Supreme Commander is quad-core.

oops double post

I suppose I am dissapointed that Sins doesn't support multi-core CPUs, I thought I read that the game was able to scale for users of old PCs and the those who use the newest but I guess it's not really true.

Hey I just wanted to ask you guys a question since your already discussing the topic of quad core vs dual core, and I would really appreciate some advice.

I am going to be upgrading my computer, which runs a (LGA 775) ASUS P5N32-SLI Premium mobo and currently has a 3.5 Ghz intel P4 CPU, 2 gigs of DDR2 and dual 7600GTs. I was going to be adding a sound card, 2 more gigs of ram, and upgrading to either a Q6600 2.4 Ghz (with GO stepping)quad core or a ED6850 3.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo (since they are rather similar in price and I haven't splurged on computer equipment in a while). I was also going to buy a Thermaltake V1 for cooling, since I've heard its one of the best CPU air coolers for the money right now.

I use my rig for gaming, videos, and internet browsing/downloading. I do some video editing, but its more of a side hobby and I rarely do it. I also run XP, (I've got another rig that has Vista, and I don't like it until the SP comes out officially), and I play a lot of strategy games that like to eat up my CPU like Rome TW, Medieval TW, Sins, and SupCom (but I stopped playing supcom since my single core POS can't really run it with more that 4 players)also with some FPS like BF2142 and COD4.

So what do you guys think? Dual core or quad core for my upgrade? Also, a related question, will I need to update any other software besides my bios for a CPU upgrade? Thanks in advance for your advice. I've been researching a lot and I can't really find a bad word about either CPU, so I'm undecided, since one argues it will be the CPU of the future, and the other offers better performance overall for gaming. Which one is more worth it?

I went with the quad core keeping the future in mind. I've been quite happy with the performance, both in Sins as well as other games and general speed. While the dual core might be faster and consume a bit less wattage, I think it was a good call considering my video editing will take advantage of the multi-threading.

p.s. SP1 for Vista is out.

Mine is 100% busy on the 1. and ~40% busy on the second core. Leaves enough capacity to chat via skype simultaneously. Not to bd i think..

Neither. The 6850 is a better deal, but the only CPU anyone should be buying now is the 8400 or maybe 8200. Like has been stated earlier in the thread, the quad will be useless now and useless in the future due to it being 65nm, and the 6850 is already really old, is based on an old die, and doesn't overclock as well as the quad or the 8400.

Don't add the extra 2GB. Not only will you not see it in x86, in x64 you'll end up with a performance hit due to those registers being doubled. The memory sweet spot for x86 is 2GB, for x64 it is 6GB and over.

I would also go with a new video card over that sound card, especially with the RAM savings. Assuming you were going to go with a decent sound card, that should free up $150-$175, you could almost snag a 9600GT or probably could get a 3850. One of those would beat your 7300 combo quite nicely.

I would make sure that your motherboard supports a the processor before you buy it. Not all old LGA775 motherboards support Core 2, and not all of those support Wolfdale (45nm) chips.

I did a quick google search for your motherboard and it seems that at least some versions of the ASUS P5N32-SLI are meant for pentium 4 and pentium D processors but don't say anything about Core 2 support. As far as I can tell the "Premium" version that you have supports Core 2, but this doesn't mean that it would support Wolfdale chips. For some motherboards, a BIOS update is required to use 45nm processors. I would make absolutely sure I have a compatible motherboard and BIOS revision before I buy a new chip



Some people just refuse to overclock. I don't know why, but for them I could see how the 6850 would be better than an 8400. I wouldn't rule out the Q6600 which has been on sale for $200 if you search around for it.

How so? The 8400 is stock-clocked to 3ghz.

oh nevermind, I was thinking of the e8200 for same price as e6850

But anyways the e8400 is not the "only" processor people should be buying. There's nothing wrong with picking up the e2180 for $70 and overclocking it past 3 ghz

The discussion about performance thats been going on here leaves out one crucial point.
Size.

