# Will games really use all 4 cores?



## ian

http://www.techzine.com/2009/01/22/will-games-really-use-all-4-cores/
Techzine Blog post by Scout.


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## Shane

nice reviews thanks Scout,

im glad i choose Quad


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## Computer_Freak

for me, there is no point going quad. 

Im just gonna get an i7 when he refine the technology and drop power consumption


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## bm23

i have a question. when you say utilizing all 4 cores, do you mean all 4 cores would be used equally or even just 1% of the core being used would count as being utilized? because even in xp, if i was to check the task manager while at standby, i would see that all 4 cores are used but 1 or 2 of them would be working more than the others. this is also noted in your screenshot of Hell Highway. and i apologize if this question come across as being n00b.


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## Computer_Freak

they will usually reach like 60 - 75% on load, and then start ith the next core...

so not all the cores are working at 100%.

It basically shares the load better, allowing it to be processed more efficiently


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## deedub

I just happen to have the same processor in my PC (Intel Core 2 Quad 9300) as was in the test, and I would agree with those test results as they are very close to the graphs of my cores when gaming.  The main games I play are Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, Call of Duty World at War, Medal of Honor Airborne and Crysis.  I always play at the high settings and use a HP 24" 1920x1200 resolution monitor connected by HDMI. 

Its interesting that one game will pretty much max out core 4, and another game will max core 3 with the other cores taking up the slack.  But when I play any of these games, each of the four cores are are getting a workout for sure.


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## DirtyD86

good article. i think saying that quads will be a necessity in 2009 for gaming is a little extreme, and definitely isn't fact based, but good read nonetheless.


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## tlarkin

The game developers have been saying this for some time now, and I doubt a developer would come out and say yes, we do support all multi-cores and then not be able to do so.  That would just look really bad, which is why I opted to buy a quad core.  Not that gaming is most important to me, but all applications of all sorts in the very near future and even right now as we speak utilize multiple cores of a processor.

good article by the way though


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## ScOuT

Nevakonaza said:


> nice reviews thanks Scout, im glad i choose Quad


Thanks…I am glad you liked it! It means a lot when you call it a nice review!


bm23 said:


> i have a question. when you say utilizing all 4 cores, do you mean all 4 cores would be used equally or even just 1% of the core being used would count as being utilized? because even in xp, if i was to check the task manager while at standby, i would see that all 4 cores are used but 1 or 2 of them would be working more than the others. this is also noted in your screenshot of Hell Highway. and i apologize if this question come across as being n00b.


As you can see...some cores are used more than others. In some of the screen shots you see, they are all used but at different levels and intensity. When my computer is at idle...the cores will spike up to about 5% one at a time.


deedub said:


> Its interesting that one game will pretty much max out core 4, and another game will max core 3 with the other cores taking up the slack.  But when I play any of these games, each of the four cores are are getting a workout for sure.


I was surprised myself…Brothers in Arms is a very processor demanding game. I actually ran the test 3 times just to make sure. The results were the exact same, 4th core wide open.


DirtyD86 said:


> good article. i think saying that quads will be a necessity in 2009 for gaming is a little extreme, and definitely isn't fact based, but good read nonetheless.


Thanks for the review! You are correct…it was an extreme statement and maybe I should have chosen my words a little more carefully. Although, some people have a hard time with GTA IV running a 2 core processor right now. I don’t think it is extreme to say that by Q4 2009…dual core processors will be very stressed just trying to play a new release game. That’s just my prediction


tlarkin said:


> The game developers have been saying this for some time now, and I doubt a developer would come out and say yes, we do support all multi-cores and then not be able to do so.  That would just look really bad, which is why I opted to buy a quad core.  Not that gaming is most important to me, but all applications of all sorts in the very near future and even right now as we speak utilize multiple cores of a processor. good article by the way though


Thank you for the review…it means a lot when you also call it a good article. Gaming is not the most important thing for me also. That's what I have read…software developers are really starting to develop programs…even small simple programs…that are coded to utilize 4 cores.


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## gamerman4

We shall wait for Alan Wake, I've heard a lot about it and it looks promising as a CPU killer.


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## ScOuT

Looks amazing to me I have seen some wild trailers and read an article about it...and as far as a CPU killer...oh ya


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## Swapnil

Yes! mostly games use all cores that processor have to make leveling with each processor.
In windows you have a option called "set affinity" in which you can restrict application/thread to certain cores.


