Can the games take advantage of dual/quad cores?

Hi,

It may seem like a stupid question but can games and software in general take advantage of multicore technology?

Nowdays there is all this buzz about the new quad cores etc, but their actual clock is set lower than the extreme processors.

So which one will be faster given the software that is around today?

 

only a few games are fully multi-threaded to fully utilize all multi-core CPUs.

namely, the Unreal Engine 3 games are great for multi-cores...
- Unreal Tournament 3 is great and you will see 100% of all cores used during playing it, very well coded game.

upcoming and new games that are being tested and developed are going to be multi-threaded as well... I know, I am testing a few.

 

How about couter strike and MMORPG games ?

 

pentium 4 processor are inefficient compare to current core2duo or even pentium III clock for clock.

to make it as simple as possible; the core2duo can process lots more information per clock cycle.

plus, eventhough your game is not multi-core enabled, your computer OS and services run a lot of processes which can be loaded onto the second free core (if you use core2duo).

 

So I guess the answer is:
1. Actually there are some of the games taking adavantage of the multicore technology,
2. quadcore processors should be faster than dualcores when runing the same single software (despite the fact that they are not 100% used), and
3. A quad core is a good investment for the future, yet an expensive one and not that much necessary at the moment. (repeating myself here)

Right??

 

Crysis:Warhead can take advantage of multi-core CPU's as well as Microsoft's Flight Simulator X.

 

Recently found out that Oblivion can take advantage of multicore CPU's - after editing a config file.

 

I believe Witcher and Supreme Commander both utilize multicore as well.

 

Counter-Strike runs on the Source engine, which has an unofficial and unstable multi-core option.

 

Definitely not the original version, I read a webpage that detailed how the Witcher used one core heavily and left the other completely unused. I don't know if they changed that in the Enhanced Edition.

 

Not that anyone here cares, but Falcon 4 runs on multi-core and takes full advantage of it. Almost double FPS because of it too!

 

Lost planet also uses dual or quad core, you have to set it to use quad core in the options menu.

 

Hi everyone,
Well there are some of the games taking adavantage of the multicore technology but quadcore processors are faster than dualcores when runing the same software.It is a good investment for the future, yet an expensive one.
Priya Sharma
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Hi Priya,

Interesting sig, but i received virus alert when i opened Houston virtual link. ._.

 

Not necessarily true. Same technology, just more cores. In some instances it may seem like it's faster, but that's only because some background tasks may be offloaded to more cores.

Here's a good comparison:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000942.html

 

Lets put it this way:

Single cores are phasing out and dual cores are becoming more popular.

why?

Instead of increasing the clock speed of a processor to insanely high levels (which causes tremendous heat and requires greater heat dissipation methods) were now increasing the number of cores a processor has, which allows more processes to be carried out without increasing clock speeds to gigantic levels because the load can be carried over multiple cores.

as of now, dual and quad cores show their colors mostly through the ability to multitask (having 7 web browsers open, playing a high performance game, listening to music, and messing around in photoshop all at once with no hiccups) like no ones business. But with newer applications, support is being added to the code to allow a single application/program (such as a game) to harness the power of multiple cores.

As shown in this thread, many games/applications are already taking advantage of multiple cores to their fullest. You can pretty much count on games/applications in the future being coded to support multi core technology.

So, IMHO, if you can afford a quad core 2.8ghz processor, dont pass on it, because even though its seems like overkill now, you'll be wishing you had gone with it a year or two from now. Garuntee, games will be using this technology more and more.


~poseign