I will boldly assume that those claiming SoaSE runs fine even in huge battles are usually playing small maps (40ish planets), while some of the guys complaining about jerkyness and lag are using 100+ planet maps and 9 CPU-Players.

I use a 4200+ AMD with 2gig of DDR400, and it didn´t really affect performance when I used a Radeon x550 (old GF7900gtx died on me) as a substitute, neither did things improve a lot with my new 9600gt - no matter what Resolution or Detail selected.

Basically, playing a small map makes it run smooth, while huge maps tend to drain all you got.
With a huge map, the client on my PC grabs 1.3gig Ram acc. to Taskmngr, and adds 1.5gig to the swapfile, while CPU1 is a 100%, and CPU2 at ~50.

SO, I think that in most cases here upgrading the GFX won´t help a bit. Using a 64bit system with huge RAM (4-8gig) however may cause massive improvements.

And, on top of that, it would be nice to have the game use more than 1 CPU if present.
For example, to outsource the AI of some of the CPU-Players. Having to compute the movements of 10 large fleets, hundreds of Trade/Refinery ships, and all the data for each planet (pop, cult etc.) is simply too much for a single CPU.


Conclusion: Sins is fine for "small" games, but it´s programming as it is does not
fit for using the game´s full potential - aka playing extremely huge maps (which may easily take 20+ hrs playtime each).

I have been playing a long 10 AI game on a custom 10 star map for the last half a week or so with almost all players fleet cap maxed out and any frame rate reductions I got were not indicative of a CPU bottleneck.

Just curious (and too lazy to search the whole thread again) - what was your RAM size and CPU again ? And whats the CPU/RAM/Swap load when you play such a big map ?

2gb DDR2, E6400 OC to 3ghz. CPU is running at 37, RAM usage is 1.2gb. 5 players have maxed out their fleets, 2 have been eliminated and 3 are about 85% of the way there. Total game time is around the 7 hour mark.

That ATI card IS your problem... I have an older 2.8 dual core with 2GB of Ram that had the same card... I thought it did pretty good, until I picked up a BFG 256MB Nvidia 8600GT... It's not even a real "new" card considering they're onto 8900's now, but the difference is night and day. I was amazed at the difference... If you're looking for a relatively cheap alternative to ramp up the graphics, seriously consider putting something else in there soon, you'll be a much happier camper.

I am going to start setting the game to a single core to see what effect the affinity has on game play. Using project lasso, I set the priority to real time after start up, and that makes a huge difference too.

Just for info, the card was $130 bucks on sale... even lets me over clock it a bit, although I need to get some extra fans in there to be safe before I go nuts...

T

Forgive me if I`ve posted to this point already, but the poster within this thread who claims that a multi-core cpu is a waste of time is full of shit.

Supreme Commander, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, World In Conflict, Unreal Tournament III, Company Of Heroes, Crysis, Call Of Duty 4, and (as has already been declared) Sins Of A Solar Empire use multiple cores. In the case of the last game, albeit only in a limited fashion for now, but still, anything that makes my game run more smoothly is good.

The difference between many of these and other games I have not mentioned when utilizing a Quad cpu to a simple old Pentium hyper-threader is night & day. I could offer numerous testimonials to that fact if the point were not so plain nor elementally true, and many of these from industry professionals spanning the entire gamut of technology.

An Intel Q6600 cpu is a great upgrade for almost any new game. Difficulty in programming for multi-task operations is seperate from deriving benefits from... and the task will get easier/more usage as time goes on.

I just build a new computer, first one in over 4 years. I would have loved to get an 8400/Wolfdale *but you can't find one anywhere* actually for sale cause they are constantly sold out. So I went with the E6850. With that, 2 gigs of RAM and an ATI Sapphire HD3870 Toxic my machine is screaming and I don't overclock anything (The Sapphire Toxic is factory overclocked though).

