well hmm in gaming it made no f***king difference for quad core so why would someone spend money on that?
Right now, even games that bear 2 separate "coarse threads", working on 2 diff./discrete datasets show they can make gains, & never losses, even w/ AA/AF turned up FULL which on a single core rig would hit you FAR HARDER & create "losses" where small gains are seen using multithreaded designs, instead of losses!
(Even MORE gains, IF you lay off the AA, which imo, again, is a waste beyond 800x600 since image borders & 'frames' they are on tend not to distort @ those res!).
This much, on "only" dualcore rigs, we're all fairly certain of & have seen, if only in other apps that bear multiple thread designs, & only 2-3 games so far.
BUT, w/ QuadCore (or more)?
They'll get more out of them doing "coarse" multithread, for things like Physics processing such as the folks from VALVE allude to above of course, but more efficiency's are coming & will be 'mainstream'.
* Give it 6 months to a year... see these quotes from the article this thread is about/refers to (w/ other game developers following suit on John Carmack's, one of the "best & brightest" out there today, & his already proven in practice (games like Quake 4 SMP) results):
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"Furthermore, games are coming out with more complex AI, physics, pathfinding, and other effects that will tax the CPU more than ever before. At that point, it will be time for us to redo the way we test video games, because 'canned' benchmarks won't take things like AI and physics into consideration. In the coming months, several games will be released that are designed with quad CPU directly in mind. These games are expected to push the boundaries of immersion more than you could imagine. The idea is to let the graphics card to its work, and let the CPU do the rest, including AI, pathfinding, physics, etc"
Article Author
&
"Multi-core computing is the new standard for PC games, and we at Epic are thrilled to see Intel leading the industry forward with Core 2 Extreme. Its four high-performance CPU cores enable a new level of realism in games, with realistic physics simulation, character animation, and other computationally-intensive systems." --
Tim Sweeney, Epic Games
"The introduction of Quad Core processor based PC’s allows Remedy to create real next generation games as demonstrated by our Alan Wake, a psychological action thriller to be published by Microsoft Game Studios. Dividing complex programming tasks into multiple threads is the way to exploit performance that allows us to create more realistic and dynamically generated environments and thus enjoy fantastic game worlds like never before." --
Markus Maki, Remedy Entertainment
"Gas Powered Games has had the opportunity with our Supreme Commander title to be on the leading edge of working with Intel’s Quad Core. The performance and experience enhancements we’ve seen implementing our multi-threaded architecture on Intel’s multi-core systems has shown us that these technologies will represent the minimum bar for the future of advanced gaming." --
Kent McNall, Gas Powered Games
"Quad-core will change every aspect of PC gaming. It will change how we create our games, how we provision our service, and how we design our games. The scalability we've seen in graphics over the last few years will now extend to physics, AI, animation, and all the systems which are critical to moving beyond the era of pretty but dumb games." --
Gabe Newell, Valve.
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Do/ or would you gain today using a Quad Core? Possibly!
Now, iirc?
The tests mentioned in this thread DID mention 'small gains possible to none', & not flat-out zero though as you state, by running their tests on a QuadCore rig...
AND, the more threads a particular task had, the greater the gain was on tests in that review (see the first set of tests in fact, CPU test suite, which stresses multitasking (as best as they can or needed to, today)).
See, you have to figure that other running processes sending interrupt requests to the present CPU cores will have more core to be "spread across", leaving the one(s) your game needs to get access to, freer (freer of other program child & main threads making interrupt requests on the CPU(s) your game is running on)!
Tomorrow?
They'll gain even more as the coders of these games move from 'coarse' multithread designs into more 'delicately designed' ones such as what is known as "fine" multithreading.
Most of what you see done today, is of the "coarse" nature, & pretty good, but not as good as it CAN be imo & yes, those of others.
APK
P.S.=> Would I buy a Quad Processor now? No... don't require it, as games I currently own wouldn't get much out of it, only indirectly (because other processes running's threads would be spread to more CPU cores present, leaving the cpu core(s) the game is running on freer to service the game's interrupt requests)
Plus, I only buy once every 4 years... by then? It will be commonplace commodity goods... & priced lower, most likely!
Still this last quote from the article's conclusion should "seal the deal" on this one:
"See what I'm getting at here? The future is multithreading. Intel knows it. AMD knows it. Microsoft and Sony know it. We saw big gains in performance across the board, and in the few cases where we didn't, we can still consider the intangible benefits of having more than a couple cores." ... apk
Beat me to it guys, I'll have a newspost ready in a few minutes for users with RSS feeds to TPU (and lazy people who don't have forum accounts).
