Quad Cores and Gaming - truth vs hype

[mdzcpa]

Okay folks here's the deal. Everyone here who knows me knows that I like running the latest and greatest hardware available when it comes to gaming and media. I've been playing on the top shelf for years. I work with the best AMD/Intel/ATI/Nvidia/etc/etc has to offer, then overclock the snot out of it while maintaining complete stability and "true" PC characteristics (portable, quiet, low maintenance, fully enclosed).

With all that background layed out, I pose the question to everyone here at XS:

Will quad cores really improve the gaming experience anytime soon?

I mean, heck, obviously at some point the software will catch up and quad (or more) cores will be beneficial. That's easy to understand. What I am refering to is this latest batch of quad technology coming out. Be it AMD 4x4 or Kentsfield, will these quad cores really matter?

Now, before you answer, here are the rules.

1. Skip the simple minded comments like "more cores are obviously better" and "if 2 are good then 4 must be better."

2. Back up what you say with linkage to reputable references if at all possible. I'm not looking for unfounded hype, I'm looking for a real discussion.

3. Skip discussions about how great single cores still are....cause they're not. Dual core has a significant daily benefit on the desktop for gaming and media hands down.

4. Keep in mind the time line. I don't care what games and apps come out next summer that take advantage of quad core. By then, faster multicore cpus will be out anyway. The question is about whether or not quad cores make a real seat of the pants difference on the desktop space in gaming a media within the next 6 months.

I have to be honest, I'm simply not buying into the latest hype. Not this time. This is the first time since the PII I feel less then compelled to upgrade from my current specs to enjoy high end gaming and media.

Thanks for participating. I hope this is a lively discussion.

[afireinside]

Only reason I see to upgrade is if:
a) you somehow manage that "mega-tasking" thing with 2 hands and eyes
b) games within the next 6th months fully utilize two cores 100% allowing you to have 2 more cores for video card drivers and offloading of background tasks.

[Exedy]

i just think multi core is the future...quadcore is not really necessary at least some years :D

single core runs fine everything today...multi core does it and will do better...quadcore is just a "good enought + 1" :D

[sierra_bound]

Shamino's tests showed a quad-core probably won't be very beneficial in gaming.

http://sg.vr-zone.com/?i=4098&s=4

But on the other hand, his and other tests have shown that in things like video encoding and rendering, a quad-core will help. So if you do a lot of video editing or graphics work, a quad-core might be a worthwhile investment.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6871&page=2

[JPeitzman]

agree 100% with sierra_bound and afireinside. Games will see no boost unless the threaded games that are on the horizon utilize a dual core to it's max. Though a Quad SLI system with Physics might see a performance increase. Maybe you could do something like goto a LAN and run a server on your machine and game at the same time, with quad core you will have some head room for normal background stuff, and things like chatting/browsing/anti-virus/what not. I just don't see games fully utilizing dual core CPU's in the next year or so.

I do however seeing things like video encoding, DVD ripping, rendering, etc... utilizing this kind of power very very fast. If you do a lot of these kinds of tasks or you mega task then it could be awesome, if you just game, no stick to dual core. I think the biggest benefit we will see from quad core is a price drop on the current dual core processors.

[nn_step]

Right now, there are few if any games that are designed that make use of Quad cores, we have a few games that make use of Dual cores but it is going to be atleast another year or two before Quad makes it into the gaming stream

[dinos22]

looks like you'll just have to stick with the Conroe for now mdzcpa :)

i like the idea of quads because of the video stuff i do but i can get away with dual cores as well......

the question is likely the the bottlenecking claims are and where is the line that dual or quad core CPUs will have to reach to bypass that on new gen cards

i wonder what AMD will be able to do in 2007 when it comes to new gen GFX and CPU bottlenecking

[Soulburner]

One more thing to think about. With all these cores you need some sort of mega busline of data to keep them fed. No hard drive setup would keep up with 4 fast cores.

Basically you will have a system so fast that they will not be utilized to their full potential. You will have CPU's not running 100% because they are waiting for data.

We need ramdrives to keep things from bottlenecking IMO.

