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An honest understanding of thread count and utilization.

Toothless

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So this has plagued me since Ryzen launched and maybe when the 5820k came out too. I've been used to four cored/thread chips for a good while and just recently in the last 6 months have been able to really use my 4790k's eight threads for goodies. (VMs, WCG, multiple programs and games all at once)

Then I see all these builds with those 6c/12 and 8c/16c chips for games and I can't find the understanding of do they really, honestly, truthfully require all of those threads for games or are they running a large amount of Odin-knows-what in the background? Do we need to have a mass movement to introduce these people to WCG? I feel as if we do.

The upgrade itch is there but when I look at it I always stop and think. "What in seven hells am I going to use 16 threads for? Second strongest GPU on the market (currently). A good chunk of memory which would be costly to replace, but for what?" I feel as if unless I'm dinked out my current chip and still REQUIRE more, there is absolutely no reason to upgrade and I hope I'm correct about that.

TL;DR dragon is having major sleep issues and has junk on his mind.
 
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People just like higher numbers, honestly. More ghzzz, more ramzzz, more corezzz, etc... so they get suckered in.

The cool thing to do today is buy more cores than you will ever need in hopes, as its been for a decade and change, software will catch up. I can see the use of more than 8t for a gaming machine in a few years (3+), but right now, if i was a gamer, id buy intel...if you can use the cores, or need to save money with same amount of threads, go amd.
 
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Don't let the upgrade itch get you. It will leave you broke. I by no means needed to do what I did and it ate my paycheck.

That said, I did it because a.) I was pissed at Intel. and b.) I run a build server on the same box I game on.

I wouldn't buy a new Intel mainstream CPU right now simply because of the value you can find in these Ryzen chips, and the insane level of future proofing I feel they have. But if ALL you do is game and you are only thinking about this upgrade cycle (not 2-3 years down the road), yeah, Intel, is probably a safer bet.
 
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In response to OP:
I totally agree, I'm just a thread junkie, can't get enough! :laugh: If I wasn't running WCG I wouldn't have bought an 8c cpu, I don't do video editing (yet), will probably start doing an open uni course in CAD so it might come in useful there, but games definitely don't need this many threads! I guess future games will eventually be demanding enough to need this much CPU power but I can't see that happening for a few years at least.

It would be nice though if games are coded to utilize all the threads (even if low %) which might take away the advantage from the crazy 5ghz+ quad core processors. In fact I think that's exactly what's happening currently.
 

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People just like higher numbers, honestly. More ghzzz, more ramzzz, more corezzz, etc... so they get suckered in. The cool thing to do today is buy mlre cores than you will ever need in hopes, as its been for a decade and change, software will catch up. I can see the use of more than 8t for a gaming machine in a few years (3+), but right now, if i was a gamer, id buy intel...if you can use the cores, or need to save money with same amount of threads, go amd.
I feel like it's a huge e-peen or "because I can" situation with most.

Don't let the upgrade itch get you. It will leave you broke.

That said, I did it because a.) I was pissed at Intel. and b.) I run a build server on the same box I game on.
I only really run a VM for helper bots for a specific game, only needs one thread to run just fine.

I totally agree, I'm just a thread junkie, can't get enough! :laugh: If I wasn't running WCG I wouldn't have bought an 8c cpu, I don't do video editing (yet), will probably start doing an open uni course in CAD so it might come in useful there, but games definitely don't need this many threads! I guess future games will eventually be demanding enough to need this much CPU power but I can't see that happening for a few years at least.

It would be nice though if games are coded to utilize all the threads (even if low %) which might take away the advantage from the crazy 5ghz+ quad core processors. In fact I think that's exactly what's happening currently.
I'd rather a game really take use of threads instead of being so spread out. Seems like a waste of really nice resources imho.

I should probably add that I'm usually using four threads for myself, three dedicated for WCG, leaving me with one and sometimes two threads open for whatever I need. Still not maxing it out.
 
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I'd rather a game really take use of threads instead of being so spread out. Seems like a waste of really nice resources imho.
That's just one of those illogical ocd preferences that a lot of us have lol (crazy hardware enthusiasts that always watch the utilization and temps for everything haha, definitely applies to me! :kookoo:).. But thinking about it, 1 thread on a 5ghz cpu could carry out more instructions in 1 clock cycle than a 4.1ghz cpu with equivelant IPC, but if those instructions were split onto 2 threads (on different cores) then the same if not more instructions can be carried out in 1 clock cycle instead of taking 2 clock cycles. I might be oversimplifying this to the point of not applying to the real world but this is my thinking at the moment.

TL;DR version: better use of threads = lower latency and higher fps. (opinion not set in stone)
 
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Due to consoles having 8 weak cores the situation slowly has changed... some games start to eat every thread you throw at it.
 
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Right now, well kinda pointless for most but developers seeing the price per core lower due to AMD i hope that they act on it and use more.

But time will tell, so don't go getting a 8c CPU now you should be fine for a good while yet.
 

