Four cores or more?

Troezar · 30 May 2015 at 10:17

With consoles now using more than four cores and games increasingly likely to utilise them in the next few years is your next upgrade likely to be aimed at more than four cores?

Obviously this is subject to some sensible pricing and hopefully some competition from AMD!

Looking at Intel's Xeon chips they obviously have the technology to put the cores out now if the software demanded it.

Telecaster · 30 May 2015 at 10:21

Only if PC gaming switches to CPU wars from the current GPU wars, there doesn't seem to be much evidence that they're using the full potential of even the older PC CPUs, hence people still playing everything on 2500k/2600k/2700k perfectly fine!

Troezar · 30 May 2015 at 10:37

Agreed I'm one of them

Is there a reason the consoles went for more cores? I'm presuming multiple lower clocked cores run cooler than say 4 highly clocked ones? I'm just playing futurologist as it seems to be PC follows where consoles lead or will there be some divergence and PC will lead again with their superior performance?

los · 30 May 2015 at 10:42

Given the fact I already have 4 cores. I'm pretty sure my next upgrade will have more, well at least 8 threads.

Troezar · 30 May 2015 at 10:50

los said:
Given the fact I already have 4 cores. I'm pretty sure my next upgrade will have more, well at least 8 threads.

That's what I'm thinking given my current setup may well have lasted 5 years before upgrading. The next one could well last a similar tone and I'm sure software will move on in the next 5-6 years.

wunkley · 30 May 2015 at 10:56

Im doing a new build soon, and given that Skylake doesn't look that exciting, I'm more interested in going x99 and a 6 core 5820k I think. 12 threads will feel more of a leap and might be put to good use in the not too distant future in new games.

OhEsEcks · 30 May 2015 at 11:11

Troezar · 30 May 2015 at 11:27

Lol very true though. I think it could be the same story we had with 64bit. AMD ahead of their time, too far ahead, but eventually proven right even if they didn't profit from it add much add they should have.

Orcvader · 30 May 2015 at 12:02

Depends on pricing but 8 threads is minimum, don't really mind how many cores there are as long as per core performance is still pretty good.

Troezar · 30 May 2015 at 13:05

Yes the funny thing is I think the money is out there waiting to be spent they just need to give people a reason to spend it!

ishoeyi · 30 May 2015 at 14:02

Troezar said:
Is there a reason the consoles went for more cores?

to lower speed of the cpu, reduce heat, lower power consumption

just my guess

Troezar · 30 May 2015 at 14:12

ishoeyi said:
to lower speed of the cpu, reduce heat, lower power consumption

just my guess

In which case you'd expect the devs to code for multiple threads to make use of the available resources. Anyone know which comes first these days the console version or the PC version? If it's console first maybe the PC version is more likely to be optimised for more threads?

ishoeyi · 30 May 2015 at 14:21

Troezar said:
In which case you'd expect the devs to code for multiple threads to make use of the available resources. Anyone know which comes first these days the console version or the PC version? If it's console first maybe the PC version is more likely to be optimised for more threads?

the console cpu only runs about 1.6ghz
with a quad core running at 3.2ghz and beyond

it sort of roughly balance out

i7 have hyper threading so they behave like a 8 core

most of today games are console version then copy and paste to pc
yea i'm exaggerating, with recent pc version of some games, looks like ports to pc are improving.

Rroff · 30 May 2015 at 14:28

Troezar said:
Lol very true though. I think it could be the same story we had with 64bit. AMD ahead of their time, too far ahead, but eventually proven right even if they didn't profit from it add much add they should have.

Thats the problem with AMD though... i.e. look at their push for HBM memory on GPUs, older stuff like DX10/10.1, tessellation - sure in the long run they are proved right but they are wasting/not making money pushing stuff like that atleast a generation before its really needed/going to produce financial returns.

Trying to push 8 cores CPUs when they did due to a vision of how things "should" be when the reality is they will never be that way or in the short term lead that way even though they "should" be is just hurting them more and more.

Troezar · 30 May 2015 at 16:55

Rroff said:
Thats the problem with AMD though... i.e. look at their push for HBM memory on GPUs, older stuff like DX10/10.1, tessellation - sure in the long run they are proved right but they are wasting/not making money pushing stuff like that atleast a generation before its really needed/going to produce financial returns.

Trying to push 8 cores CPUs when they did due to a vision of how things "should" be when the reality is they will never be that way or in the short term lead that way even though they "should" be is just hurting them more and more.

I agree Rroff, shame they don't have the resources of Intel. In fact I'm surprised they haven't been swallowed up by one of the massive conglomerates by now. Whatever you think of Intel's business ethics they know how to make money and stay on top.

I'd prefer some real competition though to push the innovation.

ginjaninja · 31 May 2015 at 20:40

it will be interesting to see whether the current 8 core amds are good enough per core, to yield their owners massive value, in the long run, a bit like the q6600.
loads of people said q6600 was not as good value as dual core, frequency was more important, more cores not necessary yet etc etc. Maybe the Amd 8 core customers will be laughing all the way as time goes by...

Xelene · 31 May 2015 at 20:53

Had an i7 back in the Nehalem days, but since then have just gone for i5 as the extra £100 didn't seem worth it. Extra threads would be nice I guess, but most of my heavy computational tasks are farmed off to the GPU these days (iray)

Edit: just remembered, have an i7 in the mini box underneath the TV but that's pulling double duty as Virtualisation server - and has one of the clock locked low power jobs in it.

colinmcr · 1 Jun 2015 at 16:15

Guys do you think the supposed improvements to core utilisation in dx12 and win10 will mean that the higher core counts cpu's of will outperform skylake?

ginjaninja · 2 Jun 2015 at 12:54

I would bet no...but outperforming isnt neccessarily the best metric if eg fast enough and better value.

ginjaninja · 2 Jun 2015 at 12:57

Was thinking of amd when i wrote that...vs 5820 im not a betting man..but if solely a gamer my guess would be skylake better value..including benefits of latest platform.