I was already running Sins pretty well on my ancient P4 2.8 ghz with ATI x800 but had some stuff turned off and big battles would slow down. I built this computer mainly to finally run Oblivion at full power finally. Before I was barely at 25 FPS and often much lower at even 800x600. Now in Oblivion I'm running everything as high as they can go including high end texture mods at 1440x900 and I can't get it to drop under 60 fps. Needless to say Sins rarely drops under 60 either.

hi you might want to read the post you're referring to before posting a diatribe on how games use two cores, when I specifically stated that a quadcore CPU is a waste of money and a dualcore CPU has been standard for the last 4 years or so.

Seconded... if you have the budget for a high end CPU and decide to snag a quad fine. Of course there is night and day difference between the new quads and an old hyper threader. Just don't come crying when someone with a much more advanced dual core out performs you consistently out of sheer efficiency. Seriously the only thing I can think of to really tax a quad is playing two games at once.. and try as I might I can't get windows to let me have 2 separate keyboards and mice to do this. And I really need to work on that whole growing an extra set of hands...

Are you kidding? If I had a QX9770 I would be getting tons of use out of it, for instance I would be bragging about it on several forums, and that's just the first thing that comes to mind

Yes thanks for answering.

I agree, see also my thread here:

WWW Link

it seems to be the CPU whats causing the game to slow down but i've never seen sins to use even 1 core at 100% at any given time.

the game uses a lot of ram - yes - but not too much so 2 GB is more than enough to run the game at full detail with all settings to max.

in this case I tend to say the internal programming or game design was not very well done for extreme big maps and thus thousands of ships.
I just hope they will address this matter some time soon because there are still some games I like to finish

Forgive me if I jumble about a bit.

You have a dual-core? I guess you`re one of the idiots who is not aware of the direction of cpu development in the future.

Making the claim post-comment about the value of a Dual-Core versus the idiocy of a Quad-Core is nonsensical - you are - suddenly - testifying as to the value of dual-core processing, but at the same time swinging the Bible of Uselessness and Stupidity about the potential migration of code to a quad architecture?!? Does not compute.

If memory serves me right, you insulted people who bought multi-core cpus. Parse it down to those who bought Quads if you like. You also clearly stated that nothing utilized multiple cores, at the very least nothing a gamer would run - a statement that is flat-out wrong. Now that you are called on it, you change your position.

In one breath you talk about how games don`t utilize cpus beyond a single core for anything, then you mention the 'Source game' (its an engine upon which games run, btw, not a game itself) utilizing a second core "only for audio". Audio chores constitute a pretty big component of a game - sound spatialization & positioning, environmental effects that morph sounds, these are important tasks that can benefit from additional processing power. I`ve noticed what happens when a superior soundcard with some onboard audio processing power replaces an inferior one without - noticeable. What you speak of specifically in this case is not inconsequential to gamers who know how to gauge their own framerates. And thats the whole point.

Yes, the majority of games out there do not run on multiple cores yet, but thats changing quickly, and we (also) have things called consoles, and they are multi-core systems. If what you say is true, then there are also a great deal of idiots in the R&D labs of Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft, utilizing the very technology you so firmly rail against, and the benefits they currently derive from such architectures are illusory. To some considerable degree software development will follow patterns from this realm (if they need to, which they do not - we are already headed there), meaning we will see more and more multi-core usage as time goes by. And it shall be more profound.

Coincidentally, there were also a great number of idiots at Silicon Graphics back in The Day®. Multiple processor systems were their specialty - we are simply treading in the steps of folks such as they. (Sun Sparcs too, anyone?...)

I guess all us idiots with money to burn like purchasing hardware that can serve us well both now and in the near future.

And even ignoring that for a moment, a Q6600 on single core runs faster than the single-core Hyper-Threader I replaced. So to claim that a purchase of a Quad cpu that is faster than a non-Quad is a waste of money is for that reason alone false. And *you* sir are the idiot for stating or implying that *we* are.

I guess my overall point is twofold - you insulted anybody who bought a multi-core system/guts, and your overall position suggested that multiple cores are useless. Thats not the case, and I offered the examples to prove it. Anyway, knock yourself out adhering to whatever non-Quads you like.

