Hyperthreading - Finally an answer
 

Holy moly, I don't know how many people asked on the forums and how often I tried it at Youtube, but I finally got an answer.


@OlegMaddox:
"Could you please answer whether this game takes advantage by a hyperthreading CPU? This can save us about 100 buccs."


"Yes, but not so much." (Quote Youtube)

"Yes, but not so much."

Meh, still pretty vague of an answer. But better then nothing, I appreciate it :)

I'd be rather interested if it benefits from multithreading.

I don't know any game that would profit from Hyperthreading. AFAIK only professional software does.


But lately Oleg posted that only part of the sound-engine is multithreaded. So we will have to see how well it performs with DX10s use of multiple cores.

Can you even buy a single core these days?

Perhaps, but what does that have to do with this topic? :confused:

I wondered about the same thing ;)

He is probably saying that it should be Multithreading enabled as you can no longer buy single core cpus.

You mean hyperthreading enabled. :D

We can't enable multithreading. Unless you already hacked the code, that is.

On Topic....

The question is if hyperthreading's "yes but not so much" worth $100?
I'm guessing that your looking between the 2500k and the 2600k right?

I'll tell you in 10 days.

Doesn't make any sense to buy a new machine before the first tests.

true that! Let other people be the guinea pigs.

lol, sorry but this did make me laugh, you got to love some of Olegs answers! :grin:

I cant understand why he uses Youtube when the forum for the game is here.

Yes, but I guess I'll go for the 2600k anyway. The question was not only my personal interest and it was more to find out if the engine supports new technologies. We'll see if the cores will be busy or not.
If not, then it's definately Oleg's engine that isn't up to the hardware and not the other way around.

And "taking advantage" of HT is very close in meaning to "make use", so taking the answer of Mr. Maddox literally, you get "CoD makes use of HT, but not much.".

A question along the lines of "Does CoD get a performance boost when HT is enabled?" could have resulted in a more useful answer. If the answer to that question would have been "not much", you would have at least known you'd get a 1% benefit or more.

If I'm playing devil's advocate too much in your eyes, I'm sorry. I just think it's important to not read too much into the information we're given and don't see things that aren't there. :)

My english is just not good enough to find the best fitting expressions.
But you could give it a try at Youtube, but make sure your question is always on top (unless you don't want an answer ;))

Oh, I'd like an answer, but I'm just not going to chase every possible site on the net where the oracle might appear. :) This is the site where you'd expect to get answers. Mr. Maddox would have been well advised to appoint a forum secretary, who would read the forum and filter the valid questions and observations for him. An intern would be well suited for such a job and it would help keep Mr. Maddox sanity and time 'wasted' on this forum to a minimum.

Oh, you're new to this forum?

LOL

I still think the $100 more is not worth it. 2500K would be the best option. Add the $100 to a SSD.

Um...duh...

If you can't buy a single-core processor, the OP question is pointless to ask.

:rolleyes:

Chances are you'll get 8 cores looking busy, whether it gives you any performance boost over a 2500k with 4 cores looking busy will only show in benchies of both chips.

Let's hope that at least 3-4 cores will be busy. And I don't mean 100% by that for sure.

I hope all cores minus one are kept 100% busy. (The -1 core being used by the OS) This would mean all available cores are used to the fullest and the game is truly multi-core.

But as Mr. Maddox said, it's a hybrid "multi-core" technology. One would think that one CPU would be used for synchronous calculations and another one or two cores be used for not time critical calculations: Sound, visual effects, AI ground movements/path finding, supply lines and other such calculations.

I hope we'll still be able to benefit from 6 or 8 core CPU's in the future, but I guess we'll see 3 cores being used for CoD.

We better abuse the cores over 4 with other tasks. Fraps? :grin:

So you say that all multicore-CPUs use hyperthreading?

Now THAT was new to me. :rolleyes:

I may be stating the obvious here but everyone knows that IL-2 uses hyperthreading too? It does. Although the improvements are limited to my understanding. It was talked about mostly during the Forgotten Battles release and then forgotten. I was assuming that IL-2 Cliffs of Dover would make use of it in some way as well.

If I were buying today... the Core i5 2500 is a great buy but the Core i7 2600 is just worth the extra money. Both are incredible bangs for the buck in higher end systems.

This is not good news...

This is not good news...

Wait infact its not right - they cannot enable or disable hyperthreading. Multithreading hey program, hyperthreading is done automatically by the hardware and the game has no control over it because it sees virtual cores.
Answer: Hyperthreading is enabled, because the cpu dictates that. Multithreading on the otherhand... Seems like a very bad omen.

I think Oleg was genuinely answering whether a hyper-threading processor (eg i7-2600K) would give any advantage over a non hyper-threading (eg i5-2500K) [so to answer Feuerfalke - not all multi-core CPUs use hyper-threading]

His answer maybe reflects the results of some testing done by Custom PC mag when the Sandy Bridges came out:

in Crysis on their test system (DX10, 64-bit, 1680x1050, no AA)

i7-2600K
min fps = 36

average fps = 64

i5-2500K
min fps = 34

average fps = 60

There you have it - Crysis takes advantage of hyperthreading too, 'but not so much' :)

(As others have remarked there is much confusion on the go over hyper-threading V multi-threading.)



