Mirror's Edge Catalyst won't run on Pentiums

[jpiniero]

Core 0+1 is locked for OS on the consoles. So games start of at core 2-7.

That hasn't been true for awhile, although the game has to ask for the 7th core.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Likely because they can't understand why anyone would consciously play a game on low end hardware that is practically guaranteed to have less of a gaming experience than the consoles.

I mean, who uses a PC with low end hardware for playing AAA games if it can't even deliver the same standard of experience as the consoles?

That's not what PC gaming is about...



The other reason is, the developer specifically noted that four logical cores were necessary. I understand why some might be cynical given that several other games like Far Cry 4, DAI etcetera had quad core CPUs for minimum recommendation, but could certainly be played with dual core CPUs.

But those games never had the explicit language concerning logical cores that Mirror's Edge Catalyst had for their minimum recommendations.

I have a PC with a HD7770, which is below the specs for the consoles. I use it for general use and gaming. I dont own any consoles because I can adjust the settings and play any game I want. I thought I was actually having fun. But I guess I must have been fooling myself, and was actually having a miserable experience because I was not getting 60fps min at 1440p on ultra. I played Witcher 3, DAI, and have about 200 hours into FO4 all on this pc that apparently should be locked out of gaming because I would get a better experience on a console.

Again, nobody is saying Dice should double the hours thy have put into the game in an attempt to make it run well on a dual core. Just dont lock dual core users out arbitrarily, and let them decide for themselves if the gameplay is acceptible.

 

[poofyhairguy]

The G3258 is garbage for PC gaming. I hate even playing rocket league on there with all the random stutters.

I don't regret buying it because the build was fun and I murders Dolphin, but I feel really bad for anyone who got it instead of a real gaming CPU. My old Core2Duos do much better.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well, someone just posted the cpu benchmarks for the beta. This technical marvel that cant use a pentium because it is pushing cpu demands to new heights, is getting more tham 90 fps with an i3.

 

[Carfax83]

I missed that NV is promoting this title since last year, didn't know it's NV sponsored.

They will have to sponsor titles to get rid of the GCN optimizations.

I swear, you're the most cynical person on this entire forum when it comes to NVidia :\

Anyway, contrary to what you said on the previous page, the game does NOT use a dynamic GI solution. I actually took the time to read the slides last night, and when I got to slide 51, they started going into depth about how they accomplished their lighting for the game.

The game apparently still uses baked in light probes, but has some kind of interactive relighting and blending procedure which uses the CPU.

Here's the actual live GDC presentation.

A clever way to mimic dynamic global illumination I suppose, but it's not the same thing.

So for me, it's still the same ranking system:

1) Unreal Engine 4

2) CryEngine

3) Frostbite 3

 

[VirtualLarry]

This technical marvel that cant use a pentium because it is pushing cpu demands to new heights, is getting more tham 90 fps with an i3.

LOL.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Well, someone just posted the cpu benchmarks for the beta. This technical marvel that cant use a pentium because it is pushing cpu demands to new heights, is getting more tham 90 fps with an i3.

poofyhairyguy said it best:

The G3258 is garbage for PC gaming. I hate even playing rocket league on there with all the random stutters.

I don't regret buying it because the build was fun and I murders Dolphin, but I feel really bad for anyone who got it instead of a real gaming CPU. My old Core2Duos do much better.

Can't say I blame DICE for not letting dual core CPUs ruin their gaming experience.

 

[Carfax83]

I have a PC with a HD7770, which is below the specs for the consoles. I use it for general use and gaming. I dont own any consoles because I can adjust the settings and play any game I want. I thought I was actually having fun. But I guess I must have been fooling myself, and was actually having a miserable experience because I was not getting 60fps min at 1440p on ultra. I played Witcher 3, DAI, and have about 200 hours into FO4 all on this pc that apparently should be locked out of gaming because I would get a better experience on a console.

An HD 7770 is actually very similar to the GPU found in the Xbox One, so I don't think you are getting an experience below that of the consoles.

What CPU do you have?

Again, nobody is saying Dice should double the hours thy have put into the game in an attempt to make it run well on a dual core. Just dont lock dual core users out arbitrarily, and let them decide for themselves if the gameplay is acceptible.

If it matters to you that much, why don't you contact Repi on twitter and ask him why he decided to limit the game to four logical cores only, seeing as he's the lead rendering architect at DICE.

 

[Carfax83]

Well, someone just posted the cpu benchmarks for the beta. This technical marvel that cant use a pentium because it is pushing cpu demands to new heights, is getting more tham 90 fps with an i3.

The Core i3 has four logical cores, so it's within spec in that respect.. But perhaps more importantly, it uses the Haswell core which totally bitch slaps the weak ass Jaguar cores found in the consoles..

 

[frozentundra123456]

The Core i3 has four logical cores, so it's within spec in that respect.. But perhaps more importantly, it uses the Haswell core which totally bitch slaps the weak ass Jaguar cores found in the consoles..

