Will the PC version take advantage of 4 or 6 core procesors? : V

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:30 pm

Has any one heard anything about how many cores the PC version will take advantage of. As I understand it, programs must be designed to take advantage of multi core PC's or your stuck with just 1 core per program. Anyone have any technical know-how to speculate on this, or has anyone heard anything specific? I just fired up my new system today and would love to hear that the PC version will utilize my killer processor!

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:37 am

I think this is where the DX11 support will be most utilized.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:31 am

what is the fastest processor a pc can have, the i9?

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 11:40 am

I have a question of my own since we're talking CPU's. Will it use all if the spu's in the cell?

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:34 am

Oblivion used multi-threading, and Skyrim is definitely going to as well. It's not known how many cores are going to be used. Hopefully as many as possible. I for example have 4, so I too hope that at least that many are used.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:01 am

Oblivion used multi-threading,

Not really. You could activate muliti-threading on a number of processes but the engine didn't actually do anything as a result of those ini settings. I just got a 6 core processor and have my current install set to use all multi threaded capabilities but while playing (i have dual monitors) my processor usage is no different from before i tweaked those setting in the ini.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 1:10 pm

Yes. Yes it will. The game will probably take advantage of multiple threads as well :liplick:

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:49 am

Not really. You could activate muliti-threading on a number of processes but the engine didn't actually do anything as a result of those ini settings. I just got a 6 core processor and have my current install set to use all multi threaded capabilities but while playing (i have dual monitors) my processor usage is no different from before i tweaked those setting in the ini.

This. I tried the same thing and it doesn't change it. The best it will do is two cores and that's not even impressive. I'm sure skyrim will have multi-threading though.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:48 am

Oblivion used multi-threading, and Skyrim is definitely going to as well. It's not known how many cores are going to be used. Hopefully as many as possible. I for example have 4, so I too hope that at least that many are used.

oh

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 11:14 am

You could activate muliti-threading on a number of processes but the engine didn't actually do anything as a result of those ini settings.

Quite often activating those settings even made things worse in fact. Same thing with Fallout 3. They certainly won't go for 6 cores as not enough people have those types of processors yet. Quads are becoming more common place, but dual cores are currently the main type used by the general public. So I'm guessing they'll just be improving support for dual cores and not going beyond that. There just isn't enough demand for more than that yet.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:38 am

Quite often activating those settings even made things worse in fact. Same thing with Fallout 3. They certainly won't go for 6 cores as not enough people have those types of processors yet. Quads are becoming more common place, but dual cores are currently the main type used by the general public. So I'm guessing they'll just be improving support for dual cores and not going beyond that. There just isn't enough demand for more than that yet.

Most people who would be playing Skyrim on the PC as opposed to a console will, by now, have a quad core. Not all, but most.

I will be very disappointed if they only support dual cores. It seems like everything supports quads now.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 1:07 am

Oblivion used multi-threading, and Skyrim is definitely going to as well. It's not known how many cores are going to be used. Hopefully as many as possible. I for example have 4, so I too hope that at least that many are used.

Don't think Oblivion used multithreading.. were there even 2 core proc's available to the public when it was being created? Think not. Gotta think at least 7-8 years ago that they started creating it. Anyways not to get too picky i say g'night.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 8:30 am

Quite often activating those settings even made things worse in fact. Same thing with Fallout 3. They certainly won't go for 6 cores as not enough people have those types of processors yet. Quads are becoming more common place, but dual cores are currently the main type used by the general public. So I'm guessing they'll just be improving support for dual cores and not going beyond that. There just isn't enough demand for more than that yet.

From what I understand, Dx11 inherently supports however many un-dedicated threads are running on your OS. They don't have to set a number for the engine to use because just supporting DX11 means DX can handle it for them. Least ways that's what I've heard but take that with a grain of salt as very few technical specs available for DX11 can be confirmed as official.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:36 am

Most people who would be playing Skyrim on the PC as opposed to a console will, by now, have a quad core. Not all, but most.

