Do we know how many cores PS2 / Forgelight can use?

[Was_Ash_Emerald]

Most games even today that are multi-core are dual core or even if they use more cores than that are "dumb". Meaning, they put AI on one core, rendering on another core, other game logic on another core, etc.

A truly advanced engine that's genuinely multithreaded would scale dynamically at a much deeper level, which would mean even 6 or 8 cores could all be used.

Does anyone have quotes or references about PS2 or Forgelight in this regard?

[CyclesMcHurtz]

Most games even today that are multi-core are dual core or even they use more cores than that are "dumb". Meaning, they put AI on one core, rendering on another core, other game logic on another core, etc.

A truly advanced engine that's genuinely multithreaded would scale dynamically at a much deeper level, which would mean even 6 or 8 cores could all be used.


It's a tough balancing act to utilize all the cores in a system while still allowing for a small number of cores. The reason many game systems use the separation you mentioned above is because there is an inherent order needed by the game code for things to correctly display. This simplified approach allows good control over the order of things. Not all operations done by game engines can be made to simply go "wide" across all available cores, but some can.

What works well on an i7 (HT-quad core) may significantly reduce performance on a Xeon quad-core if done incorrectly. What works well on a dual-core system may leave a quad core twiddling it's thumbs.

[basti]

Come one dude, just tell us! :D

[Xyntech]

What works well on an i7 (HT-quad core) may significantly reduce performance on a Xeon quad-core if done incorrectly. What works well on a dual-core system may leave a quad core twiddling it's thumbs.

No need to convince me that you're a wizard. I'm already sold.

[MonsterBone]

Answer this question. When I pull up task manager with the game running what do I see?

That's what we want to know.

[BigBossMonkey]

The answer is obviously 42.

It's always 42.

[Antivide]

Will my i7 benefit from this game?

[SpcFarlen]

Will my i7 benefit from this game?

Of course, but it goes more with the rest of the architecture like that 8mb cache than the hyperthreading (gimmicky if you are only gaming) and the actually amount of cores unlesss they optimize it for 4 cores.

[KnightHawk ECID]

Swoosh!

Dodged like a politician!

http://image.spreadshirt.com/image-server/v1/compositions/4257642/views/1,width=178,height=178/International-Bush-Dodge.png

[Was_Ash_Emerald]

It's a tough balancing act to utilize all the cores in a system while still allowing for a small number of cores. The reason many game systems use the separation you mentioned above is because there is an inherent order needed by the game code for things to correctly display. ...

Understood.

Given these limits, what are the maximum numbers of cores that PS2 can indeed use- or, perhaps more properly, after how many cores are there rapidly diminishing uses of extra cores?

Also, will there be a 64 bit client?

[Was_Ash_Emerald]

Answer this question. When I pull up task manager with the game running what do I see?

That's what we want to know.

I'd hope he'd just tell us. Heck, we'll figure it out once beta starts. I have an FX-8120 I can throw a Windows image on to check; as crappy it is for all existing games on the market, it works well for some other purposes.

[KnightHawk ECID]

I'd hope he'd just tell us. Heck, we'll figure it out once beta starts. I have an FX-8120 I can throw a Windows image on to check; as crappy it is for all existing games on the market, it works well for some other purposes.

Off topic but was is your signature, its kinda creepin' me out haha.:confused:

[FINALCUT]

The most important question is how many cores does one need to kill Vanu?

[Jimmuc]

most games only utilize 2 cores and maybe 3 if it has too. PS2 may reach the 3 cores with so much going on but i don't really know for sure.

it's Ash from Alien, he was an android.

[KnightHawk ECID]

Hopefully they can get it to use 4 cores. I mean this is a huge game and its 2012 time to upgrade to 4 cores.

