Question How many cores are you operating with on your PERSONAL PC at home?

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Red Hawk

Diamond Member
Jan 1, 2011
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8. Got an 8 core 3rd gen Ryzen in preparation for the PS5/Xbox Series X/S having 8 core Ryzen CPUs. I'm anticipating that once 16 high performance threads becomes the standard on consoles as opposed to the 8 anemic threads consoles have now, combined with Vulkan/DX12, we'll see much better thread utilitization in games.

Well, AMD sold it a 6 cores, so that is how I would consider it. I would draw the line though when they tried to sum up the cpu and gpu and advertise their APUs as "compute cores".

Well according to this interview Gamersnexus did, labeling a GCN/RDNA compute unit (CU) a "core" isn't entirely inaccurate.


Basically an Nvidia "SM" or an AMD "CU" can perform all the same functions as a CPU "core". They're wider and thus more suited to highly parallel workloads like graphics acceleration, but the principle of fetching and carrying out instructions is the same. And it's a more apt label than Nvidia calling their shaders "CUDA cores"; CUDA cores and AMD "stream processors" are more comparable to floating point units in a CPU core.

Now, with that said, it's not like a CU an AMD APU can just grab and carry out instructions issued for the CPU. So marketing CPU cores and CUs is still a bit misleading. Similar in function, but they can't be told to do the same things.
 

ondma

Platinum Member
Mar 18, 2018
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I have a hex core desktop for gaming.
I do have a dual core Ryzen apu laptop that is perfectly adequate for light browsing. (Bought it because I could not find any other laptop at the same price point that had an SSD.) It actually seems faster than my wife's quad core Kaby Lake laptop, but I attribute that to the SSD and the fact that my wife manages to slow every pc she gets to a crawl with junk from social media sites.
 

dullard

Elite Member
May 21, 2001
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I'm anticipating that once 16 high performance threads becomes the standard on consoles as opposed to the 8 anemic threads consoles have now, combined with Vulkan/DX12, we'll see much better thread utilitization in games.
We've only been hearing the same hopes for 6.5 years: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/20/directx-12/ Over 10 years if you don't limit the discussion to just DX12.

Fact is games don't scale that well with CPU cores. They scale much better with GPU processing. The common (but admittedly can be taken as derogatory) phrase is "9 women can't make a baby in one month." This also applies to much of gaming. Sure, some parts of some games really like more CPU cores. But, we are at the point of diminishing returns for CPU cores and most gaming.

If by some miracle many new games actually can take full advantage of new cores, remember, game developers design for the lowest common denominator. That might be 4 core desktops for a couple more years (See the poll answers above). If they ignore desktop gamers, the XBox Series X doesn't give all 8 cores to the game either. So game developers would at max go for 7 cores in their games.
 

Red Hawk

Diamond Member
Jan 1, 2011
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We've only been hearing the same hopes for 6.5 years: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/20/directx-12/ Over 10 years if you don't limit the discussion to just DX12.

Fact is games don't scale that well with CPU cores. They scale much better with GPU processing. The common (but admittedly can be taken as derogatory) phrase is "9 women can't make a baby in one month." This also applies to much of gaming. Sure, some parts of some games really like more CPU cores. But, we are at the point of diminishing returns for CPU cores and most gaming.

If by some miracle many new games actually can take full advantage of new cores, remember, game developers design for the lowest common denominator. That might be 4 core desktops for a couple more years (See the poll answers above). If they ignore desktop gamers, the XBox Series X doesn't give all 8 cores to the game either. So game developers would at max go for 7 cores in their games.

Have we had high performance 8 core/16 thread consoles for the last 6.5 years? That's my point. We have seen games move towards better thread utilization with the adoption of DX12/Vulkan over the past few years. What we've been needing is a big push to really get developers to invest and design their engines around more threads, and that push is going to be the next gen consoles. If we were at the point of diminishing returns, I'm pretty sure Sony and Microsoft would have loved lower the cost of their consoles by going for less cores. But they didn't -- clearly the engineers behind the consoles see the value and potential of 8 cores/16 threads. And even taking into account the Series X/S dedicating a core to OS functions (as if PCs don't have OS overhead of their own), 7 cores/14 threads available for games is still more than 6 core/12 thread desktop CPUs.

Don't get me wrong, games will probably still be playable on (decent) 6 core/12 thread and 4 core/8 threads CPUs for a while yet. But it's just a matter of time. Try playing any modern game on a dual core CPU nowadays.
 
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Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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Four people said they had 32 or more cores? Please explain this. Why in personal at home computing would you do this?
I do distributed computing. I research cancer and covid-19. I am contributor number 54 at Rosetta@home which has now produced a cure for Covid-19, but only in the lab as of yet. But its been proven to kill it, just not available for human use yet.