[JPeitzman]

I am curious to see how the later Yorkfield's and Ridgefield (or whatever Intel's updated 45nm dual core is) will handle on the 1333FSB as far as bottlenecking. I think what Intel needs is a "knockoff" of AMD's HT, think about what a Core 2 could do on a HT bus! All that bandwidth tying the NB, SB, RAM, and CPU together, or even better, add in a couple of GFX slots, I think that would be...wow! I think quad is promising and a step forward, but soon, and very soon, Intel will start to be limited by their old school FSB. Once we start getting into high clocked quads and later octa-cores, even extreme clocked duals I think are going to start to be held back. If Intel could do something like HT, and I think they could, their R&D is amazing; it could crush AMD. NB, SB, CPU, RAM, and a couple GFX slots all running on a interconnect that allows almost 50GB/sec worth of bandwidth. Sorry Intel but like Netburst, FSB is dead, and I think people will slowly start to notice this as they move to more cores and more speed. What I would really love instead of a quad core is a 45nm dual core with a built in graphics processor sharing the same silicon and connected via a super fast junction like the one that will connect the Kentsfield's cores, this would share a HT like junction to connect it to the memory and the NB/SB if a SB is needed. I think with a super fast interconnect Intel could finally do away with the SB.

I know too that I am over looking the K8L quads. These could be something with the new HT3.0 connects, HTX I/O slots for physics, graphics, or really anything designers could dream of. I think for AMD/ATI HTX I/O could be the future. I would love to see a dual socket AMD board with a K8L in one slot and a ATI GPU in the other, they could use HT interconnect to communicate, both would have access to the memory and NB therefore I/O and HDD controllers. That means the GFX, CPU, RAM, and NB could "talk" at 44.8GB/sec!!!!! I haven't seen much on this, but with ATI/AMD joined, HTX slots coming out on some future AMD boards, and HT3.0 right around the corner, I don't doubt that this is in AMD's future.

I think the future is bight for quad core, and all the cool stuff that comes with it. Right now though I think it is illogical since most people aren't really stressing dual core systems with real world apps.

To the OP: I wouldn't worry about quad core and performance in games until we get some games out that cause your OCed X6800 + 7950GX2 setup to spit out something like 20FPS in low detail settings. Or when you can't wait 10 - 15 min for a DVD to rip. By that time hopefully 45nm Intel's, K8L, maybe even Core 3 and/or K10 will be out, then games might be using 4 or more cores.

[WeStSiDePLaYa]

i think quadcores will be utilized. instead of developers programming physics for the ageia, they will program them to run on a cpu.

so that they can run on however many spare cores there are. so 2 for the main game, 1 for phyiscs, with one left over?

and then the more cores you can spare to physics, the better they are, the less cores, the worse they are.

also, i like to have a p2p app in the background because being reset in queue sucks. so its good to being able to game and have things in the background.

and then of course you have anything to do with rendering/encoding/compressing which will greatly benefit from more cores.


sorry, but i find this thread useless.

you cant go and say you wont buy hardware because its not utilized now, because if everyone did that, no one would buy the hardware, and it would never be utilized.

developers cant create games for hardware, unless people have it. the bleeding edge hardware will never be utilized, thats the way its been for years.

[WeStSiDePLaYa]

One more thing to think about. With all these cores you need some sort of mega busline of data to keep them fed. No hard drive setup would keep up with 4 fast cores.

Basically you will have a system so fast that they will not be utilized to their full potential. You will have CPU's not running 100% because they are waiting for data.

We need ramdrives to keep things from bottlenecking IMO.


thats why instead of running raid0, you just keep all your drives seperate, and have multiple drives running.

so instead of one raid array that can spit out 90mb/s.

you have one hdd for os that does 60mb/s
one for downloads that does 60mb/s
apps/games that does 60mb/s

that way the different info can be accessed simultaneously. unlike raid0 where the array would have to wait for each access, you can have 3 accesses going at once.

[mdzcpa]

Thanks for all the input so far. Some very good points have been made.

Depending on how much video encoding that's done, versus straight up gaming, may lead to a different answer as to whether or not Quad core is worth the upgrade. It certainly won't do anything for email, surfing, music playing, and other light load multitasking.