[FINALCUT]

most games only utilize 2 cores and maybe 3 if it has too. PS2 may reach the 3 cores with so much going on but i don't really know for sure.

it's Ash from Alien, he was an android.
The first time I saw that scene was on VHS and I was eating a baked potatoe loaded with sour cream. I threw up all over the place. True story. To this day I don't eat sour cream.:sick:

[Rbstr]

I think he explained it just fine:
It'll use as many cores as it can without screwing it up for someone with a different number of cores.

Half the people on steam have a dual core system. If they want to have it run on a larger variety of systems, like they've said, you can bet they won't make a game that needs more than two.

Honestly, the CPU's on the market that makes much sense to buy for any gaming are quad core (Even Intel's Haswell next year is quad core). I don't understand the necessity of the question.

[Elude]

Off topic but was is your signature, its kinda creepin' me out haha.:confused:

It's the android "Ash" from Alien.

[KnightHawk ECID]

It's the android "Ash" from Alien.

Good thought it was some messed up gore or something, but what is all the white stuff:huh:

[Was_Ash_Emerald]

I think he explained it just fine:
It'll use as many cores as it can without screwing it up for someone with a different number of cores.

Half the people on steam have a dual core system. If they want to have it run on a larger variety of systems, like they've said, you can bet they won't make a game that needs more than two.

Honestly, the CPU's on the market that makes much sense to buy for any gaming are quad core (Even Intel's Haswell next year is quad core). I don't understand the necessity of the question.

Points taken, but I really hope 4 cores is used and ideal (if not required), and not 2 cores.

If PS2 will really have hundreds and hundreds of players running around blowing up shit in the same field of view, I'd think that 4 cores is what's going to make that run well.

PS1 used 1 processor and that was never enough. As more complexity was added (especially BFRs), the continent caps had to be continuous lowered. Somehow, using just 2 processors (cores) just doesn't sound like enough improvement. It's a sad reality that a Pentium 4 by itself is, after all this time, not that much slower than a single LGA 1155 I7 core.

I know there are other factors that are different than circa 2003, with far more powerful video cards and far larger memories being the obvious two.

I'm a total size queen and I really hope battles are an order of magnitude larger than we had in PS1. (So, yes, that means 1000+ players pilled up at times in a massive cluster....)

[Whalenator]

I wouldn't be extremely concerned about the number of cores planetside 2 employs. Like most games, this isn't going to be extremely CPU-intensive since your computer isn't running any AI and the drawdistance is limited. The polycounts look high, but not to the extreme and they've promised mixed clientside/serverside hit detection, taking even more pressure off of your computer.

In fact, the only game where I would worry about having a halfway-decent CPU is Arma 2, and even with that you'd only need a medium-tier i5 to play smoothly.

However, a 64-bit client version would so much be appreciated. What with the thousands of camo/armor combinations there are going to be tons and tons of textures to load, and I want to use all the RAM I have (8GB).

[SGTalon]

I used to run into lag when i played BF3 until I upgraded to a quad core AMD.

I would love to see an option to run 4-8 cores. My desktop is 4 but my laptop is an i7 =)

[Coreldan]

However, a 64-bit client version would so much be appreciated. What with the thousands of camo/armor combinations there are going to be tons and tons of textures to load, and I want to use all the RAM I have (8GB).

Now, what exactly is the difference between a 32 bit client and 64 bit client? It certainly isn't so that a 32 bit client wouldn't be able to utilize more than 2GB of RAM, cos APB sure can and it's a 32 bit client.

[kaffis]

Now, what exactly is the difference between a 32 bit client and 64 bit client? It certainly isn't so that a 32 bit client wouldn't be able to utilize more than 2GB of RAM, cos APB sure can and it's a 32 bit client.
That's because the 32-bit addressing limit isn't 2GB. ;) Windows 32 bit OSes can only address 3GB, but I believe the limit for 32-bit programs operating on 64-bit hosts is 4GB, as that's the hard limit of address space that can fit into 32 bits.

64-bit clients can also perform some mathematical operations more efficiently, as they've got access to extended instruction sets.