Know of a better reason to have 600 cores working ?

Oh, and if thats not enough, I lost to cancer, I lost my bladder, prostate, my hearing and balance to cancer 2 years ago. I am hoping what I do will make life better for my kids and the world in the next generation.
 

ondma

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Mar 18, 2018
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Have we had high performance 8 core/16 thread consoles for the last 6.5 years? That's my point. We have seen games move towards better thread utilization with the adoption of DX12/Vulkan over the past few years. What we've been needing is a big push to really get developers to invest and design their engines around more threads, and that push is going to be the next gen consoles. If we were at the point of diminishing returns, I'm pretty sure Sony and Microsoft would have loved lower the cost of their consoles by going for less cores. But they didn't -- clearly the engineers behind the consoles see the value and potential of 8 cores/16 threads. And even taking into account the Series X/S dedicating a core to OS functions (as if PCs don't have OS overhead of their own), 7 cores/14 threads available for games is still more than 6 core/12 thread desktop CPUs.

Don't get me wrong, games will probably still be playable on (decent) 6 core/12 thread and 4 core/8 threads CPUs for a while yet. But it's just a matter of time. Try playing any modern game on a dual core CPU nowadays.
I think basically you are correct. However, the consoles will probably run at a considerably slower clock speed than desktop cpus, especially when the desktops are overclocked. So it will be a balancing act between the faster clock speed of the desktop cpu and the greater efficiency of the console. As far as DX12, isnt it supposed to lower the burden on the cpu?
 

CHADBOGA

Platinum Member
Mar 31, 2009
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I do distributed computing. I research cancer and covid-19. I am contributor number 54 at Rosetta@home which has now produced a cure for Covid-19, but only in the lab as of yet. But its been proven to kill it, just not available for human use yet.

Know of a better reason to have 600 cores working ?

Oh, and if thats not enough, I lost to cancer, I lost my bladder, prostate, my hearing and balance to cancer 2 years ago. I am hoping what I do will make life better for my kids and the world in the next generation.
Do the organisations that run distributed computing give feedback at any point, to indicate what a given distributed computing project managed to achieve in advancing cures?
 

piokos

Senior member
Nov 2, 2018
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First of all: I really can't believe this thread turned into Bulldozer core counting discussion. Just let it die already.

How many cores are you operating with on your PERSONAL PC at home? PC with most Cores, that is.
Why don't you check what the "PC" abbreviation stands for?

I honestly don't know what the goal of this survey is, but you should have used a more precise question, for example:
- the most cores among computers in household,
- the most cores among computers in household used only by the person answering,
- the number of cores in the PC used the most,
- the number of cores in the PC used for the most demanding tasks.

And just to add even more confusion: what if someone uses an ARM smartphone or tablet as a main PC?
 

TheELF

Diamond Member
Dec 22, 2012
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What we've been needing is a big push to really get developers to invest and design their engines around more threads, and that push is going to be the next gen consoles.
That big push came with the current gen having a lot but very weak cores to deal with.
Devs had to come up with all sorts of tricks to make the small cores do things that a fast core could do in one piece. With the new consoles having decent ZEN cores all of this could go away,why bother with very hard to do multithreading if the core can do it in one go?Well if they want to sell the same game to PS4/xbone but when that stops there will be no reason any more.

Also with the new consoles being mainly for 4k and ray tracing graphics the additional cores might just be used to help with ray tracing or with shuffling the huge amount of data around,heck maybe they used them just for the large cache to make streaming in assets easier, I mean they went full heavy duty ssd for that reason so why not CPU.We can only hope that 4k textures will not be forced to be used and that we can choose lower ones,it would be a huge drag having to download 4k texture games.

Looking at benchmarks we sure as heck know that 4k gaming doesn't need much CPU power and 4k with ray tracing?! You can do that on a potato.

Why don't you check what the "PC" abbreviation stands for?
It stands for if you Personally need or even just want a server, 3d render farm or whatever else CPU you Can get one.

You are confusing mainstream Personal Computers with HEDT/enthusiast Personal Computers, while for mainstream 4/8 is way enough and 6cores is already stretching it for someone who enjoys messing with stuff there are no boundaries.
And just to add even more confusion: what if someone uses an ARM smartphone or tablet as a main PC?
That person doesn't even know this site.
 

arandomguy

Senior member
Sep 3, 2013
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Have we had high performance 8 core/16 thread consoles for the last 6.5 years? That's my point. We have seen games move towards better thread utilization with the adoption of DX12/Vulkan over the past few years. What we've been needing is a big push to really get developers to invest and design their engines around more threads, and that push is going to be the next gen consoles. If we were at the point of diminishing returns, I'm pretty sure Sony and Microsoft would have loved lower the cost of their consoles by going for less cores. But they didn't -- clearly the engineers behind the consoles see the value and potential of 8 cores/16 threads. And even taking into account the Series X/S dedicating a core to OS functions (as if PCs don't have OS overhead of their own), 7 cores/14 threads available for games is still more than 6 core/12 thread desktop CPUs.

