“Why We Need the Power of Intel’s Next-Gen Eight-Core CPUs”

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
“From a gaming perspective, do we really need octo-core processors with insanely high clocks?” Eurogamer believes so, and not only for more obvious reasons such as overhead and running games on high-refresh displays: next-gen consoles are expected to get huge CPU upgrades, which will reset the baseline.

Most console ports can easily run at higher than 60fps on PC, even factoring in the oppressive overhead introduced by Windows, but with next-gen likely to feature Ryzen and possibly two quad-core modules for eight cores in total, games will inevitably become much more complex and the PC versions will see system requirements rise significantly for the top-end experience.
 
I think the bigger question to ask here is: With all this increasing hardware power will any publishers allow software developers to take the time to harness any of it, or will the "we release every 12-16 months!" schedule mean more "well if we had the time..." scenarios. We double our GPU horsepower and all anyone wants to do is play DOTA and Fortnight ;)
 
Can someone please list here all major PC game titles that use more than 4 cores ... thank you

"Gimme, gotz ta have"

Must_Have.jpg
 
Last edited:
As someone who has done it many times: future-proofing is dumb, a waste of money, most of the time.

I'm not going to buy an eight-core CPU just because AMD or Intel made one, I'll buy one when the game I want to play actually performs better on one.
 
I think this is just furthering the myth that gamers need more cores when 99% of the time, they just need faster cores.

Hmm, I wonder which company has an interest in pushing that....
 
Can someone please list here all major PC game titles that use more than 4 cores ... thank you

"Gimme, gotz ta have"

View attachment 92543

List of games running 4+ cores:

"Doom definitely can hit 8 cores."
"Diablo II in 8 different virtual machines can certainly hit 8 cores"




_

Crysis 3. When there are lot of physics involved a simple quad core takes a nose dive.

Latest assassins creed games when there are a lot of characters on a screen and AI to calculate.

Digital foundry had a good video of 7600 vs ryzens. When nothing was happening 7600 was faster, but when was stressed out a Ryzen was faster.
 
I think this is just furthering the myth that gamers need more cores when 99% of the time, they just need faster cores.

Hmm, I wonder which company has an interest in pushing that....

Because as everyone knows, DigitalFoundry is an obvious AMD shill. :rolleyes:
 
I certainly want more and faster cores, though admittedly my interest is in tossing some of my secondary machines and just running vms in their stead.

We can also probably all agree at the least in this era of twitch and youtube that the extra cores are useful to gamers who stream and record while playing, saving the need for a second capture PC.

As for JUST gaming, I'm still relatively happy with a 4790k, but when an 8c/16t chip is around for a reasonable price, I'll be upgrading for sure.
 
I certainly want more and faster cores, though admittedly my interest is in tossing some of my secondary machines and just running vms in their stead.

We can also probably all agree at the least in this era of twitch and youtube that the extra cores are useful to gamers who stream and record while playing, saving the need for a second capture PC.

As for JUST gaming, I'm still relatively happy with a 4790k, but when an 8c/16t chip is around for a reasonable price, I'll be upgrading for sure.

I went from the 4790k to a 2700x, and found that a reasonable price.
 
Can someone please list here all major PC game titles that use more than 4 cores ... thank you

"Gimme, gotz ta have"

View attachment 92543

List of games running 4+ cores:

"Doom definitely can hit 8 cores."
"Diablo II in 8 different virtual machines can certainly hit 8 cores"




_


This to a point. Ryzen how has affordable 6C/12T and 8C/8T. Let programs catch up to the now standard, affordable C/T count. Increase IPC and clocking over the next few releases. If you need the extra core you're on a higher end socket anyways. There are different platforms for dedicated workstations that use applications that are designed around heavy core counts.
 
I went from the 4790k to a 2700x, and found that a reasonable price.

how does the single core stand up against the 4790k?

I'm honestly also just sitting back until ram prices hopefully become a bit less obnoxious and I have some more spending cash. Probably around 1/19
 
As someone who has done it many times: future-proofing is dumb, a waste of money, most of the time.

I'm not going to buy an eight-core CPU just because AMD or Intel made one, I'll buy one when the game I want to play actually performs better on one.