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## tlarkin

I have said this before so I will say it again.  Many games out support multi cores, it says so on the box.  Fallout 3, man I load different maps almost instantly on that game and get over 60FPS on maximum settings with 8x AA, maxed textures and particle effects.  The quad core definitely helps a ton.  I bet if I took out my quad and put in a dual core or even a single core processor of the same speed I would get real significant decreases of performance.


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## gamerman4

Lots of newer game are multithreaded but it is hard for a game to fully utilize every core to the max.

Example from Microsoft regarding multithreading on the Xbox 360

Typical Threaded Tasks 

    * File Decompression
    * Rendering
    * Graphics Fluff (includes non game-play physics)
    * Game-play Physics
    * Miscellaneous
File Decompression 

    * Most common CPU heavy thread on the Xbox 360
    * Easy to multithread
    * Allows use of aggressive compression to improve load times
    * Don’t throw a thread at a problem better solved by offline processing
          o Texture compression, file packing, etc.

Threading File I/O & Decompression 

    * First: use large reads and asynchronous I/O
    * Then: consider compression to accelerate loading
          o Don't do format conversions etc. that are better done at build time!
    * Have resource proxies to allow rendering to continue
Rendering 

    * Separate update and render threads
    * Multi-threaded device ownership (D3DCREATE_MULTITHREADED) works poorly
          o Exception: Xbox 360 command buffers
    * Special case of cascades paradigm
          o Pass render state from update to render
    * With constant workload gives same latency, better frame rate
    * With increased workload gives same frame rate, worse latency
Graphics Fluff 

    * Extra graphics that doesn't affect play
          o Procedurally generated animating cloud textures
          o Cloth simulations, hair simulation
          o Dynamic ambient occlusion
          o Procedurally generated vegetation, etc.
          o Extra particles, non game-play-physics, etc.
    * Easy to synchronize
    * Potentially expensive, but if the core is otherwise idle...?

Game-play Physics? 

    * Could cascade from update to physics to rendering
          o Makes use of three threads
          o May be too much latency
    * Could run physics on many threads
          o Uses many threads while doing physics
          o May leave threads mostly idle elsewhere
    * Non-game-play physics works fine
Miscellaneous 

    * Motion tracking/face tracking


Physics 

Rendering Thread 

Animation/

Skinning 

Particle Systems 

Game Thread


How Many Threads? 

    * No more than one CPU intensive software thread per core
          o 3-6 on Xbox 360
          o 1-? on PC (1-4 for now, need to query)
    * Too many busy threads adds complexity, and lowers performance
          o Context switches are not free
    * Can have many non-CPU intensive threads
          o I/O threads that block, or intermittent tasks





Simultaneous Multi-Threading 

    * Be careful with Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) threads
          o Not the same as double the number of cores
          o Can give a small perf boost
          o Can cause a perf drop
          o Can avoid scheduler latency
    * Ideally one heavy thread per core plus some additional intermittent threads


For the full presentation
http://www.montrealgamesummit.com/2006/ppt/MIGS-MS-Bruce_Dawson.pps


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## ScOuT

I just did a simple home test just to see what results I would get. I have seen so many people say it is a total waste of money to buy a Quad Core...not just on this forum by any means. You see it all over the place. I was hoping to make the decision for people wondering what to get a little more informative. I guess if gaming was the only reason you turned on your computer...a 2 core processor might be what you need.

I love my Quad

I can fold wide open with the graphical display showing, itunes playing and Firefox open with about 8 tabs doing all kinds of stuff and it never slows down


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## Concordedly

I read the article and found this information very useful in selecting what I will be using for my build. I never quite understood what those graphs meant on my computer, hopefully as time progresses I'll be able to understand hardware to the proficiency I understand software.


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## ducis

Alan wake isnt being released for PC guys, sorry I know its sad but we still have stalker


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## Shane

ducis said:


> Alan wake isnt being released for PC guys, sorry I know its sad but we still have stalker



Whaaaat!

I was loking farward to this game too...where you find this out?

Surely they will release it for pc,immagine the mnoney they would loose.


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## tlarkin

Nevakonaza said:


> Whaaaat!
> 
> I was loking farward to this game too...where you find this out?
> 
> Surely they will release it for pc,immagine the mnoney they would loose.



This month's game informer lists it as 360 only, but they will probably port it over.  They are probably doing that to reduce the amount of piracy for the initial sales since the 360 is harder to pirate games on.


