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Adv. of Multithreading
- Thread starter ahmed5
- Start date
Associate
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- 5 Aug 2005
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- 292
Well, FarCry had some added stuff and better graphics, other than that nothing off of the top of my head strikes a bell.
The routines that the put into Far Cry were supposed to yield a small FPS increase (about 5% iirc) - not sure if any of the others have similar things yet as all my machines are on x64 now so I can't really test it out (and I'm too lazy to dual-boot!)
What benefits have I had in game? Not sure I've really noticed any, would I go back to 32bit - not on your life - but that's off the topic
I remember when dual core first started appearing on non-server boards the debates that raged about whether it would make any difference to us gamers. Those who worked in the coding world spent many days explaining to the rest of us that multi-threading wasn't something you simply bolt on to your code - and it wasn't something you could 'patch into windows' to let it take care of everything. Hence it has made little impact, and you'll still find some stating that single core is better for games.
Me? I can play BF2 (now that those lazy ****s have finally fixed the bug that stopped it running on dual-cores) at full speed, with no slow down, while running a ventrillo server/client, have music in the background, and even do some ripping/encoding in the background. That's progress!
What benefits have I had in game? Not sure I've really noticed any, would I go back to 32bit - not on your life - but that's off the topic
I remember when dual core first started appearing on non-server boards the debates that raged about whether it would make any difference to us gamers. Those who worked in the coding world spent many days explaining to the rest of us that multi-threading wasn't something you simply bolt on to your code - and it wasn't something you could 'patch into windows' to let it take care of everything. Hence it has made little impact, and you'll still find some stating that single core is better for games.
Me? I can play BF2 (now that those lazy ****s have finally fixed the bug that stopped it running on dual-cores) at full speed, with no slow down, while running a ventrillo server/client, have music in the background, and even do some ripping/encoding in the background. That's progress!
cavemanoc said:The routines that the put into Far Cry were supposed to yield a small FPS increase (about 5% iirc) - not sure if any of the others have similar things yet as all my machines are on x64 now so I can't really test it out (and I'm too lazy to dual-boot!)
What benefits have I had in game? Not sure I've really noticed any, would I go back to 32bit - not on your life - but that's off the topic
I remember when dual core first started appearing on non-server boards the debates that raged about whether it would make any difference to us gamers. Those who worked in the coding world spent many days explaining to the rest of us that multi-threading wasn't something you simply bolt on to your code - and it wasn't something you could 'patch into windows' to let it take care of everything. Hence it has made little impact, and you'll still find some stating that single core is better for games.
Me? I can play BF2 (now that those lazy ****s have finally fixed the bug that stopped it running on dual-cores) at full speed, with no slow down, while running a ventrillo server/client, have music in the background, and even do some ripping/encoding in the background. That's progress!
Ok, You sure Your not a politician
1 direct answer to a straight question please, With this 64 bit windows XP do You have any sort of compatibility option to run a game or App that only supports 32bit code ?
Soldato
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- Stanley Hotel, Colorado
cavemanoc said:
You must have a nice amount of memory spare there and a good disk setup
Soldato
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- 13 Jul 2004
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Excellent, dx10 looks like it could twice as powerfull in some cases. Imagine that, first conroe doubles the stakes and then dx10 does that same
silversurfer said:You must have a nice amount of memory spare there and a good disk setup
2 shiny gigs and a 15k Cheetah Scsi for windows with a raid 0 of 2x15k for the games (plus a rubbish Sata for storage) - Made the mistake of defragging the whole lot at once - never again!
The problem with multithreading and games is that of complexity. Now, I'm sure none of you here think programming a game is a simple task by any means. The whole thing gets a lot more complicated when you introduce multithreading! Even programming basic applications to use multithreading and gain any decent amount of performance is much trickier and time-consuming than a single-threaded application.
