Preview of utilizing multi core CPU's in games

[Yog]

"Stunning video shot at Intel Developer Forum 2006, showing "incredible Quality of new game From Remedy. Game code is optimized for multi core processors."

A preview what will be possible with quad core processors and directX 10. Exciting future ahead.. :)

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[Dasquian Belargic]

In spite of the poor quality of the video, that does look pretty impressive!

[Yog]

The name of the game is "Alan Wake". It is a Psychological Action Thriller with arguably the best game graphics I ever seen. It won tons of "best of" prices at E3 this year. The gloomy mood setting seems just up my alley as well.


In spite of the poor quality of the video, that does look pretty impressive!

If you like some better video quality, check out this page with high rez videos. If they don't knock your socks off, I don't know what will :D

http://www.alanwake.com/movies.html

Edit: I highly recommend the "Alan Wake Video HDTV" <a href=http://download.remedygames.com/movies/Alan_Wake_video.wmv>LINK</a>

[Figrin D'an]

Amazing visuals. Lets just hope that the physics ends up being more realistic than what was shown in the demo.

[Yog]

There is some more info about the multi threaded CPU usage and the physics in an article at Anand Tech:

http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2841&p=2

The game will be able to utilize 5 different threads: one for rendering, audio, streaming, physics and terrain tessellation.

Its reasonable to imagine, the benefit of dual core and especially quad core processors will give huge performance increases as a lot of the workload is moved from the GPU to the CPU.

On a Core 2 Quad processor, approximately 80% of one core would be used by the physics thread.

The demonstration was performed on an overclocked Core 2 Quad system running at 3.73GHz with a GeForce 7900 GTX. Remedy claims the demo would run just as smooth with a default clock speed (presumably 2.66GHz).

It was indicated that Alan Wake would "pretty much not run on any single core processors, although it may be possible to run on single-core Pentium 4 processors with Hyper Threading enabled, with noticably reduced image quality/experience".

Hopefully, I will be able to run this at enjoyable speed on my planned computer upgrade; core 2 duo E6300 with geforce 7950 :cool:

[Khendon Sevon]

The 7950's are nice. My roommate has one of the BFG ones with a gig of ram on the GPU. I'm running the 7900GTX and it's still great (My apartment is one huge radioactive high-end computer fest with more monitors than people, lots more).

I’m thinking about upgrading just to be the biggest dog. Is that bad? (AMD 64 X2 4600+/Win XP 64 Corp/2gigs low lat ram/320 gig SATA HD/Asus 7900 GTX/SoundBlaster uber something or other/5.1 THX certified speakers/Samsung SyncMaster 204b/Chimei CMV 937A/WaveMaster aluminiminimum case).

I need better cooling :(

Using multiple threads is the way of the future. It just makes sense.

We're all required to take a course on concurrency programming and many of my classes emphasize the idea of splitting up tasks.

[Shawn]

Is there anything at all that doesn't run smoothly on your system? If not, then you don't need to upgrade.

[Khendon Sevon]

You are correct :)

But! But!

Yeah. You're right.

[Figrin D'an]

If you want to be "the biggest dog" as you put it, you might as well wait another month or two until Core2 Quatro and DirectX10 GPUs are out.

[Morgan Evanar]

I’m thinking about upgrading just to be the biggest dog. Is that bad?It's bad for the purchaser's wallet. On the whole, yes, it's bad. Unless you want to give me the old system. Then it's good.

Figrin's right, though. If you want something meaningful wait till the quad core and DX10 cards are available. Otherwise you're just wasting money.