Multi-threaded CPU and gaming

[voodooking]

I just read that Multi-Threaded chips are great for 3-d rendering. Does an i-7 chip matter when the game is in 3d? Is that the same kind of workload as video editing?

As you can tell, I'm lost..

 

[Raiddinn]

You have to program something for multiple cores if you want it to use multiple cores.

With high end audio and video editing, people have no choice but to use multiple cores if they want the tasks to get done any time this year.

Games, on the other hand, aren't nearly as processor intensive. In fact, they generally try to make games rely on video cards as much as possible so people with sucky processors can still play them.

That is why games generally only use 2 cores while audio/video will use the whole 8 no problem.

An i7 would matter, yes. It depends on which one, but the i5-2500k is generally considered to be near the top of the heap for gaming because it has 4 great cores and no game uses more than that. The 2600k and 2700k and other i7's have the benefit of Hyper Threading (meaning 4 cores act like 8), but it doesn't matter for gaming because few games use 4 cores anyway and absolutely none use 8.

 

[masakruwolverine]

Playing with HT ON and HT OFF with an i7 860 here and there is no difference except for the temps,they are lower,the CPU is much cooler without HT.

 

[HostileDonut]

Raiddinn gave a great answer. In games, even if it runs with 3D, the CPU usage should be about the same. Games are programmed to run with a certain amount of threads and very few games even run 6 threads. The core i7 is for very heavy work-loads that can actually use the extra threads. Threads are not cores though. Each Hyper-Thread is about 20% the speed of an actual core, meaning it isn't anywhere close to twice as fast like it sounds like it is.

Hope this helped!

 

[voodooking]

So, as games go into the future, the hyper-threading is irrelevant. Even if it's 3D.

 

[amuffin]

Currently games are barely multi-threaded, which means they only use 2 cores. However, I believe the future may hold better development for games that are multi-threaded, which means hyperthreading could give more performance. Then again, developers would most likely focus on better adaptation for the GPU architectures rather than making the game CPU dependent.

 

[HostileDonut]

So, as games go into the future, the hyper-threading is irrelevant. Even if it's 3D.

Yes, but that is far from now, as games are starting to use 4 threads and still generally use two. 8 threads is a good ways away. Your i7 would be old by then.

 

[voodooking]

Best answer selected by voodooking.