multi-processor system

hermanocabral

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Aug 31, 2006
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is is true that if you have more processors (lets say, quad xeons), the games will run faster?

for what i know, games dont make usage of more then one processor...
 

Dragoon42

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Oct 2, 2000
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i think only a few games can use multi proc. Long run wise though, we'll probably be seeing more games that take advantage of it
 

Aluvus

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Apr 27, 2006
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Most current games will see no direct benefit from additional processors.
 

hermanocabral

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Aug 31, 2006
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does this make sense:

"games run using operational system resources.
with more processors, the operational system will run faster.
games will run faster."
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Gaming wasn't faster at all on my dual Xeon... I'd rather have a single fast processor & a fast video card...
 

hermanocabral

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i always thought that dual processor systems wasnt best for agmes at all, and like Fullmetal Chocobo said, its even better to have a faster proc. and better video card...


anyone knows why?
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: hermanocabral
i always thought that dual processor systems wasnt best for agmes at all, and like Fullmetal Chocobo said, its even better to have a faster proc. and better video card...

anyone knows why?

Know why what exactly? Why multi-processor systems are best for gaming? If that is your question, then the answer is that they are better suited for other more intensive tasks that are already taking advantage of multiple processors, such as rendering, animation, video processing, etc.
 

Ayah

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Jan 1, 2006
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Most games just aren't multithreaded. Now games are being developed to use 2 threads simultaneously but anymore isn't really supported.
 

hermanocabral

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Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
Originally posted by: hermanocabral
i always thought that dual processor systems wasnt best for agmes at all, and like Fullmetal Chocobo said, its even better to have a faster proc. and better video card...

anyone knows why?

Know why what exactly? Why multi-processor systems are best for gaming? If that is your question, then the answer is that they are better suited for other more intensive tasks that are already taking advantage of multiple processors, such as rendering, animation, video processing, etc.


Why multi-processor systems are not better for gaming?
 

w00t

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Nov 5, 2004
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if the game is multi-threaded or takes advantage of multiple cores it could help

dual cores is good enough for gamers though and there is only a couple games that really support multi-cores.

dual cpu's and quad cpu's are overrated now we have the technology for multi-cores on one chip

single core
dual core
quad core
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: hermanocabral
Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
Originally posted by: hermanocabral
i always thought that dual processor systems wasnt best for agmes at all, and like Fullmetal Chocobo said, its even better to have a faster proc. and better video card...

anyone knows why?

Know why what exactly? Why multi-processor systems are best for gaming? If that is your question, then the answer is that they are better suited for other more intensive tasks that are already taking advantage of multiple processors, such as rendering, animation, video processing, etc.


Why multi-processor systems are not better for gaming?

Because games really don't use 100% of a single processor. If they aren't coded to take advantage of two, it's piontless. It was nice gaming on one processor, and still crunching or rendering on another though. :)
 

hermanocabral

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Aug 31, 2006
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i just cant understand why multi processor systems are not better for games then single processor systems...

the logic thing would be that if you have more processors, your system runs faster and your games run faster....
 

Spikesoldier

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Oct 15, 2001
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for games:

if dual core cpu, = single cpu core speed, then take the dual core.

if single cpu > dual core cpu speed, then take the single core.
 

RadiclDreamer

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Aug 8, 2004
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In my experience Quake 4 runs tremendously better with a dual core setup nearly 80% in my case. Oblivion showed maybe 20% but other than that I see little to no difference
 

hermanocabral

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Aug 31, 2006
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i know that two or more processors doesnt make difference (two or more processors is different of dual core processors).. i just wanna know why
 

Baked

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Dec 28, 2004
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You're using the multi-CPU so programs you're running in the background of the game doesn't slow down the game nor the system as whole. It eliminateds the bottleneck sometimes seen when playing online multi-player games. This also has to do w/ the GPU I"m sure. If I were still playing WoW, I could probably give you a better answer. I used to get lag and crash when we're doing some intense raid boss fights.
 

Brian48

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Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer
In my experience Quake 4 runs tremendously better with a dual core setup nearly 80% in my case. Oblivion showed maybe 20% but other than that I see little to no difference

Well, Q4 specifically supports dual core. There's even an option in the game control panel for it to toggle on/off. Unfortunately, most games do not and until they do (via a patch), having dual cores is really not that beneficial if the game itself is not distributing the load over the two processors.

Ditto, I'm much rather have one really fast processor with a fast video card backing it up.
 

RichUK

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Feb 14, 2005
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Originally posted by: hermanocabral
i know that two or more processors doesnt make difference (two or more processors is different of dual core processors).. i just wanna know why

There is no difference. It doesn?t matter how the actual processing cores are implemented. Just as long as windows can utilise 1,2 or 4 (and so on)... cores. The only thing that differs with a single socket dual core, or a dual socket single core processor config is the I/O and memory subsystem.
 

hermanocabral

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Originally posted by: RichUK
Originally posted by: hermanocabral
i know that two or more processors doesnt make difference (two or more processors is different of dual core processors).. i just wanna know why

There is no difference. It doesn?t matter how the actual processing cores are implemented. Just as long as windows can utilise 1,2 or 4 (and so on)... cores. The only thing that differs with a single socket dual core, or a dual socket single core processor config is the I/O and memory subsystem.

what i want to say is that there is a difference between single socket dual core processor and dual socket single core processor...

i just wanna know why having 4 processors on one machine doesnt speed up games... the real reason, not just "because they dont use it"...
 

MrPickins

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May 24, 2003
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Originally posted by: hermanocabral
Originally posted by: RichUK
Originally posted by: hermanocabral
i know that two or more processors doesnt make difference (two or more processors is different of dual core processors).. i just wanna know why

There is no difference. It doesn?t matter how the actual processing cores are implemented. Just as long as windows can utilise 1,2 or 4 (and so on)... cores. The only thing that differs with a single socket dual core, or a dual socket single core processor config is the I/O and memory subsystem.

what i want to say is that there is a difference between single socket dual core processor and dual socket single core processor...

i just wanna know why having 4 processors on one machine doesnt speed up games... the real reason, not just "because they dont use it"...

Most games currently are programmed with only one thread:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(computer_science)

Thus only use one cpu. If they are programmed with more than one, they will see a boost in performance, but at the moment, the video card tends to be the weak link in most people's systems, so the boost is nowhere close to 2x.
 

A5

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Jun 9, 2000
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Originally posted by: hermanocabral
Originally posted by: RichUK
Originally posted by: hermanocabral
i know that two or more processors doesnt make difference (two or more processors is different of dual core processors).. i just wanna know why

There is no difference. It doesn?t matter how the actual processing cores are implemented. Just as long as windows can utilise 1,2 or 4 (and so on)... cores. The only thing that differs with a single socket dual core, or a dual socket single core processor config is the I/O and memory subsystem.

what i want to say is that there is a difference between single socket dual core processor and dual socket single core processor...

i just wanna know why having 4 processors on one machine doesnt speed up games... the real reason, not just "because they dont use it"...
That is the real reason. You have to program the game to specifically take advantage of multiple CPUs(or cores) for it to use them. There's no magical way to automatically multithread programs at runtime, it has to be done at compile-time.