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You also have the future proofing part to consider. It is generally a pointless argument because the IPC will fall behind, but still. The FX 83xx CPUs almost seem to be better now than on launch.

And I would go for a AMD hexacore if I were to completely rebuild, just for the bang/buck ratio.
 
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I think it would be great if better methods were available to make it easier for software to utilise more threads.

Software developers either dont have the resources or can't be bothered to code for more threads. But seen as we are starting to hit a brick wall in terms of CPU clocks, more threads seems the logical way to go to increase performance in the future.
 

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So this has plagued me since Ryzen launched and maybe when the 5820k came out too. I've been used to four cored/thread chips for a good while and just recently in the last 6 months have been able to really use my 4790k's eight threads for goodies. (VMs, WCG, multiple programs and games all at once)

Then I see all these builds with those 6c/12 and 8c/16c chips for games and I can't find the understanding of do they really, honestly, truthfully require all of those threads for games or are they running a large amount of Odin-knows-what in the background? Do we need to have a mass movement to introduce these people to WCG? I feel as if we do.

The upgrade itch is there but when I look at it I always stop and think. "What in seven hells am I going to use 16 threads for? Second strongest GPU on the market (currently). A good chunk of memory which would be costly to replace, but for what?" I feel as if unless I'm dinked out my current chip and still REQUIRE more, there is absolutely no reason to upgrade and I hope I'm correct about that.

TL;DR dragon is having major sleep issues and has junk on his mind.
IMO the software is what it lags behind to use all that extra resources and not just to run stuff faster but to give you more.
Before when I would upgrade I knew exactly what I could do that I could not do before.
Games are the most demanding thing for most people.
Like what you have provable gonna last you for a good while.
Not have to upgrade that often should be a good thing, right ?
But upgrade is what we do, and finding reason to upgrade is getting harder and harder.
Having a lot of cores with low TDP can be a great thing for people who do rendering and stuff.
If you run it close to 24/7 at full utilization the upgrade would pay it self off just in electricity savings.
Not to mention all the time you will save, and as we know time is money.
But there aren't that many people who can benefit from it.
To upgrade from a descend i7/i5 to Ryzen 6c or 8c would not make sense for most people.
But if I was building one right now it would be Ryzen 1700x. You can get one from microcenter when bundled with motherboard the cpu is only $250.
 
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Doesn't seem too hard to use it all. Like a goldfish I expand to the size of my environment :)

While it's an i5 in my specs, there's 2 other systems within reach that I use daily. So while I don't 100% agree that developers are to blame, I understand that some people are looking for a simple solution for making 1 piece of software work on 1 machine, regardless of it's core count.

On that note... seems that after all that work Intel (Daniel Pohl) put into ray-traced games, they shifted into VR/HMD a few years back. Now they have CPUs with enough cores to push ray-traced game at very high quality and FPS but no ray tracing engine to show for it?! That's an easy way to scale over N cores and would have been a killer demonstration of HEDT.
 
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You also have the future proofing part to consider. It is generally a pointless argument because the IPC will fall behind, but still. The FX 83xx CPUs almost seem to be better now than on launch.

And I would go for a AMD hexacore if I were to completely rebuild, just for the bang/buck ratio.


I used to have an FX8320 w/ a gtx 1070. It was adequate for gaming, as they said the gpu matters the most in this application. But when I switched to ryzen, my gpu started to stretch out its legs and churn out a lot more frames. I had to cap out fps to 96 because I dont want it to heat up and churn out frames I cant even see.

And yes, ryzen felt a lot smoother. I don't know if Bulldozer is just slow or sonething.
 
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Well I've been doing WCG crunching ever since I had a C2Q 9650. I upgraded the 9650 to a 2600k, and then to my current 3930k, so I've always used all the threads my CPU has. If not for WCG, I'd probably be on a i5 based system. So yeah, I see and agree with what your saying.
 

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Hyper-threading is helpful in most tasks that can scale to more threads. Here's an example (lower time is better, 4 core + HTT versus 8 core):
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...t-over-core-count-on-bulldozer.217327/page-21
HTT adds about 10% to quad core processors that support it.

In terms of games, I think quad-cores are still going to be the target for developers for a while because they always target midrange hardware. If 8-core was mainstream, I think we'd see a lot of AAA games at least use it (e.g. more physics simulations instead of guesstimating it).

You're right that WCG would be perfect for people buying these really wide processors and generally only use it for gaming and browsing.

I don't know if Bulldozer is just slow or sonething.
Bulldozer/Excavator/Piledriver is garbage, man.
 
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I think it would be great if better methods were available to make it easier for software to utilise more threads.

Software developers either dont have the resources or can't be bothered to code for more threads. But seen as we are starting to hit a brick wall in terms of CPU clocks, more threads seems the logical way to go to increase performance in the future.

I think that's where the issue is for using more and more cores for gaming. There are some things that lend themselves to parallel processing very well i.e. what GPUs do and there are some things that don't. I'm not a programmer but I have seen comments from programmers saying that it is sometimes very difficult or even impossible to write code that uses ever more cores in some cases.