Only reason I see to upgrade is if:
a) you somehow manage that "mega-tasking" thing with 2 hands and eyes
b) games within the next 6th months fully utilize two cores 100% allowing you to have 2 more cores for video card drivers and offloading of background tasks.

Of all the comments, this is probably closest to where I am at personally in my thinking. Although it "sounds cool" to say I'm a "mega tasker" I doubt I'll ever really be doing that very often....if ever. It seems dual cores handle most of what I do now with my own two hands and eyes.



sorry, but i find this thread useless.

you cant go and say you wont buy hardware because its not utilized now, because if everyone did that, no one would buy the hardware, and it would never be utilized.

You find the thread useless because you missed the point completely...even though you actually touch on the concept in your second comment i quoted.

This is the first time in as long as I can remember that a significant leap in CPU technology was made available for the desktop space that needed to "wait around" for applications to take even a modest advantage of it. When dual cores arrived it was of immediate benefit. Intel already had hyperthreading which made multitasking smoother. Dual core simply improved upon that. Day 1 of dual core allowed you to play a game while you were ripping and burning media much more seemlessly just as an example. You felt the benefit from the beginning.

As AFI said, I'm just not so sure quad cores will make multitasking any smoother in the near term simply because of the human limits of what is practical for multitasking.

Another example is the Ageia....IMO it flopped because not enough immediate benefit was there upon release.

Like I said, I'm not arguing the theoretical benefits of more cores. In time plenty of apps will be multithreaded. In addition, new uses for the desktop will emerge and therefore more multitasking. I get all that. It just seems that the quad core thing has been pushed out before the full benefit of dual core has even been close to being utilized. I'm not so sure that's a smart move.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts so far.

[L'enFer]

in one of Russian magazines about pc hardware i read an interview with Dave Orton (ATI, excuse, but i don't know how to write the name right). he was asked about relationships of ATI/nVidia with gamecreators and he said gamedevelopers need modern technologies to make a really good game. so there is bond between them. that's why sli/cf/gx2 became.
so i think that appearing of multicores cpus isn't a fortuity. i mean if there was no necessity of it, they wouldn't become. so, there must be some reasons to suppose that quadcores cpus will have better perfomance.
p.s. sorry for my English...

[tjelaw]

As long asthe games support it, yes I believe quadcores will be better.

The tests that have been done uptill now with the quads were all on games that dont even fully utilize dual cores, no wonder quadcore benches worse :) I'm not a programmer, but I think the biggest problem is for the game dev's to make sure their product fully uses single, dual and quad cores. The development for CPU's with multiple cores shud be made easy, and the rest will follow :)

[JPeitzman]

I just re-read your first post, and did a little thinking about 4x4. To me this makes more sense than Kentsfield. I say this because : 1. you have two dual cores in their own sockets with their own HT interconnect, unlike the Kent that will have 2 c2d's linked with a high-speed on-chip interconnect, then have to bottle down to the 1066mhz FSB. 2. It is showing what the future might be for AMD, later instead of getting 2 K8L you can get a K8L and a co-processor or GFX chip of some sort. I know that K8 is slower than core, and that 4x4 will be pricey, hot, and power hungry, but it makes more sense. FSB isn't going to matter much in regular multitasking, but as games start to max out dual and eventually quad cores, or if you do lots of CPU intensive tasks that max a quad, it will show. I think we will see a shift again in the performance crown if Intel can't update FSB. We will see super-clocked Core 2's and maybe, just maybe Core 3's in quad designs and in 45nm, but NB/SB + FSB will hold it back to the max. K8L will talk to the memory / NB / maybe HTX I/O slots and sockets by then at 44.8GB/sec ; DDR2 and DDR3 can keep up, with a nice memory controller and that kind bandwidth K8L will fly. K8L on a 4x4 style platform could be amazing, and I think it will be. Intel is very fast, but I think slowly we will start to see FSB hit its max.

