Anyone else failing to see a reason to go quad core?

Personally I think gaming justifying better hardware is getting way too out of hand. Here's a two reasons why:

-After you go >30 fps, you're just adding filler since the human eye won't be able to visually process anything higher.

-What happened to gameplay?
Good gameplay should BY FAR outweigh graphics. With all these hardware upgrades, you're sending software companies a bad message. They'll continue just pushing graphics effects instead of decent gameplay.

I think the pure fact that people are claiming that Supreme Commander needs 4 cores is terrible. Not because they're wrong, but SINCE WHEN DID ANY RTS NEED THOSE KINDS OF RESOURCES? Since when is an RTS about graphics quality?
 
While I agree with your 2nd point that gameplay is more important than graphics, your first statement about the eye not being able to tell the difference after 30 fps is completely false.
 
Perhaps it was some other value (60 or 72 FPS?). But regardless, RTS games should NOT be burning these kinds of resources.

And the worst part is, for the amount of resources these new RTS games use, I am not at ALL impressed with the graphics quality. It's my personal belief that nowadays, software companies are using hardware advancement as a crutch for bad programming.
 
a reason? lol, thats a funny question.
millions of people depend on technology to help them do their job. If everyone were using 386 processors today and there was the alternative of using quad core E6600, do you think people would switch? Would a drag racer pick a 200HP car over a 400HP car?
 
I think it has to do with the fact that humans are largely attracted to visuals. Without good visuals the game will not sell well, especially after the standards continue to be raised.

Also Supreme Commander, while demanding, has a lot of graphic features that improved gameplay. E.G. Dual monitor support(first in an RTS i believe), being able to zoom in/out fluidly, massive units, and maps etc.
 
I almost ordered a Q6600 instead if the E6850 from mwave.
I game only, so figured when my pre-ordered copies of UT3/Crysis/Bioshock/Hellgate show a quad is the gaming future: Now,
I'll get a Penryn based quad. If money was tight for me, I would have just waited for the new quads later this year.
 
like stated above. Games these days are defeintaly advancing from 10 years ago. Heck 5 yrs ago for that matter.

Ive been playing cs for the last 5-6 years now, and honestly, I can never get sick of this game. I have yet to buy CS source, reason : dontknow just heard its shit.

But what is true, Game developers are not putting time into gameplay rather then appearance.

You can have a game with sick friggin graphics but shitty game play, and would you play it? Not I personally. Granted cs for example. Shitty graphics, but the game is fun. You dont need high end detail to have fun, yes it would be better if they made it a tad mroe realistic. *cough 6 hits 50dmg* lol.

Anyways back to my point. Games as of NOW.. Do not require more cores, since games dont even benefit now off dual cores. Correct me if im wrong but.. Ide prefer a faster clocked chip then a bigger sized cached cpu..

IMO
 
CoW]8(0);1031304287 said:
I think the pure fact that people are claiming that Supreme Commander needs 4 cores is terrible. Not because they're wrong, but SINCE WHEN DID ANY RTS NEED THOSE KINDS OF RESOURCES? Since when is an RTS about graphics quality?
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i hope you do realize that in SC the majority of cpu cycles goes into stuff like AI, unit AI, path finding, physics (no, not those new fangled boxes everywhere things, just explosions) and not graphics. RTS games have always been cpu intensive, for the reason you have a lot more stuff going on with different units and combat is on a much larger scale then in a FPS or what have you

SC needs those kinds of cpu resources (if it does, i have no real experience with SC, only played the demo for a few hours) not for the graphics, but for handling the HUGE amounts of units that are in play. when i played the demo, i ended up with a battle in the last demo mission which was WAY beyond the scale of any RTS ive ever seen. I had to build over 100 T2 strategic bombers just to take out the enemys air defences, and that was the weakest part of his defence (ground defence was much stronger, and a ground assult would have been insane), afterwhich it took me ~300 ground units to mop up the remaining defences

granted my strategic abilities arent all that impressive, but a battle in one of the earlier levels involving easily 600+ units (combined on both sides) all with their own AI and all that fire going everywhere, doesnt come cheap in terms of CPU cycles
 
hardc0re said:
a reason? lol, thats a funny question.
millions of people depend on technology to help them do their job. If everyone were using 386 processors today and there was the alternative of using quad core E6600, do you think people would switch? Would a drag racer pick a 200HP car over a 400HP car?
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Technology comes in many different forms. Software is a technology. If a well written program can run as fast on a 386 as a poorly written program on a Q6600, is there a difference. No, the end result is the same. My point is, hardware isn't the only thing that drives performance.

And your analogy brings up another point. 'Racing' is a competition. You're analogy shows that PC performance for many is just a competition and nothing more.

