Games coded for dual core

[LordNoob]

How long do you think it will be before we start seeing games that were coded from the ground up to extract optimum performance from dual and even multi-core processors? Any thoughts on the realistic performance gains we'd see. It is my understanding that the games today that supposedly support dual core are not necessarily optimized for dual core as it was sort of added in later. Any thoughts?

 

[secretanchitman]

probably after vista we can expect some games to fully utilise dual-core i would imagine...

 

[DaveSimmons]

Another 6-12 months, and it depends on the performance of each core.

An X2 3800+ with 2 roughly 3000+ cores will see more benefit than a 4200+ with a pair of 3200+ cores, and so on. A wimpy P4 805D with 2 x 2.6 GHz cores could see much more benefit than any A64.

Also realize that most current games are GPU bound at higher resolutions / settings, not CPU bound as long as it's a 4200+ or single-core 3200+. So there is no real benefit to optimizing those games except to help out the slowest dualies.

My wild guess is that future games will use the second core to allow for better AI and physics rather than shadows or draw distance. Games will either do this automatically or have sliders for CPU tasks like they do now for visual effects.

 

[Wildapes]

Doesn't Falcon 4 allied force have dual core support?

The way it is now most PC games seem like direct and poorly optimized console ports or more or less an afterthought to console games. Maybe game devs should focus on releasing good games as well as maybe implement them and optimize the code so they take advantage of 1 graphics card and 1 cpu properly on PC and don't run like feces while at the same time have PS2 graphics. That said, I wonder if my 2.75ghz dual core operton and dual 7800GTX 512s will be beneficial at all in Vista and future games.

 

[MechaSheeba]

Quake 4 gets a very nice performance boost with the SMP patch. I think pretty much all Xbox 360/PS3 ports should have decent support for multicore CPUs (with the exception of GRAW which was apparently done seperately), and every game developed from this point on should (though a lot probably won't) come with dual+ core support, no reason they couldn't other than just laziness.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Max Payne actually was as well.