I am a bandwidth junkie, I know that, but I think that in the end that is really what makes the difference. I am hoping AM2+ will bring with it the use of DDR2 up to DDR2-1200 like 680i will for Intel. The difference is though that I think AM2+ with HT3.0 will love that bandwidth, where as Intel, they will love it, but things might also get bottlenecked at certain places. I know too that I sound like a AMD fanboy, and I am not. Intel is faster for now, much faster, but they need a interconnect refresh, HT3.0 is just far superior to what Intel has.

I would also like to state though that although quad is the next step in CPU evolution, I think that it is not the next BIG step. I think the next big step is what AMD and ATI are working on, and that is GPU / CPU full integration. That is either CPU+GPU under the same piece of silicone, or GPU+CPU in sockets, or GPU still on a card, but connect via a HT3.0 interconnect; this way they could communicate at 44.8GB/sec with each other, they could also communicate to the I/O sub structure and, more importantly, the memory at this speed as well. I think in the near future we will see GPU + CPU + 4GB+ of memory = owned. I am worried that DDR3 will start to stress FSB, I don't think there is anything that will push HT3.0 for a while.

Kentsfield and 4x4 will be the future, and I hope for good things for both. For now though dual core hasn't full caught on, and quad setups will be a bit on the pricey side. I am excited though to see what a Kentsfield or 4x4 will do though for a quad SLI setup in terms of performance increase. We saw what happened when Core came out along with the 7950GX2, it helped to unlock its full potential, I hope quad core can do this for quad SLI.

I do though agree that something has to change too in the way of HDD's. I don't think that SATA II is holding back storage, I think it is the drives. What happened to these hybrid drives we where going to start to see, those look promising. I think the same holds true for those millions of optical drives we are all running on IDE (what is it DMA133), the SATA ones are just IDE drives with a different plug aren't they? We need some new R & D guys over at some of the optical drive plants. I really want to see some drives that really really start to stress SATA II, or I want to see something like drives that connect via a fiber channel cable; now that would be speed...fiber channel HDD's and optical drives feeding into a HT3.0 or faster sub-structure, wow, hold on tight! Fiber can push what 1TB/sec or more, I don't know for sure, but that is what I call bandwidth. Lets get some fiber optic interconnects on the motherboards why don't we.....hmmm look who's thinking like me :) >>>

http://www.intel.com/design/network/products/optical/tunable_lasers.htm
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan05/2912
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050218-4631.html
http://informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193003521

Now Intel is talking about this for networking, but with the size of the lasers it could be implemented on a motherboard. With laser we would be talking so fast that it is ridiculous. Fiber is fast to, because it also uses light, either one would be insane, I mean instant speed of light kind of insane.

Now that I am way off topic I will come back real quick, no quad core is useless until the end of 07, I think by then we will see quad (both from Intel and AMD) start to go mainstream, prices will drop, and applications will be taking advantage of them. Of course this is just what I think, so take it with a grain of salt. Theses are exciting times ahead of us, and here at XS we are living right on the cutting edge!!

[uOpt]

The problem with games is very subtle.

Currently games are doing a kind of multithreaded programming that will not make use of more and more cores, in particular not where it counts.

The are basically two ways to multithread a program:

Functional decomposition
Domain (or data-driven) decomposition


What the games do is functional decomposition, and it means that you just give each core something else to do.

But the problem is very simple: during the computation of one frame (or whatever you game's unit is) you only have to do a certain amount of work X, a certain amount of work Y, a certain amount of work Z. Obviously, if you have more cores than work the additional cores are useless. But it is worse: If Z and Y have finished for the frame and only X is still computing, then X will run on one processor.

Currently game only have about two different work threads going on, with games just announcing to have more. But even in a game with 4 workloads split off, you will still see that when workloads finish cores go idle.

%%

In domain decomposition you split up each workload. X is running on multiple processors, Y is running on multiple processors, Z is running on multiple processors. They work by synchronizing the fields of data that each of them is allowed to visit. Same data structure, but different parts.

Obviously, this almost always makes use of however many cores/CPUs you have, and at all times until the frame (or whatever your unit is) is finished.

