Multi-core in Gaming...

[Kougar]

Hopefully this is the start of what's to come...

Markus Maki, Founder and Chairman of Remedy, came on stage to demonstrate the latest build of Alan Wake on an overclocked Core 2 Quad system. The Kentsfield based CPU was running at 3.73GHz and ran the game just fine without any slowdowns:

According to Markus, Alan Wake is multithreaded and uses dedicated threads for physics, rendering and data streaming. One of Alan Wake's most unique features is its dynamic weather, and the tornado in action below used an entire core to achieve its effects:

Full blurb: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2840&p=5 (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2840&p=5)

Not a great capture of the game screen, but that's to be expected with it being projected onto a screen...

--------------------------------

Also here's a new game to benchmark multicore (Including quad-core) systems. It'll spawn a game thread per available core: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/393/2/ (http://www.legitreviews.com/article/393/2/) Some cool stuff, about time someone offload's the intensive AI work onto other cores...

When running Ice Storm Fighters on a quad-core processor (we assume it was the QX6700) with a 1066MHz Front Side Bus (FSB) vTune showed that 13% of the FSB was being used. This goes to show that even on intense upcoming games/benchmarks that are heavily threaded don't require a higher front side bus.

[XJnine]

I built a dual processor system back when Quake 3 came out because of its support for multi processor systems (which ended up being crummy) and in anticipation that more developers would do the same.

It's years later now and they're just getting around to creating multi-threaded game engines. Even Intel's hyperthreading has been around for years, what have they been waiting for? Putting the support into the game engines shouldn't be that hard. Even if the games didn't show much benefit it would still make sense to support multi cpu systems earlier since there's a bunch out there and every little bit of performance helps.

[vfrex]

XJ, it seems like something they'd have to plan for from the beginning if it isn't going to be a hack job. I'd figure that almost all games being developed starting today will have multi-core/processor support.

[liqnit]

I built a dual processor system back when Quake 3 came out because of its support for multi processor systems (which ended up being crummy) and in anticipation that more developers would do the same.

It's years later now and they're just getting around to creating multi-threaded game engines. Even Intel's hyperthreading has been around for years, what have they been waiting for? Putting the support into the game engines shouldn't be that hard. Even if the games didn't show much benefit it would still make sense to support multi cpu systems earlier since there's a bunch out there and every little bit of performance helps.
Overall in the last years multi core in % of total computer is near to nothing
so there was no need to make a special effort in that area but the coming years will look diffrent - well i hope :paw:

[dracos]

Speaking of Dual cores..

I downloaded that AMD dual core optimizer program from AMD.. well I found that it actually makes everything worse, my experiences with it were just horrible.. it was almost like going back to a single core...

witout using the software/drivers I can run two instances of prime95 and be still surf the interent and do pretty much anything light duty, word processing, interenet etc.. but with the AMD optimzer software it jsut slowed everything down to a crawl...

jsut a hint for those that installed the software, and I was curious if anyone else has seen the same problem..

[Bio-Hazard]

I installed it and I haven't really noticed any slow downs. I fold on one core and even keep it running while I game without problems.

[Kougar]

XJ, it seems like something they'd have to plan for from the beginning if it isn't going to be a hack job. I'd figure that almost all games being developed starting today will have multi-core/processor support.

I have to agree, now that dual-cores are much, much more prevalent you can expect games to finally start making use of multiple cores! Game developers make their games based on the common demonimator in gamers hardware, if not lower... but now that dual-cores are everywhere and at every price point, they'll be making use of it. Especially since dual-cores are going to comprise almost all of the shipping processors sold in 2007, for both the blue and the green camps ;)

Dracos, that's strange. I've heard others say that optimizer patch actually fixed games that were having issues with their dual-core rigs? Tried searching the AMD website forums?

[zachig]

With the new Dual-Core CPUs and Quad-Core GPUs, and especially with the new DirectX 10 Video Cards to become available soon, I'm really looking forward to see the new games that will be released during 2007...:???:

I especially looking forward for "Alan Wake" to be released already (I guess you heard about it, and if not, go and read about it...:wink:).

This game should be "something" and I really like it genere...it's also the first game to be released for Vista OS...:wink:

[Kougar]

With the new Dual-Core CPUs and Quad-Core GPUs, and especially with the new DirectX 10 Video Cards to become available soon, I'm really looking forward to see the new games that will be released during 2007...:???:

I especially looking forward for "Alan Wake" to be released already (I guess you heard about it, and if not, go and read about it...:wink:).