Don't get me wrong, games will probably still be playable on (decent) 6 core/12 thread and 4 core/8 threads CPUs for a while yet. But it's just a matter of time. Try playing any modern game on a dual core CPU nowadays.

A design consideration was to maintain simplicity in porting and backwards compatibility with existing consoles which favors an 8 physical core design for the upcoming console generation. Cutting SMT would likely result in negligible savings. Judging by the XBX's configurable clockspeed dependent on SMT and the PS5's variable clockspeed as well depending on load I wouldn't be surprised if the extra threads from SMT ends up largely given in favor of more clockspeed. So effectively 8c/16t really was just a pragmatic choice, I don't see it as a signal that development is ready to see strong scaling compared today. Even when the consoles this gen opened up an additonal core on their fixed platforms dev commentary was that it would be exceedingly hard to leverage, and that is a far cry from another 8 virtual threads.

I think basically you are correct. However, the consoles will probably run at a considerably slower clock speed than desktop cpus, especially when the desktops are overclocked. So it will be a balancing act between the faster clock speed of the desktop cpu and the greater efficiency of the console. As far as DX12, isnt it supposed to lower the burden on the cpu?

I wouldn't say considerably slower. The XBX is 3.6ghz with SMT and 3.8ghz with SMT off, the latter with which I wouldn't be surprised becomes the more popular configuration for developers. In either case to me that doesn't seem to be considerably slower than current desktop Zen 2 CPUs to me. There is also some rumors, as full lower details of the consoles haven't been detailed yet, that while the CPUs are branded as Zen 2 there is some differences between current desktop Zen 2 CPUs that is more optimal for their usage (latency sensitive gaming) that may not make it completely 1:1 comparison.

DX12 in theory is supposed to lower CPU overhead for drawcalls and allowing more parallelization of it. In practice in terms of real end performance it's more tricky than that and so far tradeoffs have been apparent, especially given the the instincts of the PC platform.

I've posted this a few times but a concern for PC gaming that should be kept in mind is just how much upcoming games will actually utilize the new console CPUs and that means for PC gaming. The performance differences on PC CPUs versus current gen console CPUs was immense, even those launched years before. This effectively brute forced paved over a lot of issues. The gap is extremely close now. Even projecting based on future CPUs we most likely aren't going to see a PC CPU released in this generations lifetime that will open up an equivalent gap, much less existing ones or even near future upcoming ones like Zen 3.
 

hbsource

Junior Member
Nov 21, 2019
10
2
16
Four people said they had 32 or more cores? Please explain this. Why in personal at home computing would you do this?

I use a 3950x at work and at home. I do a lot of 3D renders out of AutoCad so more cores = less time. I only have 1 PC in the house so it makes sense to have the same set-up as in the office. I have the same keyboard, mouse and monitor so I can work as efficiently at home as I can at my business.

EDIT: Of course, this is only 16c 32t but the threadrippers are too much £ for me. What I'm trying to say is my use case means I'd take more slightly slower cores over fewer faster ones. I don't game on PC.
 
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piokos

Senior member
Nov 2, 2018
554
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It stands for if you Personally need or even just want a server, 3d render farm or whatever else CPU you Can get one.
...?
You are confusing mainstream Personal Computers with HEDT/enthusiast Personal Computers, while for mainstream 4/8 is way enough and 6cores is already stretching it for someone who enjoys messing with stuff there are no boundaries.
I'm not confusing anything. PC is a PC. Despite many definitions that exist in literature or can be made up on the go, it converges around a computer you interact with directly - with human-usable input and output.
A server (hardware-level) is NOT a machine you operate directly, but over a network connection.
That's it.

Workstations, HEDT and so on - are all PCs if you use them as a PC. And any computer with network interface can be used as a server, while not every server can be a PC.

Which brings me back to my initial doubts, this time with an example (not true, but pretty close):
- I have a personal 4-core desktop that I use for 1-2h a day,
- I have an 8-core smartphone that I use all day for almost all basic tasks: e-mail, browsing, news, playing music, messaging,
- I have a company 8-core laptop that I use for 8h a day - including some personal stuff if allowed (but I don't own it),
- my wife has a 6-core laptop that I don't use, but partially own it (spousal joint ownership),
- I have an 8-core console (which is not a PC, but takes over a PC role for gaming and watching movies),
- I have a 10-core server, but I only have access to 9-cores via my VMs,
- I have a 24-core VM on cloud that is not a PC, but acts as my workstation.