But the is much more difficult to do, and error-prone. Synchronization to prevent data corruption is much more difficult than in functional decomposition. These errors are hard to debug, too. This generally doesn't fit with the tight schedules that game programmers have. It is also more difficult to add domain decomposition to an existing engine than functional decomposition.

Last but not least, domain (data decomposition) usually slows down the whole thing in the case that you only have 1 core/CPU available, and that makes game companies like it even less.

%%

But the fact remains: unless game engines switch away from purely functional decomposition, you will not get good performance out of many cores.

Think about it: usually when running through your game level you wait for the graphics card anyway.

When does CPU become a bottleneck instead of graphics? When one aspect of the game suddenly, just for a few frames, comes up with many more calculations to make for the CPU. An example is line-of-sight computation, some entity might walk somewhere where it suddenly sees a huge area with many enemies in there and LOS has to be checked with each one.

But that's the catch: with functional decomposition the LOS computation is one thread. One core. Your single-core FX-55 at 3.0 GHz will beat your 8-core dual Clovertown at 2.4 GHz at this task.

So, where it really counts - when holding up the minimum framerate when something (computationally) bad happens - functional decomposition doesn't cut it.

[J-Mag]

I have seen some people claim that when running the Supreme Commander Beta, they are seeing loads of 90-100% on each core of their dual core machines, so there might be some benefit when it comes to RTS multi-threaded games and quad core. I highly doubt this will be the case for FPS though...

[BlueBiker]

Lucid explanation, thx.

[uOpt]

RTS games intended to play against programmed opponents are often using variable computing times.

They just compute actions for the opponent in whatever CPU time there is left for good framerate. So you get more AI time computation if you have a fast box. Since the optimization is often not very effective the difference might not be too noticable, but since the CPU is free at that moment why not?

Similar "leftover" CPU time computations can be done for things improving the graphical quality. Game companies are pretty good at keeping low-level machines in business at some quality cost these days.

However, that doesn't change the fact that these usually only fill up one additional core.

[afireinside]

As AFI said, I'm just not so sure quad cores will make multitasking any smoother in the near term simply because of the human limits of what is practical for multitasking.

Well if you micro your OS like a pro starcraft player, maybe you could use 4 cores ;)

[mdzcpa]

Well if you micro your OS like a pro starcraft player, maybe you could use 4 cores ;)

LOL :D


Anyways, some seriously good content has been presented here. I'll certainly have to take a real close look at things when the time comes I guess. I am itching for some new hardware to play with (that's the XS in my blood)....I just want to "feel" the bang when I make the jump.

Thanks again.

[L'enFer]

look at this: Intel's Core 2 Extreme QX6700: The Multi-core Era Begins (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2866).

[mdzcpa]

Good read. Thanks for the link!

[L'enFer]

mdzcpa, on first page there is written they've tested Kentsfield...

[ewitte]

I think the 8800 cards need all the power they can get. Don't forget the drivers ARE multithreaded. If you look at the 3dmark06 benchmarks for a single 8800gtx you get quite a boost for quad core. It will probably be quite a huge boost if your running two 8800s ;)

[JPeitzman]

I agree with the above as well, from what I have seen these new DX10 cards love quad cores. I don't think they will be that well utilized, but it will be there. I still don't think they are necessary until we see ones retailing for like $500 or so. But on the flip side, it will be there, and at worst case it will perform the same as a dual core chip of the same clock. They seem to OC as good as Conroe too, so that is a plus.

As for the K8L, I don't know much about them, but they look better because they use less power and they have independent clocks for the cores (I think). You cannot change the Vcore independently, but the clock setting I think you can. Also I think the cores will power down when not in use, saving power and generating less heat, the Kentsfield is always on, so that is a small downside. I don't know if you have seen these or not:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2866
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/intel_core_2_extreme_qx6700/

Doesn't really look that bad, except for the price. I do really want to see it though with 2 8800GTX's, 2GB of RAM, Physics, OCed to the max, running some benches to 1. see what it can do, and 2. see if it starts to stress Intel's FSB at all.

[L'enFer]

Also I think the cores will power down when not in use
hmmm... C'n'Q is still alive?

