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Planet side 2- Need to code for Multicore CPU's

AMD's Modula cores are 'not fast'

To put it into context Bulldozer was 10% per core per clock slower than Thuban (AMD's own predecessor)

PileDriver is a little better but still 5% slower per core / clock than Thuban, it also has 10% better power efficiency than BulllDozer

AMD's 8 core CPU's could be very good with just a bit more per core / clock performance.
IMO they don't have to be as fast or faster than Intel per core / clock, they just have to be better than what PileDriver is.

SteamRoller slides say:



If that is right, and its a big IF, then we could be looking at 20% ~ per core / clock performance improvement.
Clocked at 4Ghz with 4.2Ghz Boost out of the box we would be looking at -15% Single threaded Haswell performance (@ stock) and a monster in fully threaded apps.

Sticking 8 cores in models was not necessarily a bad idea, a normal 8 core with each core in its own module would have been a much larger chip.

Its a bit like Porsche with the engine in the back behind the back wheels, early models did not work very well with that engine hanging out of the back of the car swinging about like a pendulum.
But they stuck with it and perfected it, now Porsche are arguably the best handling car there is, certainly enthusiasts say you cannot beat a 911 for handling and shear excitement, its a concept which works beautifully where on paper it shouldn't work at all, some how Porsche defied the laws of physics and made it work.

AMD had a radical idea and it looks like they are sticking with it, time will tell if they can perfect it.
 
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The 8 core AMD Jaguar used in the new consoles is such a weak CPU by todays standards (roughly as powerful as an Intel Pentium dual core) that any half decent PC is going to to be able to run future console ports with ease providing the GPU is up to scratch.

I'd rather just buy an Intel now than have to cling to the hope that things will eventually improve in the future, even if multithreading gets amaziningly good support on the back of consoles you're still never going to surpass the performance of an i5 (let alone an overclocked one).
 
JonJ678 said:
I *think* the 3820 is probably the best Intel chip currently on the market, but I'm having little success verifying this. The reasoning in essentially quad channel ddr3 > dual channel ddr3 with a suspicion that SB-E will scale poorly above four cores. Documentation and solid comparative testing are difficult to find.

Your q9550 stands a good chance of being quicker than AMD's £150 chip, so I wouldn't get too excited.

edit: your q9550 isn't at 3.5V though, whatever your sig says!
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lol never noticed that in my sig.

I'm aware clock for clock the q9550 is quicker.

Intel bringing out an enthusiasts 8 core Haswell-E would get me excited.
 
One thing to remember people, if they code something to work on more than 1 or 2 cores so that AMD CPU's can utilise more of their slower cores, it will also work on Intel's faster cores as well. If they code something to run on more than 4 cores then Intel have hyperthreading to use on the i7's.
 
JonJ678 said:
First point is that developing games is expensive and risky. Smaller companies have pretty much their entire company invested in each title, and go bust if the game fails. Hours tend to be long and brutal. I'm not sure "lazy" is a fair description - if you've got four hours to implement and test something, single threading may be your only hope.
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Smaller companies are more likely to make games which can run on a wider range of hardware,ie,something like a 2GHZ Core2 or something similar. An example is the Torchlight series. Making games which need 4.5GHZ Core i5 CPUs will mean they will only have a very small audience.

However there are companies like CD Projekt RED and 4A games(under 120 employees) who are not that large but still developed custom engines which could use upto 4 cores effectively,but they were backed by much larger companies AFAIK.
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Smaller companies are more likely to make games which can run on a wider range of hardware,ie,something like a 2GHZ Core2 or something similar. An example is the Torchlight series. Making games which need 4.5GHZ Core i5 CPUs will mean they will only have a very small audience.

However there are companies like CD Projekt RED and 4A games(under 120 employees) who are not that large but still developed custom engines which could use upto 4 cores effectively,but they were backed by much larger companies AFAIK.
Click to expand...

Re: A4 Games.

Metro 2033 would use 6 core fully that I know of,

On my P-II x6 with Advanced PhysX on my Minimum FPS never dropped much below 35 FPS, perfectly playable.

I don't have the link any more, just this screen shot in my Photobucket account.



Tom's used it to test advanced PhysX on the GPU vs CPU with Metro 2003, the result was the Phenom II x6 1090T @ 4Ghz was only 10% slower than with it loaded on a GTX 480.

So yeah, if the little guys can do it, so can the rest.

But.....

Metro 2033 was 'to my knowledge' the last multithreaded Nvidia PhysX game.

While I have not looked at why yet, as I have only benched it a played it for 5 minutes, Metro LL on my Lynnfield i7 massively bottlenecks my Tahiti LE GPU, and I do mean massively, it drops to 70% in places and the game turns into a slide show, literally. (without advanced PhysX) the Lynnfield i7 is still a fast CPU even today.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if one core is pegging 100% usage because of Nvidias new PhysX SKD's.
 
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When a previous poster said that AMD using low power chips in the consoles would encourage developers to multithread more the light bulb in my head came on :P


It actually makes perfect sense from an AMD viewpoint to push for a weak cpu/strong GPU setup as if you owned an AMD rig consisting of the 8350 8 core and a 7970 GPU you would have the same balance with weak cpu strong GPU.It probably can and will help them close the gap on Intel in games as thier weak single core performance will be offset by the decent multicore performance.I guess that is why AMD probably were so desperate to encourage people to use thier low power chips and offered a really low cost.


I mean the damm thing ( PS4) costs just £50 more than a 7970 so its still a weak gaming rig.Its a pity that it has such influence on our games too.But this time i wont cry as i hope for more multicore goodness as its Intel/AMD slacking and hold back PC gamers right now.Only 10% performance over the last generation while Nvidia still push 35%.It makes sense now for us all to rely less on our cpu's.

Im just waiting to see if IVY-E really does come on Sept 4th as it might last until the next consoles come out if you can clock it to 4700mhz and can get quad channel DDR3 2400mhz you will have a beast of a setup.What are people really going to do with DDR4 and 8 cores when the games will be GPU heavy :o
 
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