FX-8150 vs i7/i5, what games use all 8 cores and is there a benchmark?

[blazorthon]

BF3 in multiplayer is the only game known to use 8 cores, the upcoming Medal of Honor game likely will as well too since it uses the same game engine as BF3, however these games will be few and far between. There are a lot of games that still only use 2 cores. an i5 quad is more than adequate to handle any game you come across on the market and will continue to for some time. The video card has been and still is the heaviest deciding factor on your gaming performance.

BF3 only effectively uses six threads, not eight.

 

[gamerk316]

1: Cores != Threads

2: On Windows, the highest priority feasible thread always runs. Foreground applications get a priority boost as of Vista/7, and threads that are waiting have their priority boosted over time. But user threads are the lowest IRQ level, and just about any OS task will preempt them.

On a single core processor, if you move your mouse, guess what? Your game stops running, the thread that handles reading mouse input is run, processed, and then your game thread is continued from where it left off. This is done very, very fast, so you don't notice that your application stops every single time you move the mouse.

On a multiple-core processor, its more likely another core (one that isn't running your applications main thread) will handle reading the mouse input, but the same concept remains: The highest priority threads ALWAYS run.

3: Games don't tend to scale well because a lot of their processing is SERIAL, not parallel.

Example: in a FPS, an enemy is 10m in front of you, looking in your direction. Does he see you? Depends if there is a physical object blocking Line of Sight. So you can't process the AI engine until AFTER the geometry matrix has been created.

Another example: The AI engine responds to audio cues (gunshot, etc), so you can't process AI until AFTER you process the audio engine.

Another example: An audio engine that handles sound propagation will require both the Geometry matrix be created AND input from the physics engine in order to accurately handle processing audio. So audio must be processed AFTER the geometry is created and at some point during the physics engine.

And so on and so on.

Games are an example of Amdahl's law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

If 20% of the program is parallel, your maximum speedup due to adding more processing resources (cores) is 20%, no matter how many cores you add. So new consoles won't magically cause programmers to start coding to use more cores (which they don't do anyway; core loading is the domain of the OS's scheduler). [Ironically, it appears the WiiU only has a tri-core ~730MHz PPC 7xx CPU. So much for that argument...]

 

[blazorthon]

1: Cores != Threads

2: On Windows, the highest priority feasible thread always runs. Foreground applications get a priority boost as of Vista/7, and threads that are waiting have their priority boosted over time. But user threads are the lowest IRQ level, and just about any OS task will preempt them.

On a single core processor, if you move your mouse, guess what? Your game stops running, the thread that handles reading mouse input is run, processed, and then your game thread is continued from where it left off. This is done very, very fast, so you don't notice that your application stops every single time you move the mouse.

On a multiple-core processor, its more likely another core (one that isn't running your applications main thread) will handle reading the mouse input, but the same concept remains: The highest priority threads ALWAYS run.

3: Games don't tend to scale well because a lot of their processing is SERIAL, not parallel.

Example: in a FPS, an enemy is 10m in front of you, looking in your direction. Does he see you? Depends if there is a physical object blocking Line of Sight. So you can't process the AI engine until AFTER the geometry matrix has been created.

Another example: The AI engine responds to audio cues (gunshot, etc), so you can't process AI until AFTER you process the audio engine.

Another example: An audio engine that handles sound propagation will require both the Geometry matrix be created AND input from the physics engine in order to accurately handle processing audio. So audio must be processed AFTER the geometry is created and at some point during the physics engine.

And so on and so on.

Games are an example of Amdahl's law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

If 20% of the program is parallel, your maximum speedup due to adding more processing resources (cores) is 20%, no matter how many cores you add. So new consoles won't magically cause programmers to start coding to use more cores (which they don't do anyway; core loading is the domain of the OS's scheduler). [Ironically, it appears the WiiU only has a tri-core ~730MHz PPC 7xx CPU. So much for that argument...]

BF3 MP scales very well over its six threads when you have at or near 64 players and maybe fewer will scale well too, granted that is with humans playing, not AIs.

 

[nekulturny]

BF3 only effectively uses six threads, not eight.

Its my understanding that the Frostbite 2 engine fully utilizes 8 cores, but whatever, I don't care enough to research it further to back it up, since the point is that Intel i5 quads are perfectly capable of handling the game at the highest possible settings.

 

[blazorthon]

Its my understanding that the Frostbite 2 engine fully utilizes 8 cores, but whatever, I don't care enough to research it further to back it up, since the point is that Intel i5 quads are perfectly capable of handling the game at the highest possible settings.

