Dual core or quad core?

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[Racer96]

I bought SSE about a week ago, and it lags like hell on my Asus G50V. Im planning to buy a new computer JUST FOR THIS GAME But im not sure what processor would be good.

Should i buy a 2,6 GHz quad core or a 3,3 GHz dual core? Seems like a Asus G73JH laptop is a good choice.

[Captain Spencer]

Well I don't think Extremes utilises multiple cores properly, so unless you do intensive video editing or 3d Rendering then getting quad core would prove pointless in my opinion.

Besides, with dual core you would have one for the operating system and one to run the game (for example).

I'm sure those with multiple cores will give their advice too though, as I only have a single core computer (I know, the darkages!).

Also, do some research on Google, you'll find millions of threads on the internet about this

[Racer96]

Thanks. I guess i'll have to look for a G73 with a i7 620M then. It runs at 3,33 GHz so it should be more than enough to run the game without any lag

[Captain Spencer]

Well I would wait until the patch comes out, to see if it helps with the performance or not

[Racer96]

Yeah.. Well i dont have enough money atm so dont worry, ill probably buy one in q1 or q2 2011

[Finn700]

I also can confirm after my tests SSE in this version doesn't utilize multiple threads at all, so it's all about single core performance.
Of course some modern 2+ core systems can have more processing power in that single core what older single-core processors had. It's more complicated than pure Ghz number.

[Stuart2007]

As a pointless aside, I once worked on a computer that cost £10,000 in mid-late 90s and it had... TWO processors, with slots for another 2.

It was not any faster than the 133 P1 it replaced..... at ten grand!

[sadsid (†2016)]

I also can confirm after my tests SSE in this version doesn't utilize multiple threads at all, so it's all about single core performance.
Of course some modern 2+ core systems can have more processing power in that single core what older single-core processors had. It's more complicated than pure Ghz number.

Why are there 4 running here then ?

[Racer96]

It's because some programs use multiple cores. Or just because one program is running on core 1 and another one on core 2 and so on.

[Chitch]

I'm running a dual core AMD Athalon II processor at 2.8 Ghz with 3 GB or ram and a 1 GB video board....no problems here...smooth as silk....just for comparison's sake.  It's a Compaq Presario CQ5320F model with Windows 7 Home Premium (pre-installed), and the only upgrades I've done are the video board and I popped in a more beefy Power Supply...put in a 500 Watter...the old one was only 170 Watts  ...barely ran the system on it's own, but it's honkin' now.  I'm thinking of bumping the ram up to 4 GB soon, but at this stage, I'm not sure I really need it.  Then again, the general rule of thumb is that there is no such thing as too much RAM and a Hard Drive that's too big...so....I'll keep thinking on it.

Jim

[fishlikelong]

I have an intel quad core processor at 2.4ghz and 4gb ram.
I also have an ATI Radion HD 3570..I think it was anyway...I need to check my PC...but anyway that has 256mb of onboard memory...Again I need to double check but that's roughly what my system spec is and the game runs pretty well.

[Finn700]

Why are there 4 running here then ?

I've got quite clean system (no extra processes running in the background), and it looks like this:

[MokMok]

I have a three core processor. AMD Phenom II X3 running at 2.8 gHz. Only one processor is very active when running SSE2010.

[Mad_Fred]

I have approx. 5 out of 8 cores go much more active when I start SSE with a clean boot. The others dont seem to be needed somehow, I reckon.

Normally only one or two would have a minimal activity for the background stuff but when SSE starts 4 or 5 start working much harder.

That's not just to accomodate the few background programs. So it does use multiple cores for me, so it would seem.

But, I did however manually set the machine to use all 8 cores where appropriate. So that might be why.

[krytsch]

Mad Fred,
how do you manually set your machine to use all its cores? The CPU is the bottleneck here.

I remember that VSTEP (in the discussion about the newly published minimum system requirements) told us, that SSE would take advantage of multiple cores. Unfortunately I can NOT confirm that. On my machine it (alt least the demo) only uses one of the two cores. This core is running at 100 %, while the other one is nearly idle. The demo runs at game killing 8-9 fps in Sidney when the graphics settings re set to high or at not much better 10-11 fps when the graphics are set to low. The task manager shows result according to Finn700's screenshot.

I do not see SSE use more then one core - which other programs do. And which really is a shame, because we currently live in the year 2010!
So if you know a way to make it use the other core as well, please let me/us know how to do that.

[Mad_Fred]

Well, I don't know if this is the direct result of it, because I didnt set this up with Shipsim in mind actually.

but.. (and this is in Win7 btw)

I goto start -> and I run 'msconfig'  (or you can do windowskey+R and type it there)

Then on the 'startup' tab, I go to 'advanced'.

And there, in the upper left hand corner, I selected the manual setting for number of cpu's and have put it to 8.