There is also the case that some people make that game developers can be lazy but I think the bigger issue is the budget that a Publisher sets for the Developer and the programmers can't spend huge amounts of time being slowed down by more difficult coding. No one wants to pay $80 for a AAA game.
 

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In VR and AR lately it seems those extra cores are helpful. I can't say as to how much, but who knows until more of the triple A games start popping up for VR. Plus, there is only a handful of people actually benchmarking VR, but I think that's about to change with the addition of Microsoft's new Mixed reality headsets coming out in August.
 
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An honest empirical perspective i can give :)

- OC or DC a 4core and an 8core to the same exact clocks, core and uncore. Run the same game, from the same save, at identical circumstances (from ambient temp to when you launch the game to what your Windows settings are). Notice a difference in how smoother it plays with the 8core, even if the FPS are lower-ish. Notice how in reality the extra 7-11 FPS gained from the 4core are literally excess.
- Stick to the 8core, run them again once, then disable hyper-threading and run your tests again. Again smoother, though again slightly slower. Notice how yet again, said 'slightly slower' is at ranges that do not actually influence you, whereas the smoothness does.
- You don't game? Do you have multiple PCs? If you don't, more threads mean you can do work plus browse the web, chat, lookup emails, run some extra program, etc. Simultaneously. I find that a necessity. Years and years, i was at a state where "PC is doing 'x' task, shit, can't check my mails, can't this, can't that". Now i can. Bonus.
(if you have multiple PCs, O.K., perhaps your average gain has been minimized. Again though, why have multiple rigs when by now you can do most stuff with one? Simultaneously?)

Not all programs are positively affected, sure. But a lot are and in the long run, this means benefit or at the least, QoL/ease.
We don't buy PCs to run benchmarks, benchmarks mean nothing. We buy them to do stuff. Simple :)
 

Solaris17

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Not all of us buy cores to bot in video games. Alot of people on TPU

- Render 3D
- Encode Audio
- Encode Video
- Some are even scientists
- Run numerous VMs for testing.
- Multitask some if not all of the above
 

Frick

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Indeed. The Core 2 Duo could beat it in IPC.

Indeed, but my point was that as more games/programs use more threads its performance in some cases actually got better.
 
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Indeed, but my point was that as more games/programs use more threads its performance in some cases actually got better.

Honestly, and I mean this in a totally not mean-way Frick, but I wasn't replying to you and didn't even see your post.

You do have a point there of course.
 

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Not all of us buy cores to bot in video games. Alot of people on TPU

- Render 3D
- Encode Audio
- Encode Video
- Some are even scientists
- Run numerous VMs for testing.
- Multitask some if not all of the above

It's a valid point, but has a lot more quirks than you'd expect.

For example, the most popular graphics and publishing products from an anonymous company that starts with a letter A don't scale well past 6 cores (even though it was on the agenda for the past 7+ years, along with messy GPU acceleration).
Most audio editing software suites use single-threaded algorithms for encoding (and there aren't that many multithreaded encoders with visible benefits). Video editing/encoding software is catching up though, but benefits a lot more from GPU-accelerated encoding.

Multitasking also does not require that many cores...
...unless you are one of those guys who likes to watch a 4K movie, while compiling a linux kernel in background, all while tarballing a backup of another HDD, while running a separate VM for each of the trivial things like web server, DB server, NAS, and load balancing (just because you can, or it made some sense at a time of deployment).

The only tasks that truly require that many cores/threads are 3D, CAD, Number crunching, and that last one - playing with ridiculous virtualized contraptions on a single machine. Only this niche of the market can truly benefit from Ryzen, and this niche is where Intel is desperately hoping to get rid of Skylake-X and Kably Lake-X.

I think games will catch up on CPU resource utilization long-long before productivity and content creation software. The way it is going right now, it may be sooner than we think.
 

Solaris17

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I think games will catch up on CPU resource utilization long-long before productivity and content creation software.

This is still misinformation, because the assumption seemed to be based on gaming in general in the OP, and I would argue that there are many more pieces of software that utilize more cores, and while you may focus on the fact that I mentioned audio and video encoding, that doesn't mean those are the only multi threaded programs or that Apple is the only platform people do this on. I guess you will just have to accept there are more pieces of software out there that use more cores, regardless of weather or not you believe there are.

EDIT::

Just because people dont parade around the forums making sure everyone knows they emulate routers or environments on there PCs or code multi-threaded enterprise apps and simulate them on a local apache server doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. This is a tech forum not a gaming one.

It irritates me that it always comes down to wanting justification from people that want high core count CPUs when some of the more professional users probably dont even know WTF CS:GO is. It's a trend that is beginning to bother me at TPU, im starting to wonder if maybe people that utilize this stuff just stay quiet and let the younger generation of users just piss on each other all day. Jsut because games don't use them and they aren't cranking out points for TPUs WCG team doesn't mean there CPUs are "wasted".
 
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