No, just an idiot who knows about price/performance values.



The value of dual-core processing is not that a game can utilize both cores (right now) but that Windows can have its own core enabling better multitasking.



Your memory sucks, and as this is a magical text-based medium you no longer have to rely on memory to check the accuracy of a claim. Shocking, I know.



No I didn't. Nothing beyond CAD and video rendering has a need for four cores - hence why Supreme Commander, etc technically "utilize" four cores but have little to no performance benefit.



I said Source games. You know, games that utilize the Source engine. See passage above regarding text and verifying claims.



I don't care about consoles, that's irrelevant.



And guess who used those systems: people who worked on animation, video, and CAD, as well as server administrators. Durp.



Saying that quad-cores are magically going to become useful or efficient at some point in time is not a useful assertion, because we don't know when they will, how they will, or what sort of performance they'll provide. I tend to buy hardware not in advance of supposed decade-long trends, because that really doesn't work. What happens when someone grabs one of the crappy quads then there's a socket change a few years down the line? Have you heard of Nehalem? What happens when the 45nm quads start flooding the market? DDR3?

So perhaps another useful argument is: even if quads are useful to a gamer, for example, why buy now? Why would anyone buy hardware that has been shown to have no performance benefit in pretty much every game (and other applications like PS) out there, especially at a time when the technology isn't mature? Assuming a new CPU bought every few years, do you HONESTLY believe that games are going to start needing those extra cores in two to three years? Using Source as an example: that engine is more than three years old! What sort of things do you think are going to magically move onto the CPU? Physics calculations, when GPUs are getting more advanced at that all the time?

This sort of attitude fails both in the long-term and the short term. It's remarkably similar to the people on this board who make up strategies based on damage per second and ideal conditions and then go play a multiplayer game and get their asses kicked. You can say "oh well in the future this will work splendidly! you're just a multi-core hater!" all you want, but picking up a Q6600 hoping for some vague performance benefit is pretty much equivalent to throwing five hundred scouts at a capital ship fleet.



Enjoy your straw-man.

I have to agree with Carbon016 on several issues.

1) Just because you have a DUAL/QUAD core does not nessasarily mean better perfomance.
"Raw processing power is not the only constraint on system performance. Two processing cores sharing the same system bus and memory bandwidth limits the real-world performance advantage."
"A system with N cores is effective when it is presented with N or more threads concurrently."
"The ability of multi-core processors to increase application performance depends on the use of multiple threads within applications."

2) Because of architectural design (length of intergrated circuts between processors), speed/performance are effected (as processors are added, more connections are needed).
"From an architectural point of view, ultimately, single CPU designs may make better use of the silicon surface area than multiprocessing cores, so a development commitment to this architecture may carry the risk of obsolescence."

3) Read for Yourself!
WWW Link

4) If Quad/Multi core archetecture is better designed (in future) and more applications take advantage of this design (multi core) then YES, a multi core proccessor will be more efficient/quicker/reliable. Otherwise we will ALL be going to 6-10GHz processors.

For now - I'm very happy w/ my 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo - but as Carbon016 points out = very few applications/programs support the dual/multi core. Lets hope this changes ... Soon!

PoorManDSO out!!!

And this is why it doesn't matter - the Core architecture is such an improvement over the old NetBurst architecture as far as power consumption, heat, and speed that the number of cores really doesn't matter. The reason Core 2 Duo was such a revolutionary series was not that it was the cheapest dual-core solution around, but because Athlon had been kicking Pentium 4's ass all over the playground since.

Right now, you can get a E8400 for about the same price as a Q6600. I'd rather take it to 4.0 on air and have security knowing I have an amazing dual core processor than get a few cores that may or may not be useful in some arbitrary amount of years. The argument has gone since the late 90s (esp. by AMD) that clock speed doesn't matter - well, die shrinks still do, and much more so than extra cores.