[JPeitzman]

Wow (so I don't think, the slides say probably)....ya it is right on page two at the bottom on the anandtech page. It talks about the AMD quad design and shows that it can be independently clocked, but no independent voltage control; and that cores shut down when not in use.

C'n'Q though is a bios/driver option if I am not mistaken right? I think this might be something that is built into the core, so you can't turn it off. It could be nice for retailers, but I don't know how this will pan out for clockers. This could turn out to be the thorn in the side of K8L, but I don't know. I guess that and the fact that a 45nm Yorksfield should clock in the mid to high 4GHZ range, I don't know how K8L will deal with that, really I don't because we have no ES's. This is really just speculation though, so don't trust me, I just figure that if 65nm e6400 are hitting 4GHZ (which BTW is almost a 100% OC), and Quads clock about the same, then with the die shrink + I assume some small core tweaks, it should do around 4.5GHZ on the low end model. This is just using reasoning and logic, which I know can get me into trouble around here, just something to think about though....that would be a tasty treat! :)

[adamsleath]

Please forgive this noob post but....:
Techno-babble to one side; multicores are imminent and the flavour of the months to come from a hardware vendor near you. i'm waiting for an affordable Core 2 Quad...will it be January 2007?
i've read that amd 4x4 are expecting 20+ games in 2007 that are "threaded" for 4 cores (yeah an advert.) 4x4 to cost an arm and a leg - intel could easily wipe the floor with a 6400/6600 core 2 quad system in terms of cost.
next thing will be 8 cores at 45nano????
To me the whole "DUAL" core is old hat...give me 4 at a price i can afford.

[adamsleath]

Surely the point is programming 3 cores to parallel process the game program; is four cores enough to have parallel processing in one application? i.e 1 core for os crap and 3 running the game with "threading'/ parallel compute??

Why have multi cores without parallel processing?????????????????

Or am i an 8 armed octopus running 8 programs simultaneously on a yet to be released 8 core 45nm beastie?

Personally; I think it's a software issue. Programmers are not exploiting the cores properly...makes me think of multicore game consoles really.

[adamsleath]

c2q yorkfield q3 2007 ddr3; i bet yf doesnt have ddr2 support either...

[JPeitzman]

^^^I am with you in waiting for an affordable quad core. I think they (Intel) would do more than wipe the floor, they would annihilate 4x4 if they had something like a C2D e6400 but in a quad package , price it in the middle of e6600 and e6700, something like $350-$450...I think that would rock. It would be killer at that price with C2D OC abilities. 4x4 might give AMD a slight edge in THREADED apps for the moment until Intel (Kent and York) and K8L quads hit, but not by much. Plus for the price, $200+ for a motherboard, $200+ for RAM, and $800+ for a pair of FX's, I would guess more towards the $1000 mark, I'll pass. For around $1200 you could get a e6600, 2GB of DDR2-800, an Asus P5B Deluxe, and a 8800GTS; this system would shred through almost any game out there, and with some OCing you should hit 3GHZ+ for 24/7 running. I would take that over the over-priced 4x4 system any day.

What I really want though is some low cost 45nm York's from Intel that will OC like mad. Really I want any sort of quad package, low cost, and out for Christmas. BTW I hope York supports DDR3, it should since DDR3 I think is a Bearlake implementation, I want to get my hands on some DDR3 before the price explodes like it did with DDR2.

I may have stuck my foot in my mouth when I said quad not for gaming at the present time. I have been reading this, and yes I know it has been around for a week or so, but it is cool:

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2868

The tip of the iceberg for multithreaded gaming, and it looks pretty awesome. The rain looks amazing, and I hope they can push AI and physics tech even further than they are showing here. Looks promising to me, very promising indeed.

[adamsleath]

Nice link JP; good to see Valve are taking this topic seriously.

Amen to multithreaded app's

I've seen benchies for single 8800gtx from 11000+ -> 20,000!!! 3dmark05!!

SLI 8800gtx is jawdropping (plenty reviews and forum threads re this card) but suffice to say the gpu power really justifies a kickass cpu (c2q please)

Makes me wonder if multi-threaded c2q will shift the bottleneck back into the gpu corner 1 day soon???????????????????????