As I said, if I start the pc, there's very little activity, and I then start SSE and a bunch of the 8 cores start doing their magic, as seen in the system popup, then it has to come from somewhere... and I don't reckon that background stuff that only needed 'just above idle' on one core, suddenly needs 5 cores operating like they do then.

But hey, I might still be wrong. All I know is that Vstep indeed said, SSE was using multiple cores in 'some places'

Now, I don't have the specifics about that, to be honest. 


Fred.

[krytsch]

That' what I call quick a quick reply!

Well, it's XP here, but I'll give it a try or at least have a look at it.

You're right - they stated that the game was taking advantage of multiple cores in some places or cases - I don't remember the original text. But if these 'places' only are when loading the game, it is quite poor - as mentioned we have the year 2010 now, and there not many single core CPUs left in the western world.

But at first I will have a look at msconfig and see, if I can do the same setting in Win XP too.

EDIT:
With msconfig I can manually set the number of cores, which are used for booting. It does not influence the behaviour while running the system. As mentioned, my Windows DOES know about the cores, and uses them for some other applications - unfortunately NOT for QuestViewer.

[moonrider]

Questviewer is using ALL the cores, but one at the time, the one thats NOT busy will be used.
So it realy uses all of youre cores and always gets one thats "free".
There are little progs like core view to see whats happening while playing the game.

Rider

[Finn700]

Ahem..
The whole point of multicore-support is to maximize the computing power of the processor available, so the program should use the power of all available cores, if you have 4-core system and the program uses only one, it can use maximum 25% of the total computing power.

More and more new games are build for multithreaded enviroment so they can utilize the computer power of several separated cores, so one core does enviroment and talks with GPU, another one will create the sounds, next one computes the AI and if there's more, one core could be dedicated to calculate physics etc.

So SSE is not using all the cores, the computer selects which core it will dedicate to SSE to use, it can vary, but still one core at the time, so SSE uses single core.

Even the FSX used single core when it was published (2006), newest patch enabled partial multicore-support which still isn't very widely known fact, because it needs little manual work to be enabled.

[MokMok]

@Mad_Fred:

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Re: Dual core or quad core?
« Reply #15 on: Today at 00:39:54 »
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Well, I don't know if this is the direct result of it, because I didnt set this up with Shipsim in mind actually.

but.. (and this is in Win7 btw)

I goto start -> and I run 'msconfig'  (or you can do windowskey+R and type it there)

Then on the 'startup' tab, I go to 'advanced'.

And there, in the upper left hand corner, I selected the manual setting for number of cpu's and have put it to 8.

As I said, if I start the pc, there's very little activity, and I then start SSE and a bunch of the 8 cores start doing their magic, as seen in the system popup, then it has to come from somewhere... and I don't reckon that background stuff that only needed 'just above idle' on one core, suddenly needs 5 cores operating like they do then.

I have included the /numproc=3 switch in my boot.ini and I restarted my PC. It seems that SSE10 (Questviewer.exe) is now using the three cores of my AMD Phenom II X3 simultaneously. The processor load is equally divided over the three cores. When I did not use that switch before editing my boot.ini, only one core had a nearly 100% load, while the other two were nearly idle. I think that it will give a better heat distribution over the processor dye when all the three core are used equally.

[krytsch]

I have included the /numproc=3 switch in my boot.ini and I restarted my PC. It seems that SSE10 (Questviewer.exe) is now using the three cores of my AMD Phenom II X3 simultaneously

... that's exactly what I did (that said I only chose 2 instead of 3 because my AMD CPU only has two cores.). But according to Microsoft the numproc argument only affects the behaviour while booting - not while running applications. So this is no solution.
The only solution will be up to date programming, taking in account all the users with multiple core processors. Only 50 % of the computing power is used here, and for people with more modern systems it will be even less. So - referring to moonrider's post - I don't care which of the cores Questviewer uses - it only uses ONE of them at a time, and that is what is wrong.

[sydmichel]

Well, I don't know if this is the direct result of it, because I didnt set this up with Shipsim in mind actually.

but.. (and this is in Win7 btw)

I goto start -> and I run 'msconfig'  (or you can do windowskey+R and type it there)

Then on the 'startup' tab, I go to 'advanced'.

Just to be pedantic, I believe its the 'Boot tab' that is required.

[Mad_Fred]

My Windows is in Dutch, so I had to make a guess what it would say in English, even though Krytsch's Windows might well be in German though..  

Thanks!  

[krytsch]

That's right - in German the 'Boot.ini' tab is required, ant I think it's the same in every language (because 'boot.ini' in German translated into English would mean 'boat.ini', which only makes sense for us shipsim players - which I don't believe Microsoft had in mind when they were creating XP).

The other difference is of course the operating system: Mad_Fred has Win7, I have XP.

But I am sure we all are talking about the same thing.

[Finn700]

The usage of manually control the amount of processors/cores is to reduce the performance of system (for programmers to simulate single-core system on multicore-platform).

Windows automatically uses all available cores by default.