physics, sound, many of the particle systems and the game logic can all run on separate cores. In additional much of the time spent in the graphics driver can be offloaded to another core as Crysis has a very highly optimised Direct3D graphics engine. "

But this is a more detailled explanation of how they do it :
"Will Crysis support some kind of thread branching so it can theoretically support an unlimited amount of cores?

The engine doesn’t currently support the kind of thread batching which would scale to an unlimited amount of cores. For a small number of cores it’s proved more suitable to use a parallelization technique where individual tasks, such as physics, sound, particle calculations etc. are performed in parallel."

"What technologies, effects, enhancements etc. will we see in Crysis with the use of the multiple core processors?

The most significant enhancement is the increased frame rate but it doesn’t stop there. Multi-core systems benefit from being able to generate much more complex visual particle effects using the additional cores to offload the work from the main game code."

[skoreanime]

This is derailing quite a bit off from PCSX2....

I'll repeat the answer you'll get from the PCSX2 developers.

No plans for quad support, period. Capisce? They've already stated that adding in another 2 cores will barely have, if at all, an increase in performance.

[Track607]

Originally Posted by shockertwin

Not a single of of those games is quad core optomized :P

No, they all will. And from what I can, they are going to need it too.

[Thanakil]

I just wanna say that Quad-Cores arent ''needed'' tho, optimizing games to use it IS needed, since you're a really lazy studio if you don't optimize your engine to fully use the CPU of your players (except for peoples who work for free, like the PCSX2 team ) when it can gives huge boosts in FPS and smoother gameplay.
But using a Quad-Cores isnt needed to play those games, I played Lost Planet, Bioshock and currently Crysis Beta, a Dual-Core has been enough for the two first, overclocking it was fine to play Crysis at Medium-High quality.

A quad-core would only be needed to play games like that at ''ZOMG ULTRA MEGA GFX'' quality, otherwise a good dual-core can perfectly do the job and a better gfx card would be more helpful.

As for games being optimized for QC...
Lost planet isnt fully Quad optimized, but it does use quad cores to achieve better FPS.

As for Bioshock/Unreal Tournament 3 :
"Unreal Engine 3 runs two primary threads and a scalable pool of helper threads. The primary threads handle gameplay and rendering, and provide a constant heavy computing load. The helper threads are scalable to many cores, and handle physics updates, streaming, and decompression now, with threading support being added to other systems over time. In this architecture, a 3-core PC would provide measurably more physics performance than a dual-core PC."

But when tested, Bioshock didnt actually get any ''OMGZ'' improvement from using a Quad-Core

And finally, to quote a dev working on GoW PC :
"We're able to scale the thread-structure pretty well. There is a primary thread for the gameplay and a second one for rendering. On systems with more than 2 cores we run additional threads to speed up various calculation-tasks, including physics and data-decompression. So the overall performance benefits greatly from a quad-core processor. Although we haven't looked into the matter yet, I expect an even further performance increase through CPUs with more than 4 cores in future UE-based games."

[tuanming]

Alan Wake is quad core optimized. Just wait for the game to come out

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[BAXTER STOCKMAN]

Originally Posted by Thanakil

I just wanna say that Quad-Cores arent ''needed'' tho, optimizing games to use it IS needed, since you're a really lazy studio if you don't optimize your engine to fully use the CPU of your players (except for peoples who work for free, like the PCSX2 team ) when it can gives huge boosts in FPS and smoother gameplay.
But using a Quad-Cores isnt needed to play those games, I played Lost Planet, Bioshock and currently Crysis Beta, a Dual-Core has been enough for the two first, overclocking it was fine to play Crysis at Medium-High quality.

A quad-core would only be needed to play games like that at ''ZOMG ULTRA MEGA GFX'' quality, otherwise a good dual-core can perfectly do the job and a better gfx card would be more helpful.

As for games being optimized for QC...
Lost planet isnt fully Quad optimized, but it does use quad cores to achieve better FPS.

As for Bioshock/Unreal Tournament 3 :
"Unreal Engine 3 runs two primary threads and a scalable pool of helper threads. The primary threads handle gameplay and rendering, and provide a constant heavy computing load. The helper threads are scalable to many cores, and handle physics updates, streaming, and decompression now, with threading support being added to other systems over time. In this architecture, a 3-core PC would provide measurably more physics performance than a dual-core PC."

But when tested, Bioshock didnt actually get any ''OMGZ'' improvement from using a Quad-Core

And finally, to quote a dev working on GoW PC :
"We're able to scale the thread-structure pretty well. There is a primary thread for the gameplay and a second one for rendering. On systems with more than 2 cores we run additional threads to speed up various calculation-tasks, including physics and data-decompression. So the overall performance benefits greatly from a quad-core processor. Although we haven't looked into the matter yet, I expect an even further performance increase through CPUs with more than 4 cores in future UE-based games."

Does it means that Dual Core PC will not be able to run CRYSIS at high quality in 1280x1024 resolution even if i buy a 8800 ultra?. I downloaded Clive Barker Jericho Demo, and it runs PERFECT AT high quality, with 8x AA all grafics full and 1280X1024 resolution. I was realy suprised when i saw that my pc can run Jericho perfect!!!! Does Crysis has a better grafics engine than jericho? Will i be able to run CRYSIS with my current pc perfect like jericho?

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[MasterPhW]

Originally Posted by BAXTER STOCKMAN

Does it means that Dual Core PC will not be able to run CRYSIS at high quality in 1280x1024 resolution even if i buy a 8800 ultra?. I downloaded Clive Barker Jericho Demo, and it runs PERFECT AT high quality, with 8x AA all grafics full and 1280X1024 resolution. I was realy suprised when i saw that my pc can run Jericho perfect!!!! Does Crysis has a better grafics engine than jericho? Will i be able to run CRYSIS with my current pc perfect like jericho?

As long as a game isn't released, it's always hard to tell you about such things, but if I look at your sig, I have to admit, that your Ram will definitive hold you back from performance records, because the Cry-Engine is RAM and processor heavy and I think with only one gig you will have problems.
But no guarantee for that!
The only thing I can guarantee you is, that it's far away from perfect on most systems!

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[BAXTER STOCKMAN]

Originally Posted by MasterPhW

As long as a game isn't released, it's always hard to tell you about such things, but if I look at your sig, I have to admit, that your Ram will definitive hold you back from performance records, because the Cry-Engine is RAM and processor heavy and I think with only one gig you will have problems.
But no guarantee for that!
The only thing I can guarantee you is, that it's far away from perfect on most systems!

If i look at your sig, i can see that your system is not better than mine. I have a better cpu&gpu than you, and i will buy 1gb ram soon. My system will run Crysis better than yours, because my cpu &gpu are more powerful than yours.

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Athlon X2 4400+DUAL CORE 2.2.GHZ socket 939 2 GB RAM DDR400 GeForce 8800 gt 512 mb 260 gb hdd