[rob_ART]

I have the 4-core and 8-core 2.93 in the lab, both with Radeon 4870.

Of the games I've tested so far, the 8-core is only slightly faster -- 0% to 5%, depending on the game and the settings.

At nearly half the cost of the 8-core, the 4-core obviously gives you more bang for the buck.

[The Liberator]

I wonder how long it will be before Octo–core is supported properly for gaming?

Liberator.

[Mr. Selvetarm]

Quad-core still only has decent support. Octo-core is quite a bit ahead of the curve.

[Sneaky Snake]

Mr. Selvetarm, on April 4th 2009, 04:32 PM, said:

Quad-core still only has decent support. Octo-core is quite a bit ahead of the curve.

We won't see [widespread] support of 8 core in games until 8 core chips are released. Right now you can only get 8 core power with a dual socket motherboard which virtually zero gamers own, or want to own. They're only really used in the server/video world


-Snake

[mattw]

rob_ART, on April 4th 2009, 04:11 AM, said:

I have the 4-core and 8-core 2.93 in the lab, both with Radeon 4870.

Of the games I've tested so far, the 8-core is only slightly faster -- 0% to 5%, depending on the game and the settings.

At nearly half the cost of the 8-core, the 4-core obviously gives you more bang for the buck.

Excellent work as usual

Have you had chance to see if the Quad 2.66 to 2.93GHz upgrade is worth the cash?

[Frigidman]

Same problem happened going from 1 core to 2. Just have to wait till the rest of the developers get on the ball and make their products work right. Considering a lot of games tend to rely more on the GPU over the CPU, having all the extra horsepower, usually does not amount to much, when 4 cores are not pinned as is, so naturally 8 cores wont add anything.

We need more games that start integrating things that are heavy on the CPU... like... uhm... well, physics isn't it, since they are offloading that onto physics chips on GPUs now... hmm. What would use a lot of CPU? Oh, I know! Like, full tracking of all npcs and entities in the game all over real time like a living world. That would take a lot of CPU power and could ultimately benefit from 8 core.

[teflon]

We wont see widespread 8-core support until the next generation of consoles come along, or the PS3 gets a dominant position, or the developers can start to see an advantage to having 8 cores over 4 when they are traditionally GPU limited.

Like it or not, consoles are the main driving force and everything is either pushed forward or limited by what they can do.

[PeopleLikeFrank]

There are some limits to parallel computing as well. Some tasks can only be split off so far before you're not seeing returns any more, so it's all well and good to talk about what it's going to take for programmers to get on the ball, but for some things more processing cores will never help.

That said, given the hardware out there, it would be nice to at least run more instances of certain things to at least give a bit more life to games. I'm playing Mass Effect right now, and overall it's brilliant, but reminds me often of the old Deus Ex problem - creating all these living environments with nothing living in them. I'd like to start seeing some population in these places! Of course, this quickly becomes a memory issue as much as a processing one, which is one area where consoles are really holding things back, methinks.

[Frigidman]

nobody, on April 5th 2009, 12:44 PM, said:

Of course, this quickly becomes a memory issue as much as a processing one, which is one area where consoles are really holding things back, methinks.

Yup. Seems game developers 'dumb down' their games for those crappy consoles. They have to work in such confined structure, they can't really rip open the creative thinking.

This is why games like Black and White, never made for consoles, can be so amazing with the size of what all is going on (living worlds). That and MMOs as well to a point. Ever see a decent MMO on a console? LMAO.

[teflon]

Only having 512MB of RAM was one of the stupidest decisions Sony and MS made.
Sure it keeps the costs down, but RAM costs barely anything, whilst it would have given whichever console a big advantage in practically every aspect. Specially when you take into account that both consoles take a decent chunk of it to hold the main OS (I think the PS3 uses more), so that the juggling act is even tighter.

I dont think that its technical limitations that hold back things like RTSs, MMOs and the like from having a bigger foothold on consoles, but more the interface.
For an MMO you really need a keyboard/headset, which has only really just arrived with this generation in the form of the chatpad attachments for both X360 and PS3, though you can always use a standard USB keyboard too. So I dont doubt that MMOs will come along in good time.
RTSs, on the other hand, simply have to have mouse control in order to be good. Though it is interesting to see how they try and get around this, through the use of voice input etc. etc.