It's worse in games because of the time pressures (games running in real-time and refreshing at a fast rate) and interdependancy. All different parts of a game are often needing to have information from elsewhere in order to do their job right. For example, a rocket flying through the air and hitting a monster, blowing him into small bits. You've constantly got movement, changes in lighting and shadowing, physics calculations etc.. and trying to split this up to run in parallel is hard! Rock hard!
Not only do you need a strong degree of parallelism in the code for multithreading to yield significant performance benefits, you also don't know when other threads and instructions have completed. In a single thread, when an instruction is reached it's logically clear that the one preceding it has already completed. however with threads, you have to look at other data to see what's been done, what's yet to be executed, you have to wait for one or the other to catch up if it's being slow...
And that's why we don't see anything like 100% increase in performace going from single to dual core CPU's. Quake 4's code is great and is by far the leader for gaming multi-threading right now. We can but hope to see more of it. Oblivion is multithreaded too but sorely lacking in benefits - 5% increase on dual core seems to be a figure I've seen.
Finally, games running at any sensible resolution and graphics details are GPU limited these days. Is it worth the extra effort to make your game multithreaded, with all the extra complexity, time, cost and the terribly hard debugging associated with threading? The answer at the moment seems to be overwhelmingly "NO!". But it's certainly changing, slowly.
Errm...*cough, steps off his soapbox*
It's worse in games because of the time pressures (games running in real-time and refreshing at a fast rate) and interdependancy. All different parts of a game are often needing to have information from elsewhere in order to do their job right. For example, a rocket flying through the air and hitting a monster, blowing him into small bits. You've constantly got movement, changes in lighting and shadowing, physics calculations etc.. and trying to split this up to run in parallel is hard! Rock hard!
Not only do you need a strong degree of parallelism in the code for multithreading to yield significant performance benefits, you also don't know when other threads and instructions have completed. In a single thread, when an instruction is reached it's logically clear that the one preceding it has already completed. however with threads, you have to look at other data to see what's been done, what's yet to be executed, you have to wait for one or the other to catch up if it's being slow...
And that's why we don't see anything like 100% increase in performace going from single to dual core CPU's. Quake 4's code is great and is by far the leader for gaming multi-threading right now. We can but hope to see more of it. Oblivion is multithreaded too but sorely lacking in benefits - 5% increase on dual core seems to be a figure I've seen.
Finally, games running at any sensible resolution and graphics details are GPU limited these days. Is it worth the extra effort to make your game multithreaded, with all the extra complexity, time, cost and the terribly hard debugging associated with threading? The answer at the moment seems to be overwhelmingly "NO!". But it's certainly changing, slowly.
Errm...*cough, steps off his soapbox*
Soldato
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- Stanley Hotel, Colorado
No they'd just do it sequentially as normal, multithread just allows parallel processing to be done by clever arrangement of the program.
I dont think this makes it any less efficent in general, it does take more effort to program in the first place. Hence the delay in releasing programs able to use dual core fully
Does visual basic, etc allow for multithreading, Iam guessing not..
I dont think this makes it any less efficent in general, it does take more effort to program in the first place. Hence the delay in releasing programs able to use dual core fully
Does visual basic, etc allow for multithreading, Iam guessing not..
Soldato
- Joined
- 13 Jul 2004
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- 20,341
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- Stanley Hotel, Colorado
Dam surprised at that, I didnt realise compilers were that advanced or is it still very much down to the programmer. I'd like to see how effective it is either way
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Can't imagine what you could make in VB that would call for threading though!
Another thorn in the side of the game programmers is that the languages expressly created with parallelism in mind are also highly inappropriate for games.
but as understanding of the subject increases and more tools, better engines etc. are made I'm sure we'll start to see dual core being worthwhile for gaming.
Another thorn in the side of the game programmers is that the languages expressly created with parallelism in mind are also highly inappropriate for games.
but as understanding of the subject increases and more tools, better engines etc. are made I'm sure we'll start to see dual core being worthwhile for gaming.