Associate
- Joined
- 12 Jul 2015
- Posts
- 1,694
Firstly, since the DX12 + multiple cores discussion mainly seems to take place in this subforum, I thought I would post here. However, if the mods feel it's a better fit elsewhere feel free to move it of course.
On a plethora of fora (that rhyms!), whereas CPU upgrades/sidegrades are concerned and especially now that Skylake is upon us, I have noticed a trend that recommends Haswell-E (specifically the 5820K because of it's price point) for gamers. The two main arguments provided are:
1) Having more cores is (more) future proof;
2) (Tying into #1) With DX12 around the corner more cores will be utilised in games.
This has made me curious, also because both #1 and #2 are mere assumptions, in my opinion anyway. So therefore I thought this could be an interesting thread to discuss the matter as DX12 creeps ever closer.
What follows is what I think on the matter personally. DX12 is obviously a fact, as is that it can (note 'can' instead of 'will'!) utilise 6+ cores and corresponding threads - however this is no gurantee that it will. The only thing that I've heard from the horse's mouth is that it can, not that it will (because, how could they possibly predict what devs will do...?). Game devs will have to implement it and for them to do that there must be a number of good reasons, which, frankly, I just don't see in the forseeable future.
One reason that I've often seen provided for the 'it will' arguement is that most PC games are console ports and consoles have 8 core CPUs now. True, however... They are, IMHO, rather low level AMD parts that are not on par with older, current and future Intel quad cores - and the latter have no problems whatsoever keeping more than up with any game out there (especially because the GPU plays a much larger role than the CPU). Hence I see no point for game devs to implement 6+ core utilisation.
And because the GPU plays such a significant role in games, why would you want to offload more to the CPU? Sure, it can do other tasks than the GPU, I get that, but nothing that seemingly cannot be done a faster clocked quad core part.
Next, there are only a few DX12 games on the horizon and it usually takes quite a while before such a thing is truly and fully adopted (e.g. look at DX11). By that time Skylake-E is already here - whatever that will bring as compored to the current enthusiast platform.
So I ask, why would you recommend gamers (including yourself) to put all their eggs in one basket (= Haswell-E) at this point in time? Is it because the entire platform its price is currently on par with the Skylake platform? Sure, it is here and there (not where I live, that's for sure, where Haswell-E as a complete platform clearly is the most expensive one). However, keep in mind that Skylake has just been released and thus its prices are still at a premium. With that take into account that, if history has taught us anything (and still is today), games prefer the less cores but higher frequencies and I ask aloud and to no one in particular, wouldn't it make more sense to go for that higher clocked quad core?
On a plethora of fora (that rhyms!), whereas CPU upgrades/sidegrades are concerned and especially now that Skylake is upon us, I have noticed a trend that recommends Haswell-E (specifically the 5820K because of it's price point) for gamers. The two main arguments provided are:
1) Having more cores is (more) future proof;
2) (Tying into #1) With DX12 around the corner more cores will be utilised in games.
This has made me curious, also because both #1 and #2 are mere assumptions, in my opinion anyway. So therefore I thought this could be an interesting thread to discuss the matter as DX12 creeps ever closer.
What follows is what I think on the matter personally. DX12 is obviously a fact, as is that it can (note 'can' instead of 'will'!) utilise 6+ cores and corresponding threads - however this is no gurantee that it will. The only thing that I've heard from the horse's mouth is that it can, not that it will (because, how could they possibly predict what devs will do...?). Game devs will have to implement it and for them to do that there must be a number of good reasons, which, frankly, I just don't see in the forseeable future.
One reason that I've often seen provided for the 'it will' arguement is that most PC games are console ports and consoles have 8 core CPUs now. True, however... They are, IMHO, rather low level AMD parts that are not on par with older, current and future Intel quad cores - and the latter have no problems whatsoever keeping more than up with any game out there (especially because the GPU plays a much larger role than the CPU). Hence I see no point for game devs to implement 6+ core utilisation.
And because the GPU plays such a significant role in games, why would you want to offload more to the CPU? Sure, it can do other tasks than the GPU, I get that, but nothing that seemingly cannot be done a faster clocked quad core part.
Next, there are only a few DX12 games on the horizon and it usually takes quite a while before such a thing is truly and fully adopted (e.g. look at DX11). By that time Skylake-E is already here - whatever that will bring as compored to the current enthusiast platform.
So I ask, why would you recommend gamers (including yourself) to put all their eggs in one basket (= Haswell-E) at this point in time? Is it because the entire platform its price is currently on par with the Skylake platform? Sure, it is here and there (not where I live, that's for sure, where Haswell-E as a complete platform clearly is the most expensive one). However, keep in mind that Skylake has just been released and thus its prices are still at a premium. With that take into account that, if history has taught us anything (and still is today), games prefer the less cores but higher frequencies and I ask aloud and to no one in particular, wouldn't it make more sense to go for that higher clocked quad core?
Also, you assume (or I've created the misunderstanding) that I'm upgrading, which I'm not 