While I don't have any numbers to draw from, I strongly doubt that. Many people were still using single cores not to long ago. While most of the hard core gamers no doubt have at least a quad core, those are only a small minority of the numbers of people that will be playing this game. Most people will fall into the casual gamer category, and they're not likely to upgrade their systems quite as often. I could very well be wrong of course, but I'm guessing most people are using no more than a dual-core processor right now.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:14 pm

Most people who would be playing Skyrim on the PC as opposed to a console will, by now, have a quad core. Not all, but most.

Steam's hardware survey:
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

1 core: Only 8%
2 cores: 52%
4 cores: 37%

So 2 cores is now the most common setup, but 4 core is very common already too.

» Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:13 pm

Steam's hardware survey:
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

1 core: Only 8%
2 cores: 52%
4 cores: 37%

So 2 cores is now the most common setup, but 4 core is very common already too.

Thanks for those numbers, that's just what I suspected. It will be a few years yet before quads become the norm, so most games until then will still focus on dual-cores. That's were most of the money to be made will be for awhile yet.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 11:41 am

As a probable future owner of an octo-core AMD Bulldozer, I hope so

» Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:07 pm

As a probable future owner of an octo-core AMD Bulldozer, I hope so

Personally I think that anyone who gets more than a quad core right now is just wasting their money, unless they're into some type of specialized computing, like video rendering etc. The software industry is a long ways away from supporting that many cores, so most of them will end up being under-utilized. Having 8 cores is total overkill for the general user at this time.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:40 am

Steam's hardware survey:
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

1 core: Only 8%
2 cores: 52%
4 cores: 37%

So 2 cores is now the most common setup, but 4 core is very common already too.

Steam has a lot of casual games. They don't all have gaming systems that they're going to play Skyrim on.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 5:08 am

Personally I think that anyone who gets more than a quad core right now is just wasting their money, unless they're into some type of specialized computing, like video rendering etc. The software industry is a long ways away from supporting that many cores, so most of them will end up being under-utilized. Having 8 cores is total overkill for the general user at this time.

I do pretend to video ENCODE (rendering? eh?), of course. In any case, AMD already stated that Bulldozer will be affordable as well (unlike those Intel i7 worth $900), so it's a win either way.

Well, that in the case the benchmarks are favorable to them. We'll see...

» Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:41 pm

Thanks for those numbers, that's just what I suspected. It will be a few years yet before quads become the norm, so most games until then will still focus on dual-cores. That's were most of the money to be made will be for awhile yet.

I'm willing to bet that 4 core processors get skipped and are never seen in the current 2 core slot. By the time those 50% are ready to upgrade they will be moving to 6 or 8 core and 4 core will be passed over.

In five years it will look something like this.

2-4 core: Only 8%
6-8 cores: 52%
10-12 cores: 37%

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 1:06 pm

Steam has a lot of casual games. They don't all have gaming systems that they're going to play Skyrim on.

Steam probably has more hard core players than is typical in the general public. So you'd probably find that the numbers were even more slanted in favour of dual-core overall. And it's the casual gamer who's going to make up the bulk of the people who play Skyrim, not just the hard core. Any company that only aims for the hard core player is probably going to lose money.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:14 am

Any company that only aims for the hard core player is probably going to lose money.

IE; Black Ilse/Interplay. Some may disagree but I believe their dedication to the hardcoe is what bankrupted them. Just not enough hardcoe fans of Fallout to make the series profitable.

» Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:12 am

I would suspect that if your game engine and the operating system are talking to each other properly it wouldn't matter how many cores you have. The OS should be divvying up the jobs itself and the game shouldn't be worrying about that. So those of us on quad-cores should see better performance than folks on duo-cores. Or the oddball tri-cores.

So it all depends on how well that sort of thing is handled really.

» Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:49 pm

Parallelism is hard, I wouldn't put much hope into complete usage of every core on a hex core system - but then, there's also simply not enough work to go around to do that. There's still a fair amount of stuff that can be run in parallel, and bethesda would have to be idiots to not take advantage of that!

Even so, there comes a point where you're processing everything you need to process, and modern processors are really, really fast. There's simply not 6 cores worth of work, even if the load could be evenly distributed.