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## Concordedly

Smart marketing move on their part. I'm sure someone will come up with something anyway though. 360's are being modded more and more. I saw someone on Craigslist openly asking how to do it from my area, I just laughed.


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## Shane

tlarkin said:


> This month's game informer lists it as 360 only, but they will probably port it over.  They are probably doing that to reduce the amount of piracy for the initial sales since the 360 is harder to pirate games on.



Oh nah we dont want another port....we all know what ported games tend to be like


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## Scubie67

Yeah from some of the charts I have seen ,its more worthwhile now to go quad ( maybe a couple of years ago you could  make the dual arguement,I guess).Thats why back in Jan. when I rebuilt a new rig I went ahead and got an I7 instead of a dual core,especially since I tend to keep a comp. till its ancient.My old computer was a P4 ,Agp That I had about 6 1/2 years and it was struggling with the new games even on low settings.LOL.


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## tlarkin

Scubie67 said:


> Yeah from some of the charts I have seen ,its more worthwhile now to go quad ( maybe a couple of years ago you could  make the dual arguement,I guess).Thats why back in Jan. when I rebuilt a new rig I went ahead and got an I7 instead of a dual core,especially since I tend to keep a comp. till its ancient.My old computer was a P4 ,Agp That I had about 6 1/2 years and it was struggling with the new games even on low settings.LOL.



Well really your OS is the core of what would take advantage of a multi core system.

For example, I have an iMac at work which is my work desktop. On my iMac every day I have the following running:

ARD admin
Email client
Web browser
up to 10 terminal windows at any given time
Casper Remote
Casper Admin
Composer
Excel
Word
iChat
iTunes
server tools (WGM, Server monitor, server admin, etc)
Passenger
TextWrangler


All of these apps tend to almost kill my machine as it only has 1 gig of RAM and a C2D processor.  However, for how low my specs are it handles them rather nicely.  I mean I have them all running at once all day all the time every day.  I try to avoid using Excel as much as possible as I HATE spread sheets, but I gotta use it.  

If I tried running that on a Windows box with 1 gig of RAM you could say forget about it.  So not only is multi core processors important for performance it is also important how you OS utilizes them in every day usage.  

I hear Windows 7 is way better at memory management though, so I will have to wait to see how it pans out.


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## Scubie67

tlarkin said:


> Well really your OS is the core of what would take advantage of a multi core system.
> 
> For example, I have an iMac at work which is my work desktop. On my iMac every day I have the following running:
> 
> ARD admin
> Email client
> Web browser
> up to 10 terminal windows at any given time
> Casper Remote
> Casper Admin
> Composer
> Excel
> Word
> iChat
> iTunes
> server tools (WGM, Server monitor, server admin, etc)
> Passenger
> TextWrangler
> 
> 
> All of these apps tend to almost kill my machine as it only has 1 gig of RAM and a C2D processor.  However, for how low my specs are it handles them rather nicely.  I mean I have them all running at once all day all the time every day.  I try to avoid using Excel as much as possible as I HATE spread sheets, but I gotta use it.
> 
> If I tried running that on a Windows box with 1 gig of RAM you could say forget about it.  So not only is multi core processors important for performance it is also important how you OS utilizes them in every day usage.
> 
> I hear Windows 7 is way better at memory management though, so I will have to wait to see how it pans out.



 I dont have all those apps on my computer so Are you saying a dual core in my situation would work just as well?


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## tlarkin

Scubie67 said:


> I dont have all those apps on my computer so Are you saying a dual core in my situation would work just as well?



I am saying that multiple core hardware is fantastic, but only if the OS can properly multi task between the two.  A good trial would be to build two identical systems 1 with a core 2 duo and one with a core 2 quad and then seeing how they perform.

Some software will not take advantage but the OS should always take advantage balancing out tasks to each core.  

If I had a single core processor my machine would run even worse, and believe me I can push this little guy to the limit and have crashed it a few times, but for the most part I am pretty impressed it is running all of that with only 1 gig of RAM.


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## Scubie67

tlarkin said:


> I am saying that multiple core hardware is fantastic, but only if the OS can properly multi task between the two.  A good trial would be to build two identical systems 1 with a core 2 duo and one with a core 2 quad and then seeing how they perform.
> 
> Some software will not take advantage but the OS should always take advantage balancing out tasks to each core.
> 
> If I had a single core processor my machine would run even worse, and believe me I can push this little guy to the limit and have crashed it a few times, but for the most part I am pretty impressed it is running all of that with only 1 gig of RAM.



K, I see now,thx.


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