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Cooltapes
Cooltapes
Join Date 01/2007
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Advantage of a quad-core? ^_^;

January 5, 2009 12:58:08 PM from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

I just bought a rather strong gaming rig: quad core 2.83 ghz, 4 GB 1066mz DDR2 RAM, and that crazy 4870X2 video card from ATI. So, as you can guess, I'm gonna be playing everything with full graphics and good resolution, but my question is: is the extra processing power going to waste? I've heard that not a lot of games are coded to take full advantage of a quad core, so.... would I start getting much slowdown playing a large scale map with 8 players or more?

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Cooltapes
kryo
Join Date 05/2003
+458 sdemployee
Reply #1 January 5, 2009 1:29:21 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Aside from texture loading, Sins only uses one core.

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whiteknight321
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #2 January 5, 2009 2:07:22 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

It would still be good for games which require some serious horsepower(I.E. Supreme Commander)

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The_Regicide
Join Date 02/2005
+22
Reply #3 January 5, 2009 2:09:55 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

I have a story I like to tell people who think there's no advantage to quad-core rigs.

Those people usually use computers only for gaming, so they have no idea what a "core" actually does, other than it costs money. So that is why I did this like I did it, and not use a 3D rendering or some video encoding example.

So anyway, this friend comes to my place right after I bought a new beast with a Q6600. I was playing Sins at the time. Being one of those playstation-instant-gratification-people, he wasn't impressed with Sins, so he asked me to "show him something awesome". So I alt+tabbed from Sins(mind you, when you do this, Sins continues to run in the background), and I load up Crysis, which runs pretty well with all settings on High(no AA, ~32 FPS). After he is gobsmacked by the graphical beauty of two minutes of Crysis, the speakers announce that one of my planets is under siege, so I alt+tab back to Sins to deal with the problem. This is when he actually noticed that Sins was still running in the background. After being amazed at the sheer power of the rig, my DVD burner opened to eject the freshly burned DVD.

No, you're not going to feel the 2nd, 3rd or 4th core in Sins. But you will feel it if you like multitasking.

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Cooltapes
Cooltapes
Join Date 01/2007
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Reply #4 January 5, 2009 2:55:14 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Well, i DO like to multitask, so that's nice. That would mean that since only one core's actually in use, I'd still technically have a 0.43 Ghz boost over my old computer. That's not bad of itself, is it? Maybe I'll just overclock the thing a few hundred mhz, see how things go

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ThaMahstah
Join Date 12/2008
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Reply #5 January 5, 2009 4:45:49 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

If you're gaming, go Dual Core. They're far easier to overclock too, if that's your thing.

Quads, for now, are only for major multitasking, like what Regicide did.

Games aren't taking advantage of quads right now; they're barely taking advantage of duals as it is. (Most of the load is still placed on the first core, and less places on the second, and if you have more cores than that they aren't used at all.) Overall, Duals for gaming and overclocking; Quads for major multitasking.

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MetaCog
Join Date 09/2008
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Reply #6 January 8, 2009 1:09:11 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

@ ThaMahstah

I agree about dual cores, but quads aren't just for multi-tasking. In addidtion to multi-tasking, quads are good at handling things like media transcoding and 3d rendering for those who do a lot of creative type things. Transcoding a video or rendering a 3d scene on a quad core will be about 2x faster than on a dual core of the same frequency.

But still, if the rig is mostly for gaming and you don't plan to have much running in the background, dual core is still the way to go.

 

@Cooltapes

A quad core at 2.83, would that be the Q9550 by any chance?  A great chip! I would have gotten it if I had waited a bit longer, I went with the q9450 because I couldn't wait. Quad cores are kinda hard to oc though... Intell has the multiplier locked realy low (8 for the q9450, 8.5 for the Q9550 I think) that means to oc you need a realy high fsb speed and that can cause problems for your ram.  I managed to get teh processor to run stable above 3 ghz, but to keep it stable I needed to have the ram running at 800 instead of 1600 (I went halfway inbetween for my final setup. Ram speed is pretty important and is ignored far to oftain...) Just watch those voltages... Quad cores are much less tolerant from what I've heard.