Dude/s i'm just a consumer i don't really understand the hardware technically; probably other obstacles for multithreaded app's - i would like to hear from a games programmer....think i'll go read that article a bit miore thoroughly; cheers.

[Vengure]

I do see that drivers and DX10 in combination with Nvidia 8800's will boost benchies but. I think it will still bea few years before the gaming market changes to multithreaded games. Sure Xbox360 and PS3 are already doing it. But game companies want to sell as many copies of games as possible and if they coded it for best performance on multi cores they would loose a huge market share for people with older pcs. Its going to take time but it will come but for now I'd say stay Dual core for a another year or two. Give the market time to switch away from single core computers. Its simple economics companies will do everythign in their power to milk as much cash out of older technologies as they can before havign to present newer tech. Games are the same they will make games designed for a single core platform for as long as they see that a huge majority of average people still use older computers. Where as leading edge people such as ourselves only make up a small part of the market.

[adamsleath]

maybe vista the new fat os will prompt 'people' to upgrade to c2d...mass market cash milking as you say...that predictable cycle of: 1: build new wacky do hardware then 2: clog it up with fat software, inducing people like me to upgrade hardware again, etc, etc.

All i need is a time machine to jump 4 years into the future

[pentium777]

I think the 8800 cards need all the power they can get. Don't forget the drivers ARE multithreaded. If you look at the 3dmark06 benchmarks for a single 8800gtx you get quite a boost for quad core. It will probably be quite a huge boost if your running two 8800s ;)

This all depends on your resolution selected, for me running 2560x1600 I see no benefit in a faster CPU, even 8800 GTX SLI is most likely going to be GPU limited especially when I utilize >4xAA 16xAF etc

If you run the 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 then ya you'll probably be CPU bound but articles I've read show no advantage and sometimes slightly slower with quad cores. And I have 680i, 2x8800 GTX SLI, 1000W PSU, 4x150 RaptorX coming in tomorrow, the Quad Xtreme was on my list but I am glad I read some reviews before plopping down $1k on it.

[adamsleath]

obscene res on the 30" if i had the cash id be copying your specs.

i've got enuf dough for c2de6400+p5bd+6400c4ddr2 right now @1600x1200 on 21"...probaly go yorkyfieldddr3 when it happens (1yr?)

[Lithan]

"Dual core has a significant daily benefit on the desktop for gaming"

Numbers please? I've yet to see any consistant reports that this is true in real scenarios. (Ie: when you arent randomly encoding stuff in the background... seeing as 99.9999999% of gamers dont do that, though fairly there may be a misrepresentative sample here of those that do.)

[DazzXP]

Well supreme commander is in beta and kills dual core processors. 30 minuites into the game with the AI and you will have CPU utilization of 92~100% on both cores! Thats a AMD Athlon X2 4400+ @ 2.75GHz, And mr Taylor said this game will take advantage of multi cores when it comes out in march 2007.

[JPeitzman]

Supreme Commander is going to rock....hard, and yes it rapes dual cores. I am starting to think that as games become threaded that quad will help, not just because of the threads, but you will have an extra couple cores to handle the background processes. As of right NOW, I don't think they really have their place yet, except for future-proofing, and for people that are multitasking a lot, and people that do hardcore multimedia stuff. Once we see quads that are priced around $300-$500 then I don't know if they will really have their place.

Looking at games like Supreme Commander, Unreal Tournament 2007 (which I think will be threaded last I read), and Hal-Life 2 (after the patch that is linked above), I am really excited for threaded games. I think the other benefit will be the fact that it will help cut some of the bottleneck at the CPU in games. It should help cut loading times, developers will be able to use very realistic physics and particle collusions, we could see hyper-smart AI's that can think and react to you and the environment (not just follow a preset path), games could look better (it could help to take some stress off the GPU if the CPU is doing everything but rendering), the list goes on and the possibilities are endless.

[l0x]

^^ Those games are the only reasons why I feel like upgrading. Even too the 8800s. We are at a very slow time right now when it comes to multi-threading. "The big catch up game" First it was the software developers yelling for more performance, now its the other way around. All this game really dose is hurt and confuse consumers. This thread for instance. You the consumer right now can't decide if its worth the upgrade. Same with me. I'm a Gamer first and Overclocker second. I'm going to wait another 3-4 months till I put the money down on a quad.