I agree. I remember the endless upgrade cycle. I went through 2 cpus during the original Athlon life cycle. Then there's all the other cpus I've owned before and after. Now I'm currently sitting on a 5-year old 4770k and I'm not even thinking of upgrading it. I almost feel dirty; but I'm ok with that.
 
This also could point out why they are raising GPU prices/keeping them high. The PS4/Xbox X are decent small gaming PC replacements. Not a parallel world anymore. There were viable reasons(before crypto) to make a GTX 1060 6GB class or lower gaming PC. Now though, why would you pay $300-ish for a GTX 1060 6GB when you can just buy a PC-like console. The next generation of consoles could totally take over the lower end PC gaming market.

If the game producers allowed K/M to work under their games on console(the consoles themselves allow it), wouldnt you rather have a much cheaper block box console for gaming(where everything just works).
 
how does the single core stand up against the 4790k?

I'm honestly also just sitting back until ram prices hopefully become a bit less obnoxious and I have some more spending cash. Probably around 1/19

That was one of the reasons I went from a 1600x to a 2700x. I had to overclock the 1600x to 4.05Ghz to match the performance I was getting with the 4790k in core-lite games, but the 2700x offers 6700k-ish per core performance and more cores, so I went with that.

I see AMD as more of a "step-ladder" platform. I started with a 1600x + B350, upgraded that to a 2700x, then when the x570 chipset comes out I'll pop the 2700x in that chipset, then whenever Zen2 (3770x?) comes out, upgrade to that.

My fiance got my 1600x now, and will get my 2700x when I get the 3770x.

Compare that to Intel were CoffeeLake technically CAN run on Z170, but is prevented from doing so, and people are questioning whether or not the recently released z370 chipset is compatible with the upcoming 9900k/9700k/9600k.
 
Nothing is going to matter until we get games that start to push boundries again, instead of dumbing down graphics to facilitate release on every conceivable platform. I want game developers to make money and be successful, but at the same time, don't see any simple answer to the issue. Many pc forward games get pirated in much higher volume than bought, unless its an online only, multiplayer centric game, which often necessitates lower standard visuals to enable a larger audience to achieve 60ish fps across a broad spectrum of machines (fortnight, tf2, overwatch ect). There could be an argument made, that any forward looking pc game, must include some sort of multiplayer/online element otherwise it may as well be relegated to piracy and debt. Before you start to talk about witcher 3, remember that it was cross released on consoles that made up the VAST majority of its sales.
 
Can someone please list here all major PC game titles that use more than 4 cores ... thank you

"Gimme, gotz ta have"

View attachment 92543

List of games running 4+ cores:

"Doom definitely can hit 8 cores."
"Diablo II in 8 different virtual machines can certainly hit 8 cores"




_

Any BF game on up starting with 4
 
Any BF game on up starting with 4

there are many games that use 4+ cores, however, it's relatively moot, since games are driven by GPUS, and the closer you get to the high end, the less there is any measurable variation on cpus. Other than some better AI, there is only so much they can program for on the cpu that will take advantage of it.
 
there are many games that use 4+ cores, however, it's relatively moot, since games are driven by GPUS, and the closer you get to the high end, the less there is any measurable variation on cpus. Other than some better AI, there is only so much they can program for on the cpu that will take advantage of it.


I was just thinking about all the physics and shit on large 64m maps. The [email protected] that I replaced with my current [email protected] felt smoother with everything set to Ultra.
 
That was one of the reasons I went from a 1600x to a 2700x. I had to overclock the 1600x to 4.05Ghz to match the performance I was getting with the 4790k in core-lite games, but the 2700x offers 6700k-ish per core performance and more cores, so I went with that.

I see AMD as more of a "step-ladder" platform. I started with a 1600x + B350, upgraded that to a 2700x, then when the x570 chipset comes out I'll pop the 2700x in that chipset, then whenever Zen2 (3770x?) comes out, upgrade to that.

My fiance got my 1600x now, and will get my 2700x when I get the 3770x.

Compare that to Intel were CoffeeLake technically CAN run on Z170, but is prevented from doing so, and people are questioning whether or not the recently released z370 chipset is compatible with the upcoming 9900k/9700k/9600k.

I came close to a 2700x a week or two ago but I just can't afford the ram right now :\. Will be over $300 for 32 gigs less whatever I can recover selling 32gb of DDR3 2400.