Dual monitor support seems like an unfair advantage to most gamers. The only hardware that should dictate who wins should be your head.

And I think we need to progress to the fact that visuals shouldn't be what makes or breaks a game. They call it eye candy for a reason.
 
DrFreeze said:
i hope you do realize that in SC the majority of cpu cycles goes into stuff like AI, unit AI, path finding, physics (no, not those new fangled boxes everywhere things, just explosions) and not graphics. RTS games have always been cpu intensive, for the reason you have a lot more stuff going on with different units and combat is on a much larger scale then in a FPS or what have you

SC needs those kinds of cpu resources (if it does, i have no real experience with SC, only played the demo for a few hours) not for the graphics, but for handling the HUGE amounts of units that are in play. when i played the demo, i ended up with a battle in the last demo mission which was WAY beyond the scale of any RTS ive ever seen. I had to build over 100 T2 strategic bombers just to take out the enemys air defences, and that was the weakest part of his defence (ground defence was much stronger, and a ground assult would have been insane), afterwhich it took me ~300 ground units to mop up the remaining defences

granted my strategic abilities arent all that impressive, but a battle in one of the earlier levels involving easily 600+ units (combined on both sides) all with their own AI and all that fire going everywhere, doesnt come cheap in terms of CPU cycles
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But you see there's the problem. Micro'ing just went out the window.

Also, just to get to the OP's question. Gaming shouldn't be justification for a quad core. But that doesn't mean quad cores are useless. I think the only people that should get it are the people that are confident enough to not post a thread asking if they need it.
 
CoW]8(0);1031304414 said:
But you see there's the problem. Micro'ing just went out the window.
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well yeah, SC is on such a large scale that microing a single unit becomes very ineffective, which is how strategy usually works. As the design team for SC said, most "strategy games these days are tactics, strategy works on a higher plain"

besides, to me in SC, doing little sting attacks with 30-40 units is microing anyway
 
The point for me isn't all of this multitasking, or improved performance.

The point: I can have two cores dedicated to horrifically programmed programs that grab 100% of the core. Now, you say, there are alternatives to these programs/plugins/extensions/whathaveyou? I don't want these alternatives. I like the ones I have.

As it is, my firefox at peak uses 50% of a core. That's with 20-60 tabs, albeit, but still. I don't care if anyone else thinks this is a bad idea, it's still what I want. Along with an idling, older mmorpg which doesn't play nice with others (tends to grab 100% of a core) that's two cores gone. Now we're down to a dual core.

I will get my quad-core, and alleviate the conflict. Sure, I might end up with only two dedicated gaming cores, but whatever. Sure, I could go multi-computer, but I don't want to. So I'll have quad-core, and everything will work, despite programming errors. Just because these problems could be taken care of in software doesn't mean they will be. They probably won't, as the programs are by now likely abandoned. But the hardware is here to act as a crutch for this bad programming and let me do what I want to.

So there's my endorsement of quad-core.
 
I think for most people there isn't a great reason to go quad besides the fun-factor. But what you have to ask is: for us overclockers, what is the point of the e6x50 series? There isn't really an improvement since we already have the 333mhz fsb, and since the q6600 costs the same as the e6850, less than $300, which is what I spent on my e6600 last year, well, relatively speaking it is a cheap toy for grown-ups :)

I think if I had to buy a processor today the best choice would be to get an e4xxx for $100 or so and overclock it, and wait to see if penryn is worth the upgrade. But admittedly, I would probably wind up buying the q6600 for the FUN factor and bragging rights :D
 
HarkovAdm said:
I think for most people there isn't a great reason to go quad besides the fun-factor. But what you have to ask is: for us overclockers, what is the point of the e6x50 series? There isn't really an improvement since we already have the 333mhz fsb, and since the q6600 costs the same as the e6850, less than $300, which is what I spent on my e6600 last year, well, relatively speaking it is a cheap toy for grown-ups :)

I think if I had to buy a processor today the best choice would be to get an e4xxx for $100 or so and overclock it, and wait to see if penryn is worth the upgrade. But admittedly, I would probably wind up buying the q6600 for the FUN factor and bragging rights :D
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Funny, since I'm looking at the e6850 or Q6600 to see how much better it would be than my e4300 overclocked :)

Buddy is getting the Q6600 for Oracle and database work, but he's going to run some benches too, so I'll have first hand knowledge without paying yet.
 
