News Star Citizen Now Requires AVX Support, Killing off Intel Pentium Platforms

nofanneeded

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Chris Roberts should use this game Engine for a new Wing Commander game .. maybe the start of the universe when the Kilrathy Attacked the Human race ... or Just Wing Commander triology remake ...
 

nofanneeded

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Lol and get $200 million more and never actually finish the game.

Wing Commander game can be done easy and very fast unlike open online gaming .. and the engine is ready for it . and this time would be cheaper to make, no more real Acting and hiring expensive paid actors/actresses . 3D animation is even better and can do impossible cutscenes

The Original Wing Command lacked online story mode , where your wings men help you in battle ...

Also , I find Wing Commander story interesting. and the beginning of the story can make a cool trilogy .
 

CerianK

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I likely won't be playing Star Citizen, but I get where some of the disappointment in the forums is coming from... my old workstation that I turned into a gaming rig runs an OC'd Xeon W3690 with no AVX. I doubt it would struggle with SC, but I am assuming that there are few other non-AVX CPUs available (still in common use) that are in its performance class.

Regardless, it may not be horribly difficult to create/maintain a parallel non-AVX code-path, depending on how extensively they have implemented AVX. Personally, I hate writing AVX code (using C with GCC in Linux), and cannot easily read my own AVX code for debugging once it it written (though I'm not very good with C, in general anyway).
 
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jasonf2

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The majority of those processors are so outdated that I would be questioning OS and driver support on Windows 10 long before worrying about SC. Anything without AVX today is so low level that those chips are being used for IOT level stuff, certainly not gaming rigs. AVX extensions are so established that I am sure that the user base on a whole is going to be much happier utilizing them than hold the entire ecosystem back to maintain the few individuals trying to run ancient/ultra low end hardware. Any online game that runs long enough will face the fact that if they continue development hardware obsolescence will become a sore spot for a given number of players no matter what.
 

Findecanor

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However good it runs on older hardware, removing CPU support in a patch is a dick move IMNSHO. It's a matter of principles.
You don't alter the system requirements for installed software. Updates should not break anything!

If it had been a new game or a new major version then that would have been a different story.
 
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You don't alter the system requirements for installed software. Updates should not break anything!
The game is still in "alpha" though. I mean, it's been in alpha and barely playable for like 8 years now, but alpha nonetheless. : P

However, it is probably worth pointing out that when people were first buying this game during its 2012 Kickstarter, processors without AVX support would have been quite common. Sandy Bridge only came out a year prior, and Bulldozer had just launched.

And the developers continued to do crowdfunding and collect money from those hoping to one day have something resembling a complete game, at this point have brought in over $300 million. So there are probably people who bought the game over 8 years ago and continued funding it, hoping to eventually play the finished product on what was then a modern gaming system. Now, the game they funded is dropping support for their hardware, still with no end to its development in sight.
 
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The majority of those processors are so outdated that I would be questioning OS and driver support on Windows 10 long before worrying about SC.
What are you even talking about? These are THIS GEN processors, Pentiums are available from EVERY 1-10 Intel generation, and the 3000g is still, so far, a current Gen AMD processor.
 
...and the 3000g is still, so far, a current Gen AMD processor.
The 3000G does support AVX instructions though. Even AMD's $55 Celeron competitors have supported that feature. It's just Intel not including it on their lower-end processors for product segmentation reasons. Which seems a bit weird, considering people probably won't even realize AVX instructions are a thing until they run into some piece of software that requires them.
 

Wolfshadw

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...people probably won't even realize AVX instructions are a thing until they run into some piece of software that requires them

Or hardware. My Windows Mixed Reality headset required AVX instruction support. Dipping my toe into VR was the deciding factor for upgrading my system. My old, first gen I5 didn't support AVX, but could still run everything else I wanted it to well enough for my needs.