Yea, but apparently haswell or even skylake cores are not good enough if you dont have hyperthreading. And even a Sandy Bridge i3 runs the game perfectly fine. Come on, hyperthreading at most adds 30 percent or so. From those benchmarks, an overclocked 3258 or skylake pentium has more than enough processing power to run the game. But Dice knows best, screw you if you have a dual core.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

From those benchmarks, an overclocked 3258 or skylake pentium has more than enough processing power to run the game. But Dice knows best, screw you if you have a dual core.

Some of us knew best two years ago:

You'd have to be a fool to buy a 2T CPU for gaming anymore, regardless of overclocking potential.

Some people still don't get it, but what I don't understand is why you've changed your tune in that 2 years:

Yea, problem is, you need an aftermarket cooler and a z87 motherboard, bringing the price close to the level of an i3 or FX 63xx system, which is more well rounded. Also with an i3, you know what performance to expect, while with the pentium you arent guaranteed what overclock you will be able to get.

I also dont agree with the sacrifice cpu for gpu theory. Not only are gpus easier to upgrade, gpus are advancing faster than cpus, so you stand to gain more from a gpu upgrade in a year or two, while a good quad intel cpu should last for several years. Also, it is easier to compensate for lack of gpu power by turning down settings than it is to compensate for lack of cpu power.

Despite high framerate in a lot of games, the Pentium is often a stuttering mess, thus it is not recommended.

 

[Carfax83]

Yea, but apparently haswell or even skylake cores are not good enough if you dont have hyperthreading. And even a Sandy Bridge i3 runs the game perfectly fine. Come on, hyperthreading at most adds 30 percent or so. From those benchmarks, an overclocked 3258 or skylake pentium has more than enough processing power to run the game. But Dice knows best, screw you if you have a dual core.

Hyperthreading adds 30% or so on quad cores and up (or it could reduce performance slightly when not CPU limited), but on dual cores, the performance increase is much higher, like 60 to 75%..

Termie from TBG did some benchmarks that reflect this:

 

[Zodiark1593]

That's a vast oversimplification. I don't think Gameworks has anything to do with the performance, or lack thereof for AMD parts. The main reason for poor performance in these UE4 titles on AMD hardware, is because they are all Indie developers.

Indie developers don't have the resources that major developers have, and so spend whatever time they have for optimization mainly on NVidia hardware as NVidia hardware represents the large majority of the discrete GPU market.

With professional developers, the gap will decrease tremendously. Though that's not to say that I don't believe UE4 favors NVidia hardware. It does, but that's not unusual.

.

Nvidia hardware typically possesses higher poly rates and fill rates than equivalent AMD hardware. Classic performance killers like overdraw are mitigated better as a result.

AAA developers typically optimize better and avoid excessive overdraw and poly counts in their games. In addition, they are better able to leverage compute for advanced shader effects, thus the advantage moves to AMD in these cases.

At least, the above is my hypothesis.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Yea, but apparently haswell or even skylake cores are not good enough if you dont have hyperthreading. And even a Sandy Bridge i3 runs the game perfectly fine. Come on, hyperthreading at most adds 30 percent or so. From those benchmarks, an overclocked 3258 or skylake pentium has more than enough processing power to run the game. But Dice knows best, screw you if you have a dual core.

It's almost 2017 -- So screw anyone trying to run a brand new game on a dual core.
They've had just shy of a decade to move up to a real CPU.

And no they are not. The only way a SL Pentium or 3258 has more than enough is to totally ignore the minimum frame rates.
I sold my 3258 because it is a stuttering piece of **** in modern games. It can only play demanding games made prior to 2014 well.
An i3 should be the absolute bare minimum for a gaming PC.

 

[Zodiark1593]

It's almost 2017 -- So screw anyone trying to run a brand new game on a dual core.
They've had just shy of a decade to move up to a real CPU.

And no they are not. The only way a SL Pentium or 3258 has more than enough is to totally ignore the minimum frame rates.
I sold my 3258 because it is a stuttering piece of **** in modern games. It can only play demanding games made prior to 2014 well.
An i3 should be the absolute bare minimum for a gaming PC.

An OCd Pentium certainly out-brutes the consoles, however, getting numerous tasks synced correctly on only a couple cores can cause hitching and stuttering.

Unless the game crashes or acts wonky when tasks aren't completed in perfect sync, there shouldn't be any technical reason a task couldn't be run on a dual core, even if it runs very poorly. However, providing support and dealing with poor feedback for/from those on dual core machines is probably the more expensive bit here.

 

[MajinCry]

If the game engine is designed to be as parallel as possible, why the bloody 'ell would ya then un-parallelize it? Dual cores are fer games like Neverwinter Nights 'n' Oblivion.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If the game engine is designed to be as parallel as possible, why the bloody 'ell would ya then un-parallelize it? Dual cores are fer games like Neverwinter Nights 'n' Oblivion.

You can run quad-threaded programs on a 2X clock-speed (and equal IPC) dual-core, without modification, in pretty-much all cases that I can conceive of, unless they're spin-locking stuff.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

You can run quad-threaded programs on a 2X clock-speed (and equal IPC) dual-core, without modification, in pretty-much all cases that I can conceive of, unless they're spin-locking stuff.

