So all it does is load some textures?

Since it is now clear that quad core will be the standard within a couple years, and since dual core cpus have been the standard for some time now, it is puzzling to me how a cpu-intensive game released in 2008 would not be at least dual-core optimized. No one buys single-core cpus anymore today, so why are games still being developed that use only half of the hardware?

The developers of flight sim x, which was released in late 2006, explained that they did not know during development that multithreading would be the way of the future. Fair enough, but that was almost 18 months ago, and now major titles are still being released that can barely take advantage of a second thread?

I think an expansion pack that greatly improves ai-performance, heavily using the available processing power of extra threads, would be marvelous. Heck, using extra cores for anything at all would be great!

When Nehalem becomes available at the end of this year, enthusiasts will have access to 8 threads. Imagine the possibilities! I hope they aren't wasted.

I have a regular pc (E6700, and an now old 1650xt), and have never experienced problems with sins performance. I have been through massive battles, and i wasn't the one lagging. It's true it's not multithreaded, but a dual core still performs better than a single one because sins will most likely not be your only process running. If you have fps problems, it's probably either a very old pc or configuration problems.

The load on 2 cores will be balanced by windows even with single-threaded apps, up to a maximum of 50-50. This is to better control cpu temperature. The process will simply alternate on the 2 cores, but of course never on both.

Hmm that's funny because I just finished a game that lagged pretty hard when I fought two ai fleets with 2300 support

The framerate was dipping pretty badly, to the point where it affected gameplay. I couldn't select things or issue orders as quickly.

I assume it's the cpu and not the graphics but I will turn down the settings and try it again (I saved before the battle hehe).


I'm using an e6600 running at 3.6ghz, 2 gigs, and a 7900gt. Assuming it is the cpu, it worries me how my friends' older computers will perform when we play lan games, since you can turn down the graphics settings, but not the cpu settings.

1 core does the game the other core does the background programs

I think we can chalk that up to a couple of things:

1. People who know what they're doing (media developers and editors, not gamers)
2. People with too little sense and too little money

..where the hell did that come from? Did you get shafted by not doing your basic research on how multithreading works and how it doesn't magically scale up to seventeen trillion cores before buying the SUPER DUPER XTREME QUAD CORE QX3943343 (aka firmly in the second category) or are you just trolling? It's not elitism, it's the facts. If you buy a quad-core and do not work with quad-core optimized software like rendering video or CAD you have more money than you have brains, end of story. Quad-cores are still at 65nm, they're still way more expensive than they should be, they're still not as powerful as the Wolfdales, and the only reason someone would buy one is because they bought into hype. If that's you, sorry, but that doesn't give you the right to call people elitists just because you screwed up. If it's not, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Programming difficulties -- its a lot harder to program for multiple cores.

how long wil it be for the next generation chips i hope not soon just bought a new dual core 3,2 computer

I just bought a Q6600. I'm a gamer. And I do video editing. That doesn't mean I have too much money or am stupid- I bought the correct processor for my new box based on what I use. And the cost was just slightly higher for almost identical performance of a dual-core. A quad is overkill for most people now, but in a year or two it will become the standard.

It'd be so nice if the OS could handle all the threading needs for software, so programmers wouldn't need to add in code to handle this, but I know that's in a perfect world scenario that isn't possible.

In both XP and Vista, you can set processor affinity for processes. Open up Task Manager, find the process for Sins, right click- and choose Set Affinity. You can then choose a core or cores to assign to. In my case, I'll probably set it to the 1 and/or 2 core, so Windows can have 1 core just to itself. Not the same as multi-threading, but handy.

I'm running a dual-core AMD 64 6400+ processor, and would really like to see better, or any, multiprocessor support. When I'm running a medium size game with several battles at once, my computer slows to a crawl with 100% usage on one core, but nothing on the other. I realize that divvying up the processing tasks between multiple processors is a computational challenge, but I think this should be a priority - It has a drastic effect on gameplay.

an ATI Radeon x600 with 256MB of video ram. It's definitely the oldest part of the machine, but the performance has been fine for my needs.

Also, 2GB OCZ pc3200 ram, two SATA 2.0 drives in a RAID 0 array. I don't remember the specs on the motherboard, but it's pretty beefy as well.

if anything is actually bottlenecking you on raw power there its definitely the video card.. game runs flawlessly on my 2.6 ghz X2 w/ ati 1950xtx

But the x600 should be able to handle it... I actually have an x600 pro here I can test w/ the game and report back, other than that it'd have to be background apps etc. Also, you running XP or vista? if its vista then the 2gb of ram could actually be whats causing it, vista is retarded fat kid at an all you can eat resturant when it comes to ram.

The sort answer? Unknown, both the CPU venders are aware of the difficulties multi-core design imposes on software developers. As for where I got the information? It was an old Network World article I happened across last year in the bathroom. Those things make great bathroom material when you work on networks for a living. Anyway, I can't find the original article to quote but if my memory serves me correctly Intel believes (and I do as well) that Itanium is the future.

Now this isn't to say that the current high end server CPUs are the future, as much as to say that a highly efficient and dynamic logic processor will replace current iterations of CISC or RISC class hardware. Basically the Itanium carried to its fullness is a architecture free logic circuit that allows a programmer can redefine its function on the fly. Such a processor wouldn't be x86, or ia64, or AMD64 it could in theory be whatever the OS and application developer wanted.

Now, all of this even given my experience with technology sure appears to approach the world of magic... however, I do know that Intel specifically, and one could assume AMD as well, is working to get back to a single core architecture for efficiency reasons. We as consumers however won't see this on the shelf for at least 10 years.

Seriously, the only other option is an OS that somehow magically creates multiple threads for an application...

All this said I'm squarely in the camp of annoyed that Sins doesn't use multi-threaded design more heavily because the darn game needs to run well on the hardware we have now. But, that annoyance really goes away when I see the game run flawlessly despite its inefficient use of the CPU. So at this point anyone with a dual core chip should simply be happy that they have one core for the game and another for windows to live on.

For those that have quad cores, I'm afraid I have to agree with some sentiment I've seen in this thread. But, I'll put it much more diplomatically. If you aren't doing CAD, Video editing, or 3D Graphic rendering, quad core will be a performance penalty to 90% of your use of the PC and you should save the money and get a dual core. Notice I said 3D Graphic rendering, Photoshop in all of its glory doesn't do a thing faster on quad core vs dual core. Now that quad would allow you to run more than one copy of Photoshop as long as you had the ram for it.