Will Fallout 4 Feature Hyperthreading?

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sterlin22

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May 17, 2012
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In case no one noticed, Fallout 4's min and recommended specs have been posted.

Minimum

Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required)
Intel Core i5-2300 2.8 GHz/AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0 GHz or equivalent
8 GB RAM
30 GB free HDD space
NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or equivalent

Recommended

Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required)
Intel Core i7 4790 3.6 GHz/AMD FX-9590 4.7 GHz or equivalent
8 GB RAM
30 GB free HDD space
NVIDIA GTX 780 3GB/AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB or equivalent

Does the fact that they recommend an i7 support the idea that the game will utilize hyperthreading?
 
Solution
NightAntilli


The chart is not really helpful without CPU usage. Even though neither the i5 nor the i7 are bottlenecking, you could say that maybe the i5 has four threads at 90% load, while the i7 has 8 threads at 45% load, so to speak. Obviously in the real world it won't be that big a difference. But, look at the FX-6350 vs the FX-8350. 100 MHz difference is not enough to explain the increase in performance the FX-8 CPU gets. The FX-8370e at 3.3 GHz also almost keeps up with the FX-6350. More than six threads are definitely being used for this to be...
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Most modern games can use hyperthreading, however that doesn't mean there will be any noticeable benefit if the i5 equivalent is already doing the job or the scaling across cores isn't good enough.

UTILIZING the threads and having enough multithreaded code to benefit are different things.

Anyway, I'd be very surprised if we saw much difference between say an i7-3770 and an i5-3570. On a dual-core HT that's a different story and I suspect closer to 20% difference with HT on or off depending on GPU, settings etc.
 
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Just wanted to say thanks for posting this. I've been wondering about this for awhile with many new games recommending an i7. Fallout 4 requirements for example I wasn't sure how my 4670k @ 4.2 GHz would stack against the recommended 4790, but it seems like my CPU is fine based on what you're saying.
 
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Games don't utilize hyper-threading they utilize threads/cores. The fact they are recommending the i7 could mean they support a higher thread count it may also be in part to the fact it has a higher clock-speed
 
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A game that uses more than 4 cores... Did you guys remember skyrim you actually had to enable multicore cpu's in the config. It will be a heavy single core nightmare for my amd fx8350..
But a walk in the park for my i5 4690k
 
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In Fallout 3 there was a known problem for quad cores quere you had to force the game to use only two cores or it would increase your chance to crash by a factor of 20.
Due to this, and the fact that all previous games made by bethesda (elder scrolls) used 2 cores, that fallout 3 and elderscrolls used similar graphics, and that fallout 4 does not look much different, it seems safe to assume it will be on two cores as well.

 
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Fallout 3 and Oblivion shared the same engine.
Skyrim had a brand new engine, not the one Oblivion used.
Fallout 4 has an updated Skyrim engine, so it's possible they changed how it addresses hardware.
 
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I havent done any testing myself (Dont have skyrim), but If I remember correctly, an article I read long ago by EPIC games stated that till now (it was a 2012 article) only 3 games used more than 2 cores "correctly", and everything else was a gimmick putting 90%+ load on core 1 and 2 and then leaving something extra to do for additional cores.

I have never done testing myself about this, and since this is something I can do, I think Im going to give it a shoot when I get home.

I remember it had something to do with how the game needs very good coding to know to what core to send what instruction depending on both core load and scene impact (if at some point in the game Physx would be very heavy, the game code/engine would need to know to split that into more than one core, even worse, it would need to know when to split it depending on how good the cpu was per core).

You cant split everything into different cores constantly as that would take longer than the delay from one core being over saturated, so making a game that will work well on many cores is really hard.

Again, I will do some testing when I get home to confirm or deny this, but so far, only Infiltrator demo by Unreal Engine 4 maxes my 4 physical cores and 8 threads to 100% (and it still wont launch since I think it needs 16GB of ram 😀).
 
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Just some trivia....

Oblivion and Fallout 3 & New Vegas used the Gamebryo Engine.

Skyrim and Fallout 4 uses the Creation Engine.
 
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They still look like <mod edit>. I watched some of the fallout 4 gameplay and I feel the engine is really weak (I mean, its 2015, Cryengine 2 and unreal engine 3 are better than that).
I didnt test yesterday the load on cores (was feeling sick). Lets hope I can do it today.
 
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If you do not like Fallout 4's graphics, and that is the most important feature of any game you play, then don't buy it.

Games developed by Bethesda Studios never focused on cutting edge graphics for their games, they focused on gameplay first and graphics second. Graphics are usually good, not great. Fallout, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim did not have cutting edge graphics, but they offered a tool set to the community to create mods for their games.
 
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I disagree that Fallout3, Oblivion and Skyrim were not considered pretty cutting edge graphically out of the box when they arrived. Fallout3 was criticized for not having a very fluid feeling when moving and shooting but since it was not primarily an FPS this was not a problem but everyone agreed when it came out that it was graphically fantastic. I also remember hearing a lot of praise on the graphics of Oblivion and certainly Skyrim. Those games ALSO have great gameplay.
 
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Fallout 3, Oblivion and Skyrim had good graphics, but they were not considered cutting edge for their time. Just because I said Bethesda focuses more on gameplay (which I think is more important) and graphics second, does not not mean the graphics in those games look like crap... though I did find that faces in Oblivion looked.... odd...


