sc1ence

And fortunately, That is all I plan do to for the next 1-2 years.

One thing that sort of puts me in a unique position is that when I upgrade to a new cpu, the low wattage single core I just bought will be put in a dedicated htpc box for my 42 inch plasma. I have an intended use for it after my future upgrade. If I bought it thinking I would just junk it when I upgrade in about a year or two then I think I would have held out for more. I really don't multi task much, and when I do, speed simply is not an issue.

In the price to performance ratio, cpus in the +4000 range, either dual or single core are very affordable. Given that the games I play now, and the games I intend to play for the next 1-2 years (bf2, bf2142, and ffow) are not built with multithreading I think having one very fast core to run my game on is better than two cores clocked a little lower each. For someone that is used to keeping very tight control over the programs running when I game, I think spending more for a dual core makes less sense for me right now.

We really are at the crossroads now with respect to multithreaded gaming. In 2 years time I would be pretty shocked to see a major release game not be multithreaded. Multi threading has taken longer to catch on than most people thought about 2 years ago. For those on a VERY tight budget, you can squeak by happily with a single core if you know what games you plan to be playing for the next year or two.

for those of you with single core systems right now, Holding off on a cpu for as long as you can will get you lots more bang for your buck about 1 year down the line from now.

Tonk

while dual core processors are not common in games yet, i find that dual cores are perfect for current (and 1-2 years from now) games because you have 1 core dealing with the game, and a second core doing EVERYTHING ELSE.. all 50 background tasks/services.. xfire, steam, steam chat, keyboard and mouse drivers, on board audio(if you use it), windows itself, internet traffic) dual core makes sense right now, and im not saying single core suck, but its lifetime is closing in fast...

here is a hypothetical question.. how long until multi-core is a requirement? for obvious reasons (heat, power consumption, efficiency) single cores will come to an end in the next 4 years almost guaranteed (save smaller aplications)

when will the first dual core pda come out lol

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=Sarc=

You didn't play Raven Shield from the time it came out to the time the last patch was released. Ubisoft supported the game for a long time with a lot of patches. On FilePlanet, there are 71 patch files for Raven Shield. Most of them are the same version but for different languages or for the dedicated server. I counted 11 distinct versions though. That game is very annoying to patch when reinstalling.

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Eternaly_Lost

That quote is a lot of lies.
Windows NT had support for mutiprocessers ( that is basicly a dual/muti core processer, only that you have 2 Chips... )

Windows NT came out in 1993. And was a mainline product aimed at businesses. Programmers may have not been taught how to do muti threaded programs, but that is more a failure on there part, and not the industry as a whole. After all, if Microsoft, who every claims has some of the worse programmers, could add in multiprocessor support 14-15 years ago, what keep them back?

Iamthefallen: Did you have more Ram/CPU cache with your upgrade?
Most of the speed gains people see come from Ram upgrades or Ram to CPU bandwidth/timing improvements. This is because most CPUs are waiting for data for LONG amounts of time. Ever wonder how the whole HT thing worked? This was because the average CPU is doing work less then 50% of the time, so they doubled the cache and then half the time it is doing one thread, and the other half it doing the other.

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ScratchMonkey

SMP goes back a lot farther than that. I was using SMP back in the early 80s, when I worked for a company that was building a clone of a DEC PDP-20 mainframe with up to 4 CPU's. (Each CPU was several 12x12 circuit cards, and I think 4 took up two rows in a 19 inch rack.) And this was a very compact machine for its day.

Here's where I worked:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_Concepts

OS/2 had SMP before Windows.

What has changed is the easy access to SMP at the consumer level. No one bought SMP because there were few SMP systems available to end users, and the only OS that ran the most popular games required you to pay extra for each additional CPU. Only with the advent of hyperthreading did MS start allowing one license to cover 2 "cores" (and HT doesn't really give you a whole core).

Gamers had no incentive to write for multiple cores because customers didn't have them (same argument used against coding for other operating systems) and because there was a performance penalty if you used multiple threads on one CPU.

Even now, you have to code for several markets: Those with low and high end video, and those with one core versus those with many. If you write the code once, you're going to compromise one or more of those market segments, so you typically need to write separate code for all.

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Iamthefallen

Same RAM (4Gb), I'd have to find the old CPU model specifics to get the cache size, but it seems very likely that the C2D's would be larger.

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Iamthefallen

I believe the quote is only applicable within the scope of game development, it makes no claims about software development in general... And within that scope, it made little sense to design for multiple cores when only a tiny fraction among gamers had a multi-CPU system.

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Bamboo

By the way, Newegg dropped the price of the q6600 today to $255

http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16819115017

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Cappy

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ScratchMonkey

If one buys a multi-core with more than 2 cores, can one use it with a base XP license or must one pay extra for the additional cores to be supported?

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Switch

Growing up is a confusing time for all of us.... while maturing and going through all the stages of development you may sometimes find yourself feeling attracted to the same core instead of an opposite core. Its completely normal and you shouldn't feel embarrassed or ashamed. I'm an INTEL so I am naturally attracted to an AMD... if you're an intel and you find other intels attractive, its ok... this may be a phase... or maybe that processor life style is right for you. Its ok.

When facing the multi core scenario, its important that you consider whether you can handle the situation emotionally as well as functionally. Will you feel ok with yourself if you ever go back to one core? Will it still be as satisfying an experience for you? Can you supply the power for a multi core experience or will you not be able to handle all that performance.

What ever you chose, we support you.

---
edit
I read nothing but the title of the thread and I felt inspired, disregard my babble if you don't find it amusing

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That noob who TK'd me with a sniper rifle.
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Bamboo

@ Scratch
are you making a joke or serious. wording is throwing me off

I know there was some talk about M$ doing that with Vista, like charging per core, but they dropped it. Could you imagine how angry people would be, more than usually I would think

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Iamthefallen

IIRC the license for consumer operating systems cover up to 2 CPUs regardless of cores. For server products there's a different licensing scheme, but I don't think any MS licensing is done on a per-core basis.

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ScratchMonkey

Ok, found details here:

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/h...multicore.mspx

Apparently MS considers a "CPU" to begin and end at a chip boundary. So if the silicon people mash two current chips onto one die with twice as many pins, you don't have to pay for an extra Windows license. (I wonder if there's money to be made by the silicon guys in saving server customers the cost of additional OS licenses?)

Historically, a "core" and a CPU were the same thing. A CPU might be implemented with many chips, or even many boards. Now MS has redefined it to mean whatever you can fit in one package.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU

Today's "cores" typically share a common L2 cache and a bus interface unit. They have their own L1 cache. Us old timers would consider a CPU to stop before the L1 cache, and would include an ALU, some registers, and a branch machine to pick the next instruction to load. Even the MMU would be treated as outside the CPU.

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WhiskeySix

Just bumping this thread after realizing the low FPS I'm seeing in my gaming system (P4-2.8 OC'd to 3.1, x1950xt, 2GB DDR2 800) when playing Frontlines: Fuel of War (UT3 engine), is very likely due to my CPU... What's the sweet spot these days for dual-cores? Seems AMD is cheaper for similar performance?

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