That they are. It'll probably be a long time before they can't handle modern games unless CPU requirements actually get serious any time soon.

 

[gamerk316]

BF3 MP scales very well over its six threads when you have at or near 64 players and maybe fewer will scale well too, granted that is with humans playing, not AIs.

Well, it would make sense to have all communication over the Internet as its own separate thread, so that more or less explains why BF3 (and most MP games) tends to scale better then SP. (Especially notable given how bad EA's netcode tends to be).

 

[hctim2001]

The FX has the potential to beat a Core i7 but since most applications use up to 4 cores the FX CPU just cant compete.There is currently only one game that i know of that uses more than 4 cores efficiently and thats Battlefield 3.It uses 6 cores and in it, the FX processor is a bit faster than a Core i5.
But remember most games use 2-4 cores and so Intel's processors perform better.
Intel just uses a superior archetecture.That's why at most games you need a FX at 4.8 GHZ just to match a Core i5 at 3.3.

Guys, Battlefield 3 doesn't use 6 cores at all. 2 cores is already enough to play Battlefield 3. The performance of the game would not be as good as it will normally be. But for good performance in Battlefield 3 then 3-4 cores is enough.
PS: Ofcourse you must also look at other stuff of the computer. Like: Graphics Card, GB Ram, Storage(Most computer would have more then enough)

 

[anxiousinfusion]

because there is no core left for the mouse driver! ... there always a core left to play the music, respond to the mouse and write files to disk.

A single operation will rarely occupy an entire core as you make it out to be. Unless you're joking -- I'm terrible for detecting sarcasm.

 

[k9shell]

since next gen consoles are using 8 core processor of x86 architecture, i can see that from 2014 games will start using 8 cores. both sony and Microsoft are using AMD 8 core. they both chose cores over ipc. IDK why, maybe cheaper or smth. but since it is the same architecture, Devs will design games on 8 cores from then i think and just port it to consoles or PCs, obv they will support 6 or 4 or 2 cores for PC aswell. The Cores vs IPC battle will then heat up. whos gunna win? god knows!! lol.

But its all good news for PC. there will be no console exclusive games. (i am talking about red dead redemption which was avaialble on xbox 360 an ps3 but not on PC). since its the same architecture, it just requires less work for getting tons of extra money from the pc gaming community! Maybe cross platform gaming will happen some day.

Playing BF4 64 players against pc xbox 720 and ps4. would be nice.

 

[Moh Kash]

since next gen consoles are using 8 core processor of x86 architecture, i can see that from 2014 games will start using 8 cores. both sony and Microsoft are using AMD 8 core. they both chose cores over ipc. IDK why, maybe cheaper or smth. but since it is the same architecture, Devs will design games on 8 cores from then i think and just port it to consoles or PCs, obv they will support 6 or 4 or 2 cores for PC aswell. The Cores vs IPC battle will then heat up. whos gunna win? god knows!! lol.

But its all good news for PC. there will be no console exclusive games. (i am talking about red dead redemption which was avaialble on xbox 360 an ps3 but not on PC). since its the same architecture, it just requires less work for getting tons of extra money from the pc gaming community! Maybe cross platform gaming will happen some day.

Playing BF4 64 players against pc xbox 720 and ps4. would be nice.

"In a perfect world" ) where I can show theis console twits how to play for real

 

[zunaidahmed]

since next gen consoles are using 8 core processor of x86 architecture, i can see that from 2014 games will start using 8 cores. both sony and Microsoft are using AMD 8 core. they both chose cores over ipc. IDK why, maybe cheaper or smth. but since it is the same architecture, Devs will design games on 8 cores from then i think and just port it to consoles or PCs, obv they will support 6 or 4 or 2 cores for PC aswell. The Cores vs IPC battle will then heat up. whos gunna win? god knows!! lol.

But its all good news for PC. there will be no console exclusive games. (i am talking about red dead redemption which was avaialble on xbox 360 an ps3 but not on PC). since its the same architecture, it just requires less work for getting tons of extra money from the pc gaming community! Maybe cross platform gaming will happen some day.

Playing BF4 64 players against pc xbox 720 and ps4. would be nice.

"In a perfect world" ) where I can show theis console twits how to play for real

only six cores would be utilized for gaming while the other two would be used only for the system and background apps

 

[jaguarskx]

Here's multiplayer benchmarks for Battlefield 3:

Source (in German): http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Battlefield-3-PC-221396/Specials/Battlefield-3-Multiplayer-Tipps-CPU-Benchmark-1039293/