...and just to confuse things further, when the 2 processors were overclocked the i5-2500K had higher min fps (42 V 37), and equal average fps to the i7-2600K (both 67). Apparently, hyper-threading doesn't respond so well to overclocking. Underlines the fact that things are more complicated than they may at first appear.


!!!

I went for the i5-2500K, but hey, it's your money :)

To be really safe wait another week and then check up on the feedback

Yea well it would have to use more than 4 threads to be "hyperthreaded", for intel cpus. Crysis is getting a bit dated now as most people were on single or early duos when it was released. On the positive side if the game uses 4 threads and you buy a i7 with hyperthreading, you can run the OS and other software on the spare threads on the cores with the least cpu load.

Depends on how rich you are, really. Are 2-3 fps worth a 100 quid to you? Buy a 2600.

That's the bottom line for me as well. Whatever the hardware component in question, if i pay an extra 1/3rd of the price i expect an extra 1/3rd of performance too, but since that never happens i just buy the second best component and save enough money to possibly upgrade another one.

This is a better strategy overall and gives better all around performance, assuming you are a mere mortal like the majority of us and don't have an endless supply of money. If you really are super rich case go ahead and buy the best you can find across the board, but for the majority of people it doesn't work out that way :-P
For example, one could buy the top of the line CPU, or the second best CPU and an extra 3-4GB of DDR3 RAM for the same price (depending on whether he runs a dual or tripple channel mobo) or an SSD, etc.

@OlegMaddox
And what about more than 4 Cores?

"4 - yes, more can't aswer without consulting from programmers. Night here."


Oleg doesn't really seem well informed about how his engine works ... :rolleyes:

hardware utilisation is not his area...why do you think he should be a superman? Is there a superman? Where?

Superman? Did anybody say superman?

Oleg saying that current hardware isn't good enough || Oleg not knowing if the engine can handle the hardware efficiently.


I find it paradox, but that's just me.

All of you wondering about HT and more than 4 cores should wait for late June - when Bulldozers with 6 and 8 physical cores are out. Spending extra cash on 2600k (for CoD) is money wasted IMO.

You ABSOLUTELY want to spend the extra money for the K series chips because those are overclockable. Those chips overclock very well and have a massive performance benefit over the non-K series.

I have a 2600k OC to 4,6GHz.
Crysis Warhead uses all cores equally but only charges 43% of the CPU at the worst moments of the game in enthusiastic mode at 1920x1200 2xAA.
Most of the game seems to be calculated in the GPU ( GTX 580 )
The comparison maybe is not so valid with CoD.

This is not the discussion of this thread. Of course that k series is recommended. No on here is saying otherwise.

That's not the question. I guess nobody would not want to overclock these k sandy bitches.

No matter if you get a 2600 or 2500 get a K! Like 10 bucks and you can get a 30% perf boost from oc - the chips are identical its just the K gets the better intgrated GPU (3000 vs 2000) and a unlock on the multiplier.

On the face of it that's good advice - except that someone in my position with a below recommended-spec dual core setup that I know won't run the game that well - is faced with spending the 3 most exciting months in the life of this new series being frustrated and annoyed at either bad fps OR low quality screens while everyone else raves about how amazing the game is.

You only get to experience the newness once - why have it messed up when you can do something about it?

Also - I'm taking an educated guess (bet!) that Bulldozer won't actually threaten the SB position as top dog - floating point implementation and no or little benefit from the extra cores for gaming

And yes - patience probably isn't my strong point. :)

S!

Some preliminary tests have shown an engineering example of BD beating a SB hands down ;)

Tests run by whom though? AMD?

Oh no - I'm turning into a Fanboy!

----

actually, isn't this just the latest instance of the old computing conundrum? - there is ALWAYS something better and faster just around the corner

Please link your source, otherwise I call BULLSHIT. Why? Because I am tired of people claiming anything they want on this forum and not backing it up.

Look at it this way, you won't have to deal with release bugs. There will be a patch or two out by that time. :)

Assumption is a mother of all f***. ;)

I have read numerous rumors as well - I don't believe it until I see it. Even if it beats SB it will be marginal. And the price will reflect that.

Your sarcasm aside, my comment was regarding the post made on fact that single-core processors are probably not available (and if they still are, who would want to buy one? especially for gaming?!.)

That being said, if you buy a new system, it's highly likely that it will be multi-core and IF it is INTEL (this added just for you), the question of "does COD support multi-threading" can be seen as "pointless" as it WILL or WILL NOT use it and there isn't a thing you could do about it.

Unless, of course, you use this argument to say to yourself "then I'll save money and buy a single-core based system" in which case, it's a logical fail.

So relax mighty Feuerfalke, no one's looking to take your cake.

It will use it, COD doesnt decide that. If the game uses over 4 threads then on i7s it will automatically switch to hyperthreading and if it only uses 4 the cpu will use HT anyway to run other apps. I5s are not HT btw.