I wonder when Zen2 will hit the shelves. I was looking forward to an 8 core mainstream from intel but I really do like having hyperthreading for the VMs I toy with. An 8C/16T chip that can push the single core at around coffee lake core (or a little better) performance will be an amazing upgrade for me if that's around by the time I can upgrade.

For people who do a bit more computing than just gaming, finally moving to 8 cores with SMT is a huge improvement after a decade with quad cores.
 
Can someone please list here all major PC game titles that use more than 4 cores ... thank you

"Gimme, gotz ta have"

View attachment 92543
Lost Planet 1&2.
Probably 3 but I’m not sure. I also wouldn’t be too surprised if all MTFramework games scales well with cores. I know Devil May Cry 4 also will use 8 cores.
Other MTFramework games include Dead Rising, Resident Evil 5/6/remasters/revelations, Dragons Dogma, Monster Hunter World. I don’t know about their core usage and I’m not going to do the research for you.

I believe the Stalker series used extra cores...poorly but it did.

Possibly Metro 2033/Last Light.

There’s a decent number of games that use 4 or more cores to some extent.
 
Adding more cores is not the answer. Increasing the CPU utilization is.
If you look at the 8700K vs 2700X comparison videos, you will see the CPU utilization by the games is well below 50%. On Ryzen, it's even lower.
 
As someone who has done it many times: future-proofing is dumb, a waste of money, most of the time.

I'm not going to buy an eight-core CPU just because AMD or Intel made one, I'll buy one when the game I want to play actually performs better on one.

I think that it depends on which generation people choose to future-proof with. Future-proofing sure worked well with i7 Sandy Bridge - especially if a person upgraded their monitor to a 1440p display while using Sandy Bridge.

I'm still getting great gaming performance with my 2600k @ 4.6 Ghz and running 1440p and so I'm not in a rush to upgrade - which is doubly convenient for me because I wanted to wait until Intel was past their Kaby Lake architecture and had hardware-fixed the Spectre and similar vulnerabilities before I bought a new CPU. In this case, Intel's foot-dragging with their meagre 5% performance increases CPU refreshes has meant that I haven't bought any new Intel products in 7 years.
 
Well if Intel didn't fuck us in the ass for a decade by nickle and diming us with incremental upgrades, we wouldn't have this fucking problem. It took AMD 1 competent generation for this question to happen, when if Intel had instead done this a decade ago, we'd already have a happy outcome.
 
I dunno if they will be able to do 8 Ryzen cores, for heat reasons. I could see 6. Definitely 4.
 
there are many games that use 4+ cores, however, it's relatively moot, since games are driven by GPUS, and the closer you get to the high end, the less there is any measurable variation on cpus. Other than some better AI, there is only so much they can program for on the cpu that will take advantage of it.
Battlefield multiplayer has scaled past 4 cores noticeably, since BF3. 6 and 8 core CPUs are relevant to BF multiplayer.

Indeed, if the game is nearly maxing out the GPU, you won't see the high FPS scaling. But your minimums will be way better. And that will also raise your average fps.
 
Well if Intel didn't fuck us in the ass for a decade by nickle and diming us with incremental upgrades, we wouldn't have this fucking problem. It took AMD 1 competent generation for this question to happen, when if Intel had instead done this a decade ago, we'd already have a happy outcome.

Except, the last time this happened was almost twenty years ago; what have we received in the meantime from AMD? That's right - incremental advances while Intel got their shit together, launched Core and the rest is history.

A reality check is in order. Intel has kicked AMD's arse from wall to wall since forever and everyone knows it. Twenty fucking years since Athlon, and Intel chips are still better performance-wise even on an architecture that has supposedly been leapfrogged many times.

If it's so easy as you think it is, why don't you pull your finger from your butt and go work for Intel so you can show those idiots how to do it right? Eh? Even better, go work for AMD because twenty years is just too damn long, isnt it?
 
Except, the last time this happened was almost twenty years ago; what have we received in the meantime from AMD? That's right - incremental advances while Intel got their shit together, launched Core and the rest is history.

A reality check is in order. Intel has kicked AMD's arse from wall to wall since forever and everyone knows it. Twenty fucking years since Athlon, and Intel chips are still better performance-wise even on an architecture that has supposedly been leapfrogged many times.

