Will future games be more or less CPU limited

[darunium]

Right now it depends a lot on the game, note how much the CPU effects Dragon Age: Origins framerate versus say Starcraft II or Crysis:Warhead, which have only a 10-15% spread in performance comparing current to 3 year old CPUs.

Has anyone seen inclings of which way the current trends are moving for future performance?

 

[exar333]

Right now it depends a lot on the game, note how much the CPU effects Dragon Age: Origins framerate versus say Starcraft II or Crysis:Warhead, which have only a 10-15% spread in performance comparing current to 3 year old CPUs.

Has anyone seen inclings of which way the current trends are moving for future performance?

SCII is HEAVILY CPU dependant, as most RTS style games are. The current trend will likely continue. CPU performance will vary greatly by genre/title dependanding on the needs of the game.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Unfortunately SCII won't use more than two cores...

 

[aigomorla]

more... because with moor's law they always end up having more to work with.

And personally cpu scaling would be more benifical then gpu scaling because more people are bound to run multi processor cpu's more then multi gpu'd systems.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

CPU and GPU requirements are going to keep going up.

 

[Absolution75]

Developers wouldn't waste computations that can be done on a CPU. They'll stride for the most efficient solution to any problem which in this case would be using 100% of your CPU and 100% of your GPU at all times.

 

[aigomorla]

Developers wouldn't waste computations that can be done on a CPU. They'll stride for the most efficient solution to any problem which in this case would be using 100% of your CPU and 100% of your GPU at all times.

yeah but which of more do you think most people have or will have?

Cpu Cores or GPU cores?

I can bet u right now the number of cpu cores vs gpu cores will be at least 10:1 if not greater..

 

[3DVagabond]

yeah but which of more do you think most people have or will have?

Cpu Cores or GPU cores?

I can bet u right now the number of cpu cores vs gpu cores will be at least 10:1 if not greater..

I'm confused over what you mean here. Most people are running 2-4 cpu cores, with up to 8 threads, with a very small percentage having more than that. GPU's have hundreds of "cores", CUDA cores or SPU.

 

[aigomorla]

I'm confused over what you mean here. Most people are running 2-4 cpu cores, with up to 8 threads, with a very small percentage having more than that. GPU's have hundreds of "cores", CUDA cores or SPU.

errr ur right...

And i cant even use the word threads also.

Ummm.. well people will be running multi cores more often then multi gpu's.
And more do multi CPU's even b4 they go into multi gpu cores. (enterprise)

 

[greenhawk]

Depends on the game.

A pc based one will push both equally enough. Though a game aimed as a console port will not matter until new consoles are out (The current consoles are behind in the hardware department).

 

[pcm81]

Once "Microsoft Kids" relearn how to program the games will rely less on CPU. I suspect eventually algorithm parallelazation will take over and CPU will be mostly seen as a task scheduler, rather than a workhorse. GPU will be the workhorse.

 

[3DVagabond]

CPU and GPU requirements are going to keep going up.

^This, and not just with games. That's what makes people buy new stuff.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

CPU and GPU requirements will always be increasing in line with the hardware, however we have to considering the large number of games that are developed primarily for console hardware which don't see the frequency of hardware updates that PC hardware does

 

[Cerb]

errr ur right...

And i cant even use the word threads also.

Ummm.. well people will be running multi cores more often then multi gpu's.
And more do multi CPU's even b4 they go into multi gpu cores. (enterprise)

My GPU has over 300 cores, and it's a crippled chip (GTX 460). Since CUDA and Stream, we've been running many-core GPUs, in just as much of a sense as CPUs, however alien their operational layouts may be to each other.

Multiple CPUs are not common, and will not become common, nor will multiple [GP]GPUs. We regular users prefer the cost savings of the continual improvements in integration brought to use by Moore's Law--cram more into one chip, please. Multiple cores for each, however, we have had since at least 2006 (I'm drawing the line at the 8800GTS' official release).

 

[JimmiG]

A many-core CPU is only good at doing many unrelated things at once. You could end up with situations where 31 of your CPU cores are waiting for that last core to finish and deliver the results, before they can continue working (extreme example, but you get the idea). You can "optimize" for multiple cores/threads by trying to split up a big algorithm into smaller, independent operations, or find some other task for the idle cores to occupy themselves with, but there's only so much you can do. The ultimate limit is probably the humans that write the code.

A multi-core GPU traditionally also did many unrelated things at once - it determined the color of each pixel, and there are a lot of pixels. However, the same thing is now happening in graphics. Each pixel isn't an isolated instance - advanced effects may force the GPU to take into account the colors of other pixels in a scene to determine the final color.

So both will eventually hit a brick wall, IMO. However it will take *much* longer before this happens with GPUs, because there are so many pixels to work with.

 

[Anarchist420]

It depends. If audio or AI ever become more advanced, then CPU requirements will go up in the future. If there is a really advanced CPU-only physics engine in the future, then the required CPU for that will be really high.

However, when raytracing is used, like it will be with idTech6, then you can bet your sweet ass that your current GPU (rather than your CPU) will come to its knees when running it. So many shader cores will be necessary that it won't even be funny.