[Dark_Archon]

rob_ART, on April 3rd 2009, 11:11 PM, said:

I have the 4-core and 8-core 2.93 in the lab, both with Radeon 4870.

Of the games I've tested so far, the 8-core is only slightly faster -- 0% to 5%, depending on the game and the settings.

At nearly half the cost of the 8-core, the 4-core obviously gives you more bang for the buck.

Apple isn't targeting gamers with the Mac Pros. Games aren't generally written to be very parallel.

A game benchmark with stuff running in the background would be much more interesting.

[ltcommander.data]

teflon, on April 6th 2009, 01:01 PM, said:

Only having 512MB of RAM was one of the stupidest decisions Sony and MS made.
Sure it keeps the costs down, but RAM costs barely anything, whilst it would have given whichever console a big advantage in practically every aspect. Specially when you take into account that both consoles take a decent chunk of it to hold the main OS (I think the PS3 uses more), so that the juggling act is even tighter.

I don't think 512MB of RAM was a particularly bad decision at the time for the XBox 360. Keep in mind that they are using GDDR3, which isn't as cheap as DDR or DDR2 in computers. In 2005 when the XBox 360 was released, I believe 512MB GDDR3 was just starting to be introduced in the X1800XT and nVidia's response the GeForce 7800GTX 512. So in terms of GDDR3 cost, it's not like Microsoft was cheapening out since they are at least using as much as the latest high-end GPUs of the day. If anything, perhaps they should have used 256MB of GDDR3 dedicated for the GPU and 512MB of cheaper, slower DDR2 to be share between the CPU and GPU.

For the PS3 though, the argument would be valid that they should have included more memory since a year later by 2006, GDDR3 cost would have gone down. Although in their case, the PS3 was probably already over-budget in parts and them deciding to go with 256MB of XDR probably didn't help matters. Perhaps they should have gone with more cheaper GDDR3 instead of faster, more expensive XDR.

I think it's kind of relative that the XBox 360 and PS3 seem to have very little memory. Memory may double every 18 months, but before going from 256MB to 512MB to 1GB aren't such big numbers. It's only recently that we've gone from 1GB to 2GB to 4GB being common that the spread it getting very large even though the rate is still only doubling.

[PeopleLikeFrank]

ltcommander.data, on April 6th 2009, 08:48 PM, said:

I think it's kind of relative that the XBox 360 and PS3 seem to have very little memory. Memory may double every 18 months, but before going from 256MB to 512MB to 1GB aren't such big numbers. It's only recently that we've gone from 1GB to 2GB to 4GB being common that the spread it getting very large even though the rate is still only doubling.

2GB was quite common in a gaming computer in 2005 though, which is already 4x what the 360 had. Nowadays 2GB is common in consumer-level PCs, while many gamers are opting for 4, and 8 is not uncommon. So 8 or 16x the amount available to consoles is a bit of a pain when a game has been designed for consoles first, and has chopped up levels, bad textures, or other shortcomings. Of course, good ports usually try to ameliorate this a little, but there's only so much you can do without major reworking. DX2 remains a pretty good example of a game that felt horribly cut down in the amount of space you could explore because of console limitations, and the constant loading and sparse environments in Mass Effect is another I've recently come across.

Given that a few companies are now sticking SSDs directly on the PCIe bus, it would be an interesting middle ground option for future consoles. The expense is strictly enterprise-level at the moment, but that'll change as flash memory prices drop. Having a smaller amount of RAM vs the PC might not be so bad if you've got a much larger and very fast (compared to RAM and current storage respectively) pool of data sitting right on the main bus. Could make streaming solutions more effective.

[Dark_Archon]

Putting the SSD right on a PCI-e bus gets rid of the latency issues from the SATA bus, but programming and erasing the NAND flash is still slow compared to DRAM. Small amounts of SLC NAND could be used for a pagefile type application, but using the cheaper MLC NAND wouldn't be a good idea. It still isn't a good replacement for RAM.