JStudrawa said:
Funny, since I'm looking at the e6850 or Q6600 to see how much better it would be than my e4300 overclocked :)

Buddy is getting the Q6600 for Oracle and database work, but he's going to run some benches too, so I'll have first hand knowledge without paying yet.
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One big reason where quad-core makes all sorts of sense *right now* (not next year) is the one major application category that takes advantage of multiple cores: video and audio editing and transcoding (especially transcoding video to/from H.264). While Oracle (and other databases, especially SQL-based databases) have been heavily multi-processor/multicore friendly for years, it's been many years since such databases have been seeing a lot of *desktop* duty (while you can certainly run even Oracle as a desktop database, how common is that?).Unless you're a programmer (and more often than not, even if you are), think *relational database* (especially Oracle, but it applies just as much to any other RDBMS, even Postgres or MySQL, for that matter) and you think *server* (even if it's a virtual server running in a virtual machine environment, such as Virtual PC 2007 or VMWare Server/Workstation). Other than video, the driving forces for quad-core are all *niche* applications (and that *includes* Supreme Commander).
 
Myself, the main reason for a quad-core is folding but I'm also futureproofing for new games and apps. With the Q6600 on my system, I'm set till Nehalem/DDR3 in 2 years :)

Remain to get a video card to upgrade mine but still waiting for a refresh release.

 
EnderW said:
Everyone seems to be hyped up about cheap quad core chips, but why?

Very few application make use of them.
Increased heat.
Increased power usage.
Increased cost.
If OCing, lower OC, which means poorer performance in the majority of applications.

By the time applications come out that make use of them, we'll have native 45nm quad core chips or better.

Am I missing something here? :confused:
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Your not missing anything.
People are miss understanding software architecture and what near future threading models really have in store. Real parallel scaling is no small feat, especially with game engines.

Too many people see multicore processors as just another piece of hardware that needs market saturation before support is adopted and then everything will be rosy. Fixed data streams that are being manipulated can be more easily split with workload, like rendering, encoding, compression. The rest not so easy especially if it's a growing/changing workload.

Unfortunately this time it's technical hurdles, not market saturation that is the issue. Games won't be fully utilizing 4 cores for years.

For the next few years a 20% faster dual core will provide 10 - 20 percent faster performance in 90%+ of games (that's conservative). Instructions per cycle will still be limiting factor and frequency is king.

The support for quad core you hear about these days coming up is nothing but marketing buzz, the only benefit for quads for years to come in gaming is simply going to be removing thread contention for the primary two largest threads (over dual core). That will bring minimal advantage, but some. The time, effort and challenges to truly building a parallel scaling game engine and renderer will be... well wake me up when it happens. :)
Hmm, a multi-threaded renderer with DirectX and current GPU's, I dunno.

It will take some new low level work by Intel or MS to take the burden of programmers for multicores to be realized in the future beyond just splitting affinity of some obvious large threads. For now it's just buzz to buy buy buy. It's good people buy quad because it does push the forces that be to adapt and change and hopefully necessity, being the mother of invention, soon gives birth to new ways to leverage multicores. But change will likely be very slow if it's up to programmers having to adapt.

Obviously if you use professional/enterprise level software, then you know when you need quad or more. The consumer world is another story.
 
I'm looking to buy a Q6600, because i do quite a bit of video encoding, a lot of Digital imagry, so were talking. Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash etc all open at the same time.
That kills a dual-core so hopefully a quad will take some of the stress and still hold out. I hope to move into 3D design so a quad will greatly help with rendering.

Most people have a reason to move to Quad, if you don't see a reason to move to Quad don't do it buy a Dual and stop moaning ;)
 
I don't see a really good reason to upgrade for most people.

That said, I'll probably be upgrading in about a month or whenever I feel confident that I'll get a G0 stepping Q6600.

Some people bitch about the extra power (& heat). At idle they don't suck up a TON more (unless really overclocked), than a fast dual core. Though I'm "just" going to shoot for 3Ghz. And when reviewers test them under load they test like Prime on all cores, which is misleading. Normally, you only do X amount of work on your computer, if you have quad core, the load will either be split up more and/or finish faster. So you may have 4 cores at 25%, instead of 2 at 50%, which power wise shouldn't be that much more. Now if you're doing something like movie encoding, yeah you're going to be drawing more power. But you'll finish 40% faster!

I've had my E6600 almost a year. I'll probably be upgrading to a Q6600 on its 1 year birthday! Its just too easy not to, since its a drop in replacement on my motherboard.
 
hmz said:
Supreme Commander!
Supreme Commander!

Who cares about this game. Not many play this game and it runs smooth on dual core as well. Quad is good for video encoding, folding and other heavy cpu application. I only do next generation cpu upgrades, so this hot deal is not for me.
Click to expand...

I care and its one of the reasons I am running a 3.5Ghz Q6700.
 
alcuin said:
You can always OC and get more SPEED. You can't OC and get more CORES. ;)
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Yes, but you have to pay for more cores and it's not really worth it now. It's all about the priorities. Some people buy this because of the price cut.
 