Eventually, more and more games are going to be multi-threadded, so they can use the new processors to their full glory. OC'ed or not, it's good have a system you know software is going to grow INTO, not away from.

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Dr.Gonzo
Join Date 01/2008
+6
Reply #7 January 8, 2009 3:48:55 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Have seti @ home run on cores 2 and 3, just so they don't get lonely being never used by anything ever.

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Dr.Gonzo
Join Date 01/2008
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Reply #8 January 8, 2009 3:50:14 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

unning at 800 instead of 1600

You sure it wasn't 800DDR ie 800*2?

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ThaMahstah
Join Date 12/2008
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Reply #9 January 8, 2009 3:53:14 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Quoting MetaCog,
reply 6
@ ThaMahstah

I agree about dual cores, but quads aren't just for multi-tasking. In addidtion to multi-tasking, quads are good at handling things like media transcoding and 3d rendering for those who do a lot of creative type things. Transcoding a video or rendering a 3d scene on a quad core will be about 2x faster than on a dual core of the same frequency.

Yes, that too.


Quoting MetaCog,
reply 6
Eventually, more and more games are going to be multi-threadded, so they can use the new processors to their full glory. OC'ed or not, it's good have a system you know software is going to grow INTO, not away from.

Well sort of. The problem is necessesity is the mother of invention, and unless developers go out of their way to make their games take advantage of quads, they don't feel the need to. The only game I can think of that does off the top of my head is Crysis 2, and that was just for the novelty.

By the time games really do take advantage of quads, your chip is going to be out-of-date.

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Gabal
Join Date 02/2008
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Reply #10 January 8, 2009 4:29:37 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

By the time games really do take advantage of quads, your chip is going to be out-of-date.

By the time the average PC gamer have quad cores in his rig and make it viable for developers to spend all the money required to fully exploit the quad's capabilities, I will be a grandfather. And I don't have kids right now.

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ThaMahstah
Join Date 12/2008
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Reply #11 January 8, 2009 5:41:07 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Quoting Gabal,
reply 10
By the time the average PC gamer have quad cores in his rig and make it viable for developers to spend all the money required to fully exploit the quad's capabilities, I will be a grandfather. And I don't have kids right now.

I don't think so. I think it'll only be a few years, but I'm no expert on these things.

Also, depending on how old you are, we'll be wiping our asses with toilet paper made from computers 3 times more powerful than the one's we're using now by the time you're a grandfather.

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StuwyDotP
Join Date 06/2008
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Reply #12 January 10, 2009 10:20:34 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Quoting whiteknight321,
reply 2
It would still be good for games which require some serious horsepower(I.E. Supreme Commander)

Someone for Supreme Commander came up with the "CoreMaximizer" that allowed the game to actually run on several cores, rather than do so as needed. But SupCom was designed to run on 2+ cores, if Sins isn't i don't think a tool like this is possible

If you look it up on the GPG forums, maybe someone thats more awesome than me could make one for Sins. I've yet to meet a SupCom player who stops using it because of how good it is

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adamdresch
Join Date 07/2009
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Reply #13 October 4, 2009 6:21:59 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

It's a darn shame Sins doesn't use all teh cores of a multi core processor

I notice when Sins is running it's using 25% cpu usage all the time (all of one core I Assume)

But even with a quad core system, I can't play against 9 AI computers, because as soon as the battles start, the game slows right down

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Fuzzy Logic
Join Date 05/2002
+493
Reply #14 October 4, 2009 7:09:06 PM
from Stardock ForumsStardock Forums

I like to play big maps, 100+, game file modded to double fleet sizes, etc. It used to bring my 4400+ to its knees. My new i7 920 @ 3.6Ghz runs as smooth as anything.

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