I believe their is more truth than hype since since right now it boils down to the developers. They will start to take advantage and we will see more performance with software in due time. I just can't wait!!

[ripken204]

300-500$ is not alot of money. how much were you guys paying for dual cores a year ago? the same price. now you have 2x the cores! i will eventually get quad, maybe next summer. there is always a need for more cores.

[Fireonice]

what about the fact that windows only supports 2 physical cores and so will vista. Im sure this has to factor in there somewere.

[Soulburner]

^^ Those games are the only reasons why I feel like upgrading. Even too the 8800s. We are at a very slow time right now when it comes to multi-threading. "The big catch up game" First it was the software developers yelling for more performance, now its the other way around. All this game really dose is hurt and confuse consumers. This thread for instance. You the consumer right now can't decide if its worth the upgrade. Same with me. I'm a Gamer first and Overclocker second. I'm going to wait another 3-4 months till I put the money down on a quad.

I believe their is more truth than hype since since right now it boils down to the developers. They will start to take advantage and we will see more performance with software in due time. I just can't wait!!
And by the time that comes, quad cores will be dirt cheap. May as well wait.

[DazzXP]

Well supreme commander sees huge inceases from single to quad and even my X2 4400+ can max out at 97-100% the diffrence from single core to Quade is 19fps Single, 37fps on dual and 57fps Quad core.

[outblast]

Has any one mentioned Alan Wake? I believe it uses all four cores and one of the cores strictly for physics. Thats out now, not 2 years from now.

[J-Mag]

Has any one mentioned Alan Wake? I believe it uses all four cores and one of the cores strictly for physics. Thats out now, not 2 years from now.

WTF?

You must be in an alternate universe. First the fan filter.. Now you have alan wake out?!?

[uOpt]

Has any one mentioned Alan Wake? I believe it uses all four cores and one of the cores strictly for physics. Thats out now, not 2 years from now.

That's exactly what we don't need.

Having the different cores on different things will always leads to cores being unutilized and going back to single-core at the end of a frame when there is only one thing not yet finished computing.

You really need to split up individual tasks into working in parallel, at least the computationally heavy ones.

[outblast]

didnt mean out on shelfs dingle berry and that "plastic" stuff that sheds silver strands was just an ovservation and is also off topic. So alternate your derogitory comment else where pls.

[J-Mag]

didnt mean out on shelfs dingle berry and that "plastic" stuff that sheds silver strands was just an ovservation and is also off topic. So alternate your derogitory comment else where pls.

Derogatory? LMAO! Don't get your panties in a bunch, noob.

[outblast]

Off Topic* To j-mag, my feelings are really hurt and im gonna cry, HA!. But hey dont give the bay area a bad rap with your :banana::banana::banana::banana:ti attitude k? To uOpt.. you make a interesting point. Jmag pm me if you have other dumb comments.

[XSAlliN]

DX10.1 should ad a benefit to multi core 4 games, but I guess Dual Core would be more then enough - you don't need Quad Core to help with that, I've seen the valve engine that showed the performance of 4 Cores but I doubt will see games games whit similar engine in 2007.

From my point of view: - Dual Core should be enough until they launch Multi CPU + Multi GPU platforms + DDR3 support - that if you want to feel the performance of your new upgrade - I mean, really feel it!

I only do major upgrades - I feel like a foul spending a lot of money on a small increase of performance in real life and a big increase on paper (marketing stuff).

For me it was like this: AMD K6 -> Duron 1400 Mhz -> AMD64 3200+ (Venice)/AMD64 2800+ (ClawHammer) -> ? (I'm waiting for it)... :)

[Soulburner]

I think a lot of us are feeling that...it is rather foolish to upgrade to every new technology that is released. I've been running my 3700+ San Diego for almost 2 years now and its still great. By the time I upgrade a Conroe will be dirt cheap and a quad core will be mainstream. Upgrading your GPU is a much bigger benefit than your CPU.