Oh, yeah... That's totally realistic. Considering most of today's quad cores are clocked between 3.5 to 4.0 Ghz..... You'd only need to overclock that dual core to 7.0 Ghz. That's practical.

 

[IllogicalGlory]

Oh, yeah... That's totally realistic. Considering most of today's quad cores are clocked between 3.5 to 4.0 Ghz..... You'd only need to overclock that dual core to 7.0 Ghz. That's practical.

How about a 4.7GHz Skylake Pentium vs a 3.6GHz BD FX-4100? I'd bet the Skylake is faster in every situation (significantly), but the strictly slower CPU gets to run the game because of some arbitrary criteria.

What about mythical graphene dual cores that hit 100GHz? They won't be able to run the game either.

 

[Carfax83]

How about a 4.7GHz Skylake Pentium vs a 3.6GHz BD FX-4100? I'd bet the Skylake is faster in every situation (significantly), but the strictly slower CPU gets to run the game because of some arbitrary criteria.

What about mythical graphene dual cores that hit 100GHz? They won't be able to run the game either.

It won't matter how fast the dual core is, if the game is programmed explicitly to use more than two threads.

Game engines have steadily increased their parallelism over the years, which is a good thing, because that's where the big performance increases lie.

Perhaps this latest iteration of the Frostbite 3 engine really does need four threads to work properly, which is why DICE put that warning on the minimum recommendation.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well we shall see. My best bet is that there will be a hack and the game will run fairly well on dual cores. I mean, they get 90fps on almost any cpu. Basically the game is cpu agnostic, except apparently it is too much for a dual core, no matter how fast it is.

I am done with this thread though. I understand that those who bought a quad core have a right to feel they make the right decision. What I dont understand is the venom directed towards those who dont have hardware that meets the criteria of some posters, and why anyone would want to have another user not be able to run the game. But I guess if one wants to feel superior because they made a better decision than someone else, more power to them.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It won't matter how fast the dual core is, if the game is programmed explicitly to use more than two threads.

Again I ask, how many software threads can a dual-core execute, using a modern time-slicing OS?

The only thing that really matters, is MT throughput.

 

[MajinCry]

You can run quad-threaded programs on a 2X clock-speed (and equal IPC) dual-core, without modification, in pretty-much all cases that I can conceive of, unless they're spin-locking stuff.

Ya missed the parallel part. Threaded != Parallelized. Threadin' is where you take one part, chuck it on another thread and then return the result to the main thread.

Parallelization is where you actively use threads in tandem. The terms get thrown about a bunch, but I think it works like so:

Multi threading = Utilizing more than 1 core
Threading = Offloading a task to a different core (e.g, physics on core 2, audio on core 3)
Parallelizing = Spreading a task across threads (e.g, physics on core 2 + 3 + 4, static batching on core 1 + 2)

Lightly-moderately threaded stuff (e.g, Elder Scrolls V: Oblivion) will run sufficiently on a dual core.

Parallel stuff (e.g World Machine 2, Presonus Studio One + Kontakt + Guitar Rig, static batching, navmesh generation) is going to bloody suffer with fewer, yet, somewhat faster cores.

 

[MajinCry]

Again I ask, how many software threads can a dual-core execute, using a modern time-slicing OS?

The only thing that really matters, is MT throughput.

Uh, no? Wasn't there a huge hubbub over the horrid frametimes dual core and dual-threaded CPUs were giving, in comparison to quad cores? Framerates may be within the margin of error, but the frametimes...Hoo boy.

And parallel stuff chokes to hell and back when it's designed for >2009 core availability

 

[Carfax83]

Well we shall see. My best bet is that there will be a hack and the game will run fairly well on dual cores. I mean, they get 90fps on almost any cpu. Basically the game is cpu agnostic, except apparently it is too much for a dual core, no matter how fast it is.

I don't think we can make any final judgment on performance just based on the beta. It's likely that the beta was either missing or running reduced graphical options to cut down the size, ie textures.

It's possible that the final code won't perform as well as the beta..

Again I ask, how many software threads can a dual-core execute, using a modern time-slicing OS?

The only thing that really matters, is MT throughput.

MajinCry makes a great point, when he says that threading isn't the same thing as parallelism. Kind of like how DX11 multithreading can increase performance by using multiple threads to record to a command list, it's still nowhere near as good as a low level API which can actually fully parallelize rendering across multiple threads so that all threads contribute to the rendering process simultaneously.

With basic multithreading, older engines like the Unreal Engine 3 used threading to perform separate tasks on separate threads, ie physics, rendering, streaming, audio etcetera.. It's in older engines like these that a dual core would serve fairly well.

But modern engines like Frostbite 3 use a task based parallelism which perform multiple jobs across many threads simultaneously.. This is the future of gaming, and the best way to really effectively utilize the greater potential of modern multicore CPUs.

Dual core CPUs are much more likely to choke on these engines, because they spawn so many threads/jobs which can overwhelm the CPU in short order..

That's why I always recommend hyperthreaded CPUs for gaming these days. The hyperthreading helps out immensely when it comes to not only taking advantage of the increased parallelism, but avoiding thread stalls and hiding memory latency.