Adv. of Multithreading

ahmed5 · 2 Aug 2006 at 20:52

Hello,

With games being multithreaded, how much of a peformance benefit would it perform?

Thank you

NathanE · 2 Aug 2006 at 20:56

Totally depends on the game engine in question. In about 5 years time I'd expect the gains will be upto the 70% mark. But by that time there will of course be no way to be absolute sure of that because there'll be nothing to compare the engine to

At the moment probably the best gain out of any game is around 10-15%.

Minstadave · 2 Aug 2006 at 20:56

No one is going to be able to give you much in the way of a figure, simply because multi-threaded games are few and far between at the moment, and none really make a huge use of multithreading even then.

AWPC · 2 Aug 2006 at 21:23

Quake4 with the 1.2 or higher patch gives hyperthreaded or dual core CPUs a huge FPS boost right now. Something like 25% on HT CPUs & 87% Dual Core according to ID/Raven.

silversurfer · 2 Aug 2006 at 21:28

Quake 4 and oblivion are multithread Ive read.

Have a look at this test done by anandtech on oblivion.

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2747

Crysis is supposed to need or use dual core for extra physics processing in parallel with the normal game code, no present game really needs dual core. In answer to your question I would say at worst zero benefit and at best 30% better fps.

http://www.incrysis.com/

Cyber-Mav · 2 Aug 2006 at 21:42

in theory there should be double the speed difference. but then there are overheads to consider.

Minstadave · 2 Aug 2006 at 21:49

Cyber-Mav said:
in theory there should be double the speed difference. but then there are overheads to consider.

Provided the game is CPU limited, which is pretty rare nowadays when you start whacking on AA and AF.

NickK · 2 Aug 2006 at 22:32

Games like Sims etc can easily make use of multithreading, so I'd expect these to lead the way.

silversurfer · 2 Aug 2006 at 22:49

None of these are single core so Iam actually not sure if the game uses that or not, probably not but definetly needs cpu power

cavemanoc · 2 Aug 2006 at 22:55

That Anandtech article is a facinating read - I had no idea what an impact the CPU could make to games like oblivion, at decent resolutions. Nice to see Dual Core starting to have an impact - will have to go back and have another tweak fest - sure I wasn't getting the most out of my 165!

Jakus · 3 Aug 2006 at 10:26

I'm Still waiting to make full use of my AMD 64 bit architecture

cavemanoc · 3 Aug 2006 at 10:34

Which version of windows are you running?

Jakus · 3 Aug 2006 at 10:48

I Thought we were Talking Games ? ,Multi threading and Dual core's and the future :confused:

cavemanoc · 3 Aug 2006 at 12:26

We are - but you should still be ashamed if you're running a 32bit version OS on a 64bit chip

Jakus · 3 Aug 2006 at 13:04

I'll be Honest with You I naturally assumed none of my older games will run in 64bit, I know FarCry was patched for 64bit but that's about it, If You have more info please tell !

Did try 32bit Vista and DX10 Most games seemed to work but never got around to XP64 due to the pain in the A driver support mainly

silversurfer · 3 Aug 2006 at 16:21

Apart from larger memory access wheres the benefits of 64bit, thats the real reason its not commonly used. Why make things unnesessarily complicated

cavemanoc · 3 Aug 2006 at 18:45

Apart from the fact that it's almost universally supported and FREE from Microsoft - can't think of any good reasons to... now wait...

- Have to say it was the first time I managed to get my Sata and Scsi's all to play together nicely - just feels more stable.

drunkenmaster · 3 Aug 2006 at 19:37

cavemanoc said:
That Anandtech article is a facinating read - I had no idea what an impact the CPU could make to games like oblivion, at decent resolutions. Nice to see Dual Core starting to have an impact - will have to go back and have another tweak fest - sure I wasn't getting the most out of my 165!

they weren't at decent resolutions, anandtech used crossfire hign end cards, 2x x1900xt's , 1600x1200 not maxed out quality is not high res for that setup, a single x1900xt in all the reviews that used one card and same res showed equal, and more than enough frames to play. which was the same in almost every game except rise of legends, where even 20fps would have felt the same as its a strategy slow game.

the one thing i think might be great about eventually having really well made multithreaded games would be the ability to buy a very very cheap cpu which when all games are multithreaded and still have enough juice to play.

Jakus · 3 Aug 2006 at 20:32

cavemanoc said:
Apart from the fact that it's almost universally supported and FREE from Microsoft - can't think of any good reasons to... now wait... - Have to say it was the first time I managed to get my Sata and Scsi's all to play together nicely - just feels more stable.

XP64 is free from Microsoft ?? You got a link to that ?

cavemanoc · 3 Aug 2006 at 22:02

Yep - let me have a dig about and I'll see if I can find it again - it's a 6 month trial thing (They're trying to woo us prior to the launch of Vapour, I mean Vista)

It can be found Here

Loved the little warning at the bottom:

Important: Windows XP Professional x64 Edition cannot be successfully installed on 64-bit Intel Itanium-based systems.