-Wolf sends
 

jasonf2

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What are you even talking about? These are THIS GEN processors, Pentiums are available from EVERY 1-10 Intel generation, and the 3000g is still, so far, a current Gen AMD processor.
Perhaps context was not clear but anything without AVX being currently produced is on a performance level that for the most part too low for gaming and falls more into IOT class work where low performance and low cost are highly desirable. Individuals in these forums tend to lean towards the gaming community, where this SC issue resides. Just because a chip is based on X86 arch doesn't necessary mean that it is a valid gaming chip or that its design intent is for gaming at all. AVX has been out since 2011 on every Intel core generation (Sandybridge + (Pentium and Celeron excluded) and AMD (bulldozer +). Also FYI the 3000g in all of its $49 release glory (which I also would not recommend for gaming,) supports AVX according to wikipedia. (https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/athlon/3000g)
 

Soaptrail

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The game is still in "alpha" though. I mean, it's been in alpha and barely playable for like 8 years now, but alpha nonetheless. : P

However, it is probably worth pointing out that when people were first buying this game during its 2012 Kickstarter, processors without AVX support would have been quite common. Sandy Bridge only came out a year prior, and Bulldozer had just launched.

And the developers continued to do crowdfunding and collect money from those hoping to one day have something resembling a complete game, at this point have brought in over $300 million. So there are probably people who bought the game over 8 years ago and continued funding it, hoping to eventually play the finished product on what was then a modern gaming system. Now, the game they funded is dropping support for their hardware, still with no end to its development in sight.

So on the one hand the game is not finished so system specs can change. Also people who kick started it got 8 years out of the game before the change so that is not bad. On the other hand it is upsetting to have the game and then all of sudden the min specs change.

I think most people would be willing to let the min specs change to keep the game going after 8 years.
 
The 3000G does support AVX instructions though. Even AMD's $55 Celeron competitors have supported that feature. It's just Intel not including it on their lower-end processors for product segmentation reasons. Which seems a bit weird, considering people probably won't even realize AVX instructions are a thing until they run into some piece of software that requires them.
Perhaps context was not clear but anything without AVX being currently produced is on a performance level that for the most part too low for gaming and falls more into IOT class work where low performance and low cost are highly desirable. Individuals in these forums tend to lean towards the gaming community, where this SC issue resides. Just because a chip is based on X86 arch doesn't necessary mean that it is a valid gaming chip or that its design intent is for gaming at all. AVX has been out since 2011 on every Intel core generation (Sandybridge + (Pentium and Celeron excluded) and AMD (bulldozer +). Also FYI the 3000g in all of its $49 release glory (which I also would not recommend for gaming,) supports AVX according to wikipedia. (https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/athlon/3000g)
I wasn't responding to your post IN it's context about AVX. I was resonding to what you SAID, regarding them being unsupported by drivers or Windows 10 "long before Star Citizen", which is to say that you were indicating that things OTHER THAN gaming were more probable problems, and that, clearly, is not the case. Last time I checked, office applications, display drivers, network adapters, browsers and video chats did not require the use of ANY kind of AVX instructions, so it kind of makes that comment way off base regardless of what came after it.

The majority of those processors are so outdated that I would be questioning OS and driver support on Windows 10 long before worrying about SC.
 

jasonf2

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I wasn't responding to your post IN it's context about AVX. I was resonding to what you SAID, regarding them being unsupported by drivers or Windows 10 "long before Star Citizen", which is to say that you were indicating that things OTHER THAN gaming were more probable problems, and that, clearly, is not the case. Last time I checked, office applications, display drivers, network adapters, browsers and video chats did not require the use of ANY kind of AVX instructions, so it kind of makes that comment way off base regardless of what came after it.
The last generation of processors that would have been sold under a gaming system moniker without AVX would have been somewhere around a 900 series I7. I ran a 920 and a 960 for a very long time. They were great processors and still held their own 3 years ago when I had to replace the 960 running a 970 video card due to hardware failure (SATA controller). Driver support was becoming a problem, mainly because vendors were not maintaining them, or keeping them available on their websites anymore. It was a real nightmare every time I had to reload the OS. This was due to age, not AVX. The current generation SKUs that do not support AVX are at the very bottom end. These processors certainly are not gaming class, and while there are some very specific case uses for these processors (that they shine in) purchasing one to play video games is going to be pretty disappointing compared with anything in the Core lineup. That is especially true if you try to play Star Citizen on one.