If it's so easy as you think it is, why don't you pull your finger from your butt and go work for Intel so you can show those idiots how to do it right? Eh? Even better, go work for AMD because twenty years is just too damn long, isnt it?
AMD whooped intel's butt with Athlon 64. Intel's response was to take illegal actions to keep AMD's products from being bought. This irreparably affected AMD's bottom line and also the way they were perceived by vendors. And it left them without the money to properly R&D future products. Leavng them to settle for relatively lower performing solutions by the time Sandy Bridge came out. AMD is only just now starting to appreciably rebound.

Intel still owes money to AMD, from the resulting legal actions.
 
AMD whooped intel's butt with Athlon 64. Intel's response was to take illegal actions to keep AMD's products from being bought. This irreparably affected AMD's bottom line and also the way they were perceived by vendors. And it left them without the money to properly R&D future products. Leavng them to settle for relatively lower performing solutions by the time Sandy Bridge came out. AMD is only just now starting to appreciably rebound.

Intel still owes money to AMD, from the resulting legal actions.
I remember Intel's anti-competitive bullshit towards AMD back in the Netburst-era in the mid-2000s - it was pretty bad.
Even with the money they owed AMD from the court winnings, it was only a drop in the bucket of what they had actually lost.

AMD is making a big comeback, and one that has been needed for well over a decade, at least in the CPU department.
After the Meltdown, Spectre, CEO, and the severe disk-access performance losses, I am totally done with Intel, permanently.

If it gets so bad that AMD can't compete any more, I will move to ARM, SPARC64, POWER/PowerPC, or even a potato before I will ever go back to Intel.
Not that AMD is perfect or anything, but at least they are driving up competition in a positive way.
 
Except, the last time this happened was almost twenty years ago; what have we received in the meantime from AMD? That's right - incremental advances while Intel got their shit together, launched Core and the rest is history.

A reality check is in order. Intel has kicked AMD's arse from wall to wall since forever and everyone knows it. Twenty fucking years since Athlon, and Intel chips are still better performance-wise even on an architecture that has supposedly been leapfrogged many times.

If it's so easy as you think it is, why don't you pull your finger from your butt and go work for Intel so you can show those idiots how to do it right? Eh? Even better, go work for AMD because twenty years is just too damn long, isnt it?

You have an interesting view of history.

By interesting I mean wrong.
 
You mean, "assert that it's wrong but can't be arsed to back it up"?

Well get to it, then. I'll be interested to know how I'm wrong.

For MOST of the single-core era, AMD's CPUs were faster than Intel's, and when netburst hit, they were STUPID faster. Intel had to pay 1 billion dollars per year to some OEMs to prevent them from using the Opteron chips in their server SKUs, and that isn't a made up number: Intel literally gave quarterly payments of 250 million to Dell and HP during the later years of "the mother of all programs".

Because Intel was loosing in just about every category against the Athlon and Opteron, they paid literally billions of dollars to OEMs in order to keep AMD's logo off of products.
 
You mean, "assert that it's wrong but can't be arsed to back it up"?

Well get to it, then. I'll be interested to know how I'm wrong.

Well for one, AMD started winning the CPU battles in 1999/2000 with the XP chips. The Athlon64 hit store shelves in Q3 2003 and Core2 Duo didn't show up to 2006/7. So, its not been "Twenty fucking years since Athlon" but more like 11-12 years that Intel has dominated CPU performance.
 
AMD whooped intel's butt with Athlon 64. Intel's response was to take illegal actions to keep AMD's products from being bought. This irreparably affected AMD's bottom line and also the way they were perceived by vendors. And it left them without the money to properly R&D future products. Leavng them to settle for relatively lower performing solutions by the time Sandy Bridge came out. AMD is only just now starting to appreciably rebound.

Intel still owes money to AMD, from the resulting legal actions.

P4EE was competitive with A64
Well for one, AMD started winning the CPU battles in 1999/2000 with the XP chips. The Athlon64 hit store shelves in Q3 2003 and Core2 Duo didn't show up to 2006/7. So, its not been "Twenty fucking years since Athlon" but more like 11-12 years that Intel has dominated CPU performance.

Oh for fuck's sake. Go read the post that I responded to originally.
 
Back
Top