Question What actually is “multitasking“

[maxknitter]

So I am looking to build myself a new gaming Pc and in therms of CPU I want to go with the Intel I5 9600k. After doing some research I found out that most people say that this processor is really good for gaming because of the very good single core performance and should be more than enough for 1080p gaming.
But in therms of multitasking it is said that this might not be the best option. But what actually is meant by “multitasking“. I know it means streaming or recording your game or editing videos: doing multiple tasks at the same time.
But does that also include typical gaming things like listening to music, using a voice chat program and having your browser open at the same time?

Hope you guys can understand what I am trying to ask.

Thanks for the help

 

[COLGeek]

You pretty much answered your own question, from a practical perspective.

For more, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking

 

[bmockeg]

So I am looking to build myself a new gaming Pc and in therms of CPU I want to go with the Intel I5 9600k. After doing some research I found out that most people say that this processor is really good for gaming because of the very good single core performance and should be more than enough for 1080p gaming.
But in therms of multitasking it is said that this might not be the best option. But what actually is meant by “multitasking“. I know it means streaming or recording your game or editing videos: doing multiple tasks at the same time.
But does that also include typical gaming things like listening to music, using a voice chat program and having your browser open at the same time?

Hope you guys can understand what I am trying to ask.

Thanks for the help

Yes it includes those things. Everything takes some level of CPU power to run. No reason to get a 9600k when ryzen 3600 is available.

 

[maxknitter]

Yes it includes those things. Everything takes some level of CPU power to run. No reason to get a 9600k when ryzen 3600 is available.

I know the ryzen 3600 or even x has the better price/value ratio but I am really going for the FPS here. I am just wondering if those things I listet above are so demanding that they would benefit of the 6 extra threads?

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Does max fps matter if the fps jumps all over the place and induces stuttering? That's less competitive than a lower more stable fps.

Just having 1 or 2 tabs open in the background is not heavy multitasking, but it will increase stutter.

 

[OllympianGamer]

I know the ryzen 3600 or even x has the better price/value ratio but I am really going for the FPS here. I am just wondering if those things I listet above are so demanding that they would benefit of the 6 extra threads?

Unless you buy a 2080ti I doubt you will be cpu bound most of the time so picking the 9600k over a 3600 simply for max fps is a waste of money. You should post your budget and the entire build you are thinking about buying and what resolution and refresh rate you want to game at.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

There really is no such thing as multitasking it’s all serial in the end. It’s just all sequenced out

That’s true for computers and humans and especially humans

 

[COLGeek]

There really is no such thing as multitasking it’s all serial in the end. It’s just all sequenced out

That’s true for computers and humans and especially humans

I see where you are going, but this is not accurate. With a single input/ouput device, this would be true. With modern CPUs and multiple "paths" (cores, threads), processes can occur in parallel.

 

[mdd1963]

the 9600K is capable of gaming and listening to music, it's the gaming while streaming that's an issue for many...

If you've not already purchased it, I'd get an R5-3600 if at all possible...

 

[NightHawkRMX]

the 9600K is capable of gaming and listening to music, it's the gaming while streaming that's an issue for many...

If you've not already purchased it, I'd get an R5-3600 if at all possible...

^^^This about sums it up.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I see where you are going, but this is not accurate. With a single input/ouput device, this would be true. With modern CPUs and multiple "paths" (cores, threads), processes can occur in parallel.

In computing, multitasking is the concurrentexecution of multiple tasks (also known as processes) over a certain period of time. New tasks can interrupt already started ones before they finish, instead of waiting for them to end. As a result, a computer executes segments of multiple tasks in an interleaved manner, while the tasks share common processing resources such as central processing units (CPUs) and main memory. Multitasking automatically interrupts the running program, saving its state (partial results, memory contents and computer register contents) and loading the saved state of another program and transferring control to it. This "context switch" may be initiated at fixed time intervals (pre-emptive multitasking), or the running program may be coded to signal to the supervisory software when it can be interrupted (cooperative multitasking).

Sorry but you’re wrong. With modern CPUs it just seems like it’s all happening at once but it’s all broken down into small slices
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking

 

[COLGeek]

In computing, multitasking is the concurrentexecution of multiple tasks (also known as processes) over a certain period of time. New tasks can interrupt already started ones before they finish, instead of waiting for them to end. As a result, a computer executes segments of multiple tasks in an interleaved manner, while the tasks share common processing resources such as central processing units (CPUs) and main memory. Multitasking automatically interrupts the running program, saving its state (partial results, memory contents and computer register contents) and loading the saved state of another program and transferring control to it. This "context switch" may be initiated at fixed time intervals (pre-emptive multitasking), or the running program may be coded to signal to the supervisory software when it can be interrupted (cooperative multitasking).

Sorry but you’re wrong. With modern CPUs it just seems like it’s all happening at once but it’s all broken down into small slices
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking

Still not a serial process, that is the point. Multiple concurrent processes is not serial.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Think of an ide cable.

It has many wires carrying single serial data streams, thus ide is a parallel interface.

 

[InvalidError]

Sorry but you’re wrong. With modern CPUs it just seems like it’s all happening at once but it’s all broken down into small slices

While CPU time in a multi-threaded software environment may be cut into slices, on a 6C12T CPU you do have the physical capability of having up to 12 of those threads executing concurrently. One benefit of having more hardware threads is that the OS has more opportunities to hijack cores during IO/API calls (already incurring the cost of context-switching from user-land to kernel) or waking up an idle core instead of preempting threads, so you waste less total time on forced context switches.

Still not a serial process, that is the point. Multiple concurrent processes is not serial.

I believe the point he was trying to make is that you don't need a multi-threaded CPU to provide the appearance of multi-tasking for the human sitting between the keyboard and chair.

Once you throw multi-core multi-threaded CPUs (or multi-socket setups from the 90s) into the mix, things may still be sequential for a given process thread but are certainly concurrent hardware-wise with up to N threads in progress at any given time.

Think of an ide cable.

It has many wires carrying single serial data streams, thus ide is a parallel interface.

What makes a parallel bus parallel is that entire words are getting clocked in/out at a time over a bunch of wires each carrying one bit. On serial busses, words get clocked in/out over some amount of time using a single signal lane. What makes PCIe x2/4/8/16 still serial is that each lane still sends/receives whole words the same way x1 does, only difference being that the PCIe MAC is lumping multiple lanes together for increased bandwidth.

 

[CountMike]

Multitasking is possible even on single core/thread CPUs using idle states of the CPU core, with all this power available in modern CPUs they still spend most of time in idle state waiting for data from much slower components like RAM for instance.

 

[TerryLaze]

But does that also include typical gaming things like listening to music, using a voice chat program and having your browser open at the same time?

No site has ever tested this so everybody is just telling you their personal theories...
Running (these) extra programs in the background will mostly consume RAM which you can compensate by just getting more RAM,and internet bandwidth if you do all of these through internet and play an online shooter,like the previously mentioned battlefield,you will have internet issues that will show up as stutters no matter how many cores you have because the apps will all steal bandwidth from the game.

Does max fps matter if the fps jumps all over the place and induces stuttering? That's less competitive than a lower more stable fps.

Just having 1 or 2 tabs open in the background is not heavy multitasking, but it will increase stutter.

Yes but lowering FPS is very easy if you have a K CPU any CPU,increasing FPS on the other side is nearly impossible on the ryzen they are already maxed out while the 9600k has an pretty easy additional 20% in overclock.