So - according to you - how should I answer the survey? :)
That person doesn't even know this site.
The fact that on this forum most people prefer (or at least consider) DIY desktops and tinkering doesn't mean some of us don't use mobile devices for most everyday personal tasks.
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
94,665
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...?

I'm not confusing anything. PC is a PC. Despite many definitions that exist in literature or can be made up on the go, it converges around a computer you interact with directly - with human-usable input and output.
A server (hardware-level) is NOT a machine you operate directly, but over a network connection.
That's it.

Workstations, HEDT and so on - are all PCs if you use them as a PC. And any computer with network interface can be used as a server, while not every server can be a PC.

Which brings me back to my initial doubts, this time with an example (not true, but pretty close):
- I have a personal 4-core desktop that I use for 1-2h a day,
- I have an 8-core smartphone that I use all day for almost all basic tasks: e-mail, browsing, news, playing music, messaging,
- I have a company 8-core laptop that I use for 8h a day - including some personal stuff if allowed (but I don't own it),
- my wife has a 6-core laptop that I don't use, but partially own it (spousal joint ownership),
- I have an 8-core console (which is not a PC, but takes over a PC role for gaming and watching movies),
- I have a 10-core server, but I only have access to 9-cores via my VMs,
- I have a 24-core VM on cloud that is not a PC, but acts as my workstation.

So - according to you - how should I answer the survey? :)

The fact that on this forum most people prefer (or at least consider) DIY desktops and tinkering doesn't mean some of us don't use mobile devices for most everyday personal tasks.


I do sit in front of my server sometimes...
 
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Nov 20, 2009
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First of all: I really can't believe this thread turned into Bulldozer core counting discussion. Just let it die already.


Why don't you check what the "PC" abbreviation stands for?

I honestly don't know what the goal of this survey is, but you should have used a more precise question, for example:
- the most cores among computers in household,
- the most cores among computers in household used only by the person answering,
- the number of cores in the PC used the most,
- the number of cores in the PC used for the most demanding tasks.

And just to add even more confusion: what if someone uses an ARM smartphone or tablet as a main PC?
No one asked you to read or reply to this poll that you are obviously finding no value it. Go away and find something that makes you happy. I am not asking to make you happy, but make me happy. :) I was curious and I asked a question, in poll form.
 

dullard

Elite Member
May 21, 2001
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Have we had high performance 8 core/16 thread consoles for the last 6.5 years? That's my point.
No, no we did not have 8 core consoles. I see your point. But did you even consider my point? My point was that the DX12 promise to use more cores better has has us waiting 6.5 years and yet only a few games actually have the need for the more cores. Many games just don't need more cores You could give a game developer a console with infinite cores running at a good speed on each core, and still there just isn't a need for parallel processing (aside from the obvious more GPU cores) in much of what games do.
We have seen games move towards better thread utilization with the adoption of DX12/Vulkan over the past few years. What we've been needing is a big push to really get developers to invest and design their engines around more threads, and that push is going to be the next gen consoles
From the relatives I have in the gaming business, they just don't have the time to do that investment, even if it were possible to get significant benefits. They are on strict release schedules, working 100+ hours a week, many weeks in a row. Then they are zombies on their few weeks off before the next burst of activity.
If we were at the point of diminishing returns, I'm pretty sure Sony and Microsoft would have loved lower the cost of their consoles by going for less cores. But they didn't -- clearly the engineers behind the consoles see the value and potential of 8 cores/16 threads.
These consoles are about more than just gaming.
Don't get me wrong, games will probably still be playable on (decent) 6 core/12 thread and 4 core/8 threads CPUs for a while yet. But it's just a matter of time. Try playing any modern game on a dual core CPU nowadays.
There is a massive difference from my point of saying most games don't need 8 cores to your rebuttal of 2 cores is slow. Break the typical game down into it's elements: graphics, physics, map, character responses, enemy AI, and IO. There are 6 main functions which work quite well for 6 cores (they aren't equal in resource needs, so they often can be combined onto fewer cores by the OS without too much performance hit). Add in video streaming for a 7th if you want. The effort for the programmer to suddenly split this into 8 roughly equal tasks is massive compared to the minimal usable benefits of maybe having the map on 2 cores instead of 1.

I certainly could design a game that needs 8, 16, 32 or more cores. But it wouldn't be the typical game that most people think of.