As for myself, I have zero use for a Quad core in any of my system. I do't use anything or do anything that requires them ATM. A nice fast OC'able dual core is more than enough...............:cool:
 
For me it's not so much about if the games currently take advantage of all 4 cores, I just want to be able to jump in a game at any time without any care as to what I'm doing in the background. Azureus uses a decent amount of CPU when you're seeding 300+ torrents, Foobar2000 uses a fair amount of CPU when you use software resamplers with their highest settings, virus scanners can do their thing at any time, Microsoft update is STILL broken which can cause svchost to eat an entire processor for a while. Meanwhile games are making fair progress as far as taking advantage of a 2nd core, only having one "spare" core just doesn't seem like a lot these days.

But meh, I've been working with 4 virtual processors on my xeon rig since 2003, so I'm pretty familiar with the waiting game.
 
I tend to build rigs with ~3 year lifespans... except to maybe update video. So going Quad this Fall makes a lot of sense given games coming out, and the ever-increasing release of threaded apps.
 
hmz said:
Yes, but you have to pay for more cores and it's not really worth it now. It's all about the priorities. Some people buy this because of the price cut.
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Theres a difference between what you can afford in your budget and what something is worth. You are clearly mixing the two up. I assure you the Q6600 is worth more than what Intel selling them for. If you dont think multi-cores have a purpose in gaming then why even support C2D? Go ahead and buy a C2S.
 
Monkey God said:
I care and its one of the reasons I am running a 3.5Ghz Q6700.
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You got a Q6700 already? Where did you buy it from? I ordered one from Cost Central, but is not available until 08/13/07.
Are you on Water or Air? Which MB and RAM are you running?

BTW....Nice oc'd.
 
I don't get why so many people are looking down on quad core. Programs use it now, and more will use it in the future because its becoming more mainstream. When you can purchase a quad for under $300, they will end up in a lot more systems than when they are $500+. Intel is releasing some open source software to help with making parallel apps as well.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2161883,00.asp

Games use multiple cores now, more will in the future. Audio / Video programs use them now.

Hell if nothing else, fold on the 2 cores you aren't using atm, help save lives by finding cures!
 
Waterboy said:
You got a Q6700 already? Where did you buy it from? I ordered one from Cost Central, but is not available until 08/13/07.
Are you on Water or Air? Which MB and RAM are you running?

BTW....Nice oc'd.
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Sorry, QX6700
I bought it a while back. When they were first released.
I generally upgrade every two years on tax refund day. I get the best money can buy at that time. GPU is 7950GX2 which I bought last year but still get's er done.

Intel XBX2, 4gb RAM. Corsair of some kind I think, cant remember. If you want the exact part numbers ill look em up for ya.

Im using water cooling, Fuzion block. panflo 2X120 IIRC. It ran the same OC on stock air believe it or not, just really hot. My OC is just a bin multiplier.
 
michaLcoughliN said:
quad = pointless IMO at this given time.
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Do you own a quad to make such a statement? This is what bothers me. About 2 years ago when the X2's came out versus the San Diego cores..this same argument happened. The gamers were all pounding fists how a single core just destroyed the dual cores (especially those who had highly OC'd lower end A64's). Right there I was turned off...all I saw people with blinders on making comments based upon their own little world. This is an absolutely foolish way to decide on how to buy a processor or any piece of hardware.

I bought my SD core because it made sense for me at the time. I was not doing video encoding, I was not running multiple processing threds, I was not doing a lot of things other than playing single threaded games (why I bought the 7800 GTX at the time). I did not need the snappy alt-tabbing ability either. Therefore I bought the single core instead of the dual core. However I understood the cost vs benefits of single/dual systems.

These days I'm playing games less and doing more other computer related tasks. This means I need a system that supports "doing more things at once" which goes into the whole multi core world. If I was recommending for a new person to buy a general use PC I would definately throw a quad core at them for the soul purpose of being snappy. The #1 thing I've noticed with the non-savvy person is they dont care how long something takes once it is running...but they absolutely hate it when it takes forever to start it.
 
DemonDiablo said:
Theres a difference between what you can afford in your budget and what something is worth. You are clearly mixing the two up. I assure you the Q6600 is worth more than what Intel selling them for. If you dont think multi-cores have a purpose in gaming then why even support C2D? Go ahead and buy a C2S.
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I can afford it, but don't need that. Like I mentioned above, that it's all about the priorities.
 
Monkey God said:
I care and its one of the reasons I am running a 3.5Ghz Q6700.
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Since you're only one of about five people who bought SC, we can only hope for Chris Roberts' sake he got Intel to subsidize his development efforts.

Intel might want to consider sending SC out free with all their quads too to help boost adoption, and use your testimony on the box. :rolleyes:
 
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