This game should be "something" and I really like it genere...it's also the first game to be released for Vista OS...:wink:


Found some more info for ya ;) Check this out!

Surprisingly enough, Markus indicated that Alan Wake would pretty much not run on any single core processors, although it may be possible to run on single-core Pentium 4 processors with Hyper Threading enabled, with noticably reduced image quality/experience.

The game will actually spawn five independent threads: one for rendering, audio, streaming, physics and terrain tessellation. The rendering thread is the same as it would be in any game, simply preparing vertices and data to be sent to the GPU for rendering. The audio thread will obviously be used for all audio in the game, although Remedy indicates that it is far from a CPU intensive thread.

The streaming thread will be used to stream data off of the DVD or hard disk as well as decompress the data on the fly. Remedy's goal here is to have a completely seamless transition as you move from one area to the next in Alan Wake's 36 square mile environment, without loading screens/pauses. With Alan Wake being developed simultaneously for both the Xbox 360 and the PC, efficiency is quite high as developing for a console forces a developer to be much more focused than on a PC since you are given limited resources on a console. Markus admitted that being a PC-only developer can easily lead to laziness, and developing for the 360 has improved the efficiency of Alan Wake tremendously. With that said, Markus expects the visual and gameplay experience to be identical on the Xbox 360 and the PC when Alan Wake ships, hopefully without any in-game load screens.

Just wow... Already here is a game that should scale very well to multi-processor and quad-core systems. And it hopefully will prove to be great for benchmarking systems, since it will scale well on any multicore rig.

I may as well post the whole page while I'm at it, :roll: it can be read here: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2841&p=2 (http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2841&p=2)

During the keynote Markus mentioned that the physics thread used an entire core by itself, later clarifying that on a normal Core 2 Quad processor approximately 80% of one core would be used by the physics thread. With 80% of a single core being used for physics alone, the dual core CPU requirement is no longer so shocking

[DragonMaster]

Now that games can use both cores, they can't claim that you can play a game and do something else at the same time anymore!

[zachig]

OMG!!! These are BIG requirements for a game!!! :twisted:

So I guess it's a game that really worth waiting for...:???::roll:

If it's really true that the game will require a Dual-Core CPU to run, I must say that now, more than ever, I'm very happy that I have a Dual-Core CPU, though it's "only" a X2 3800+...:???:

But hey, at least I won't have any Video lags with my 7900GTs :wink:(..or at least I hope so...:roll:)

Thanks a lot for the info, Kougar!!! :mrgreen:

I'll be reading the FULL article in the link you've sent later on...:wink:

[DragonMaster]

What about me and my X300 onboard and 256MB RAM? ;)
At least I have an X2 4400 (939 tho)

[zachig]

What about me and my X300 onboard and 256MB RAM? ;)
At least I have an X2 4400 (939 tho)

Yeah...at least that :wink:

But I wish for you that you'll be able to upgrade soon...:roll::mrgreen:

[Kougar]

Zachig, safe to say it's true I'd say, it's just a one page article on the coverage of Intel's IDF show, but the people Anandtech quoted are those directly behind the game itself.

Now that games can use both cores, they can't claim that you can play a game and do something else at the same time anymore!

That is why you should buy a two socket Intel board... and plug two Kentsfields into it. One quad-core for gaming, the other quad-core for everything else. :lol:

And an x300?!? My old agp 9600XT gave a PCIe x300 a sound thrashing in the benches I tried up against a friends x300, and a 9600XT has only 4 pipes and one or two shaders. :(

[DragonMaster]

That is why you should buy a two socket Intel board... and plug two Kentsfields into it. One quad-core for gaming, the other quad-core for everything else.
They'll release 8-core games once it'll become mainstream, they just want to eat as much resources as possible.


And an x300?!? My old agp 9600XT gave a PCIe x300 a sound thrashing in the benches I tried up against a friends x300, and a 9600XT has only 4 pipes and one or two shaders.
That's why I got a mATX mobo with PCIEx 16x slot and the most powerful onboard graphics, I knew that I wouldn't have money for a video card, since the X1600Pro cost $250 when I got it.