Dual Core AMDs Not for Gamers...Why Not, *if You OCed Them?*

[aaronspink]

Originally Posted by black_dante

xbox as well, it seems, is rumored to also have three(?) power pc cpus. programming games for smp is certainly possible, but b/c of its increased technical difficulty/complexity, it requires much more people (and thus money---> which especially hits pc devs).

only is difficult if you constantly re-invent the wheel. Most games are not built off of custom engines (and most custom engines aren't so custom). Games are increasingly trending towards a much more mature development model where the majority of a game studios resources are spent on the actual game and no in developing the technologies to power the game.

For example, no one does in house physics anymore. They license an external physics engine, because it is cheap, easier, and more powerful than what they could do internally.

Most of these off the shelf middlewares and engines are cross platform between PC and Xbox at a minimum. The PC is along for the ride (well not really, the PC is the development playground for a lot of the technologies.).

[Long Haired Git]

1. If you've used Windows on dual CPU, you'll know if FEELS better. I've left my dual CPU desktop for this single CPU laptop, and the lags and stalls I get in the GUI are annoying now I know they don't have to occur. Very very very looking forward to dual core laptop.

2. My work has thousands of PCs, and all of them are top spec, and all of them run 10 to 15 business apps at once for the users to do their work. Dual core will help them heaps - the only reason they're not dual CPU now is the $$$.

[bobkoure]

Yep, multi-processor for multiple apps is really nice. Inter-thread communication is fast and inter-process communication (particularly when the processes are on different processors) is slow - but there isn't much cross-processor communication going on, so it doesn't matter.
There's some ugliness in the winnt cross-processor communication model in which, basically, all processors but one are stopped and their queues drained - enough overhead even without the stop/start that it made sense for msoft to produce uniprocessor and multiprocessor HALs, so single processor systems could avoid it.
Maybe they've improved things - or maybe it doesn't matter...

[Butcher]

max - CELL is 9 "cores", 8 SPEs and 1 power architecture cpu. The SPEs do most of the work, but are not fully general purpose, think of them as more DSPs on steriods. Still very useful for a lot of things in games (AI, physics, etc.) The power chip does the delegation of tasks though it is a proper processor and can do processing if required.

Originally Posted by aaronspink

They aren't reworking them for the PC market. They are reworking them for the entirety of the market. ALL next gen platforms at multi-processor. ALL. Every one. The PC is merely along for the ride as far as games are concerned.

Most games in production currently aren't next gen though, nor will next gen be the dominant game type being made for a few years yet - 80 million PS2s is still well worth selling to.

Originally Posted by aaronspink

At least 100% of games are made off of game engines. The vast majority of these engines are either bought as a resource or designed internally but shared across many design teams.

No kidding? Damn I'd never realised that in all my years of making game engines. </sarcasm>

You didn't answer my question though aaron, do you work in games? How much industry experience of this do you have?

[bobkoure]

Sorry - Cells and SPEs are... what?
Architecture for one of the game boxes out there?
Definitely not claiming to be a game designer (or even a gamer) - don't even know the acronyms...

[killernoodle]

Personally, I wouldnt care if I lost a few (even 5-10) fps in a game if windows ran more peppy. A worthy trade off IMO.

[Butcher]

Originally Posted by bobkoure

Sorry - Cells and SPEs are... what?
Architecture for one of the game boxes out there?
Definitely not claiming to be a game designer (or even a gamer) - don't even know the acronyms...

CELL is the name of the CPU at the heart of PS3, developerd by IBM et al.
SPE is one of the elements of the cell - the "synergistic processing element". Basically a fancy name for the DSP-like cores in the CELL.

Plenty of info on the net if you're interested in more details.