It is all simply a matter of opinion. As Pete Hines (Vice President of Bethesda Softworks) has stated:

http://www.destructoid.com/bethesda-doesn-t-mind-if-you-don-t-like-fallout-4-s-graphics-307213.phtml

"As with most forms of entertainment you never get 100 per cent agreement on anything. And so, at the end of the day, whether it’s what the graphics look like or whether the gameplay is what you want or whether you like the setting, or whatever it is, everybody is entitled to their opinion."
Click to expand...

 
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The graphics I have seen in preview videos look good enough for me. That's not what I'm playing a Fallout game for anyways. I just played Fallout 3 for the first time a couple months ago and even those graphics were good enough for me to love the game in 2015.

Fallout 4 is a big step up from Fallout 3. I keep seeing people say they almost look the same in comments around the internet. I highly suggest that people who think that way go look at some mod free Fallout 3 gameplay video on youtube and compare it to the Fallout 4 gameplay.

Also, don't forget that there will be plenty of graphics mods on PC for people who care enough to do that kind of thing.
 
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I agree that fallout and the elder scrolls are not a graphics only game (Is there any game that is graphics ONLY?!), but that does not change the fact that it looks very poor.

Morrowind, Oblivion (especially) and Fallout 3 were graphic beasts when they came out, but for example, Oblivion was really simplified from morrowind and some more was done in skyrim (guys, they didnt even make a PC friendly UI in skyrim, I mean... lets be realistic, you had to scroll through the items one by one!).
Bethesda games have been lowering the standard of the elder scrolls for a while now and Its easy to see if you played the last 3 elder scrolls games.

My problem is that if you are going to make a game more simple and you are not going to improve graphics, what you are doing is making games like Call of Duty does: just get something out every 2 years, no matter what it is, how it looks, what it has, as long as it has a franchise name.

We have seen this happen in many companies, and it seems to be a growing trend rather than the exception. If I am wrong when the game comes out Ill be very happy about it, since I would love to get a great Fallout game, but experience has teached me to be skeptical.

I managed to test Fallout 3 yesterday and it uses 1 core 75% of the time and 25% of the time a second core. Random cores will get spikes from time to time but it is unclear why or when.


 
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Explanation of hypertheading and how it works:
Hypertheading is a way Intel chips work and has nothing to do with how a game engine is designed. the software running on any pc's has no idea an Intel chip is hypertheaded. as far as the pc's software is concerned a hyperthreadind chip simply appears to have double the number of cores the CPU actually has.

also games use how ever many of threads they are designed to use up to the limit of the hardware it is executed on.
in AMD CPUs one core executes one thread at a time, in Intel CPUs the same is also true unless the Intel CPU has hypertheading, and it is enabled in the bios. In the case of an Intel CPU with hypertheading (and it has to be enabled in the bios) each core actually can work on 2 threads at the same time.

A thread explanation,
all software on a computer is actually a mathematical task, executed by the CPU, regardless of what software it is, once the program is wrote and compiled.
so on regulate cpu's (not hypertheaded) let's say the software is looking to do 4 things, add 1+2, multiply 6*3, compair the result of them 2 functions , and subtract 7-2. the software can do each function on one core, but because it needs the answer of 2 of them to do the other, no matter how many cores there are, it can only execute 3 of the tasks or threads at the same time, and then has to wait till the following cycle to do the compairison.
on a hyperthreaded CPU the software can execute 2 of the threads on one core, the third task on another core, then wait till the next cycle to do the last task.
Also the software has to be designed to do multiple tasks at the same time, otherwise the software will simply execute each task in the order it was received on a single thread, one after the other, cycle after cycle of the CPU, taking much longer to do the same tasks as described above.

So from this you can see you need multiple things to make hypertheading useful. you need the software to be designed to do multiple threads at the same time, u need a processor that has the capability to execute that number of threads at the same time. So hypertheading can be useless if there is not enough threads available to use the capabilities of the CPU.

if the software recommends a i7 you can almost guarantee it is designed to use at least 4 threads at the same time, and ur operating system and back ground stuff going on will use at least 1 more thread, due to the fact that all i7s have at least 4 cores and hypertheading. Most likely if an i7 is recommended the pc it is ran on will use even more to some extent....

hope this helps u to understand hypertheading and software recommendations,

also note that u also will NEVER need hypertheading nor will it help if the CPU has enough actual cores to execute all the threads needed to be processed at the same time. As no software actually knows u have hypertheading, it just appears to the software that more cores are available for it to use if designed and needed for it to execute on.
as far as the software can tell, an 8 core processor, and a 4 core with hyperthreading, appeare identical to the software.
 
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Proper multithreading is becoming prominent. I personally think Fallout 4 will also be jumping on this bandwagon. Of course, we don't really know much yet, so, it's speculation on my part. But the Witcher III does this, so does Battlefront, and generally, the AAA games that are not supporting it in currently released games are few and far between.
 
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The following CPU performance chart for Witcher 3 does not seem to show it benefits from hyper threading.

http://www.techspot.com/review/1006-the-witcher-3-benchmarks/page5.html

CPU_01.png
 
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It might not benefit from hyper threading after a certain point.
It does seem to use multiple cores, as you can see from the i3-4130 and fx 8350 similarities.
The 8350 would only outperform the i3 if it was using multiple cores.
And the i3 would be fairly far behind if it wasn't using hyperthreading.

It'd be interesting to see where a true dual core would be on that list.

It's also due alot to the fact games don't care much about CPU power as opposed to GPU power.
 
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