[Antivide]

In fact, the only game where I would worry about having a halfway-decent CPU is Arma 2, and even with that you'd only need a medium-tier i5 to play smoothly.

However, a 64-bit client version would so much be appreciated. What with the thousands of camo/armor combinations there are going to be tons and tons of textures to load, and I want to use all the RAM I have (8GB).

Co op mission in Arma 2 are hell. You get like 80+ people with ~80 AI with tanks and a map several kilometers big and you have on gigantic cluster fuck in your hands.

[LtStaley]

I wouldn't be extremely concerned about the number of cores planetside 2 employs. Like most games, this isn't going to be extremely CPU-intensive since your computer isn't running any AI and the drawdistance is limited. The polycounts look high, but not to the extreme and they've promised mixed clientside/serverside hit detection, taking even more pressure off of your computer.

In fact, the only game where I would worry about having a halfway-decent CPU is Arma 2, and even with that you'd only need a medium-tier i5 to play smoothly.

However, a 64-bit client version would so much be appreciated. What with the thousands of camo/armor combinations there are going to be tons and tons of textures to load, and I want to use all the RAM I have (8GB).
Do you really think PS2 isn't going to be too CPU intensive? I've been debating on whether I should build a new gaming desktop or not. The one I currently have might still be strong enough to handle PS2. Here are my specs, let me know what you think...

ASUS A8N32 SLI Deluxe Mobo
AMD 64 X2 4800+ @ 2.4 Ghz
Dual BFG 7900GTX GPUs in SLI
3GBs of RAM
Windows XP x86

[Goku]

Points taken, but I really hope 4 cores is used and ideal (if not required), and not 2 cores.

If PS2 will really have hundreds and hundreds of players running around blowing up shit in the same field of view, I'd think that 4 cores is what's going to make that run well.

PS1 used 1 processor and that was never enough. As more complexity was added (especially BFRs), the continent caps had to be continuous lowered. Somehow, using just 2 processors (cores) just doesn't sound like enough improvement. It's a sad reality that a Pentium 4 by itself is, after all this time, not that much slower than a single LGA 1155 I7 core.

I know there are other factors that are different than circa 2003, with far more powerful video cards and far larger memories being the obvious two.

I'm a total size queen and I really hope battles are an order of magnitude larger than we had in PS1. (So, yes, that means 1000+ players pilled up at times in a massive cluster....)

Where the hell do you get this info from??

Closet comparison I can find is a Pentium 955 XE (2 core HT from 2006) vs a i3 2100 (2 core HT from today) is shown to be at least twice as fast (http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=93).

[Landtank]

Points taken, but I really hope 4 cores is used and ideal (if not required), and not 2 cores.

If PS2 will really have hundreds and hundreds of players running around blowing up shit in the same field of view, I'd think that 4 cores is what's going to make that run well.

Four cores aren't necessary for a game like this to run smoothly. 95% of games aren't even programmed to use four cores, let alone the hyperthreading that gives you 8 virtual cores.

Games like Total War and Supreme Commander are extremely processor intensive because they require multiple cores to perform multiple functions, such as AI, Shading and Shadows, Graphics, etc.

In a game like Supreme Commander, which is an RTS, your 5000 units would lag and not move, but your graphics would be fine. This is because one of the cores was lagging behind the others.

In a game like Planetside, all cores will be devoted to graphics processing and Clientside Calculations. The main thing for a game like this is how up to snuff your video card is, and your RAM so that the massive world can be saved.

I'm sure nothing more than a dual core 2.4ghz processor will be the recommended processor for this game. At least that's my take! I could be wrong.

2000 player battles should be fun!

[Coreldan]

While APB isnt exactly... the rolemodel of an optimized game, over in APB CPU is much more important than your GPU is. APB actually has some AI though, but it is by no means in an important role, it's mostly just the peds and the driving civilians.

My CPU is loads better than my GPU, but I sorta expected to upgrade from my HD5770 for PS2..

[Rbstr]

It's a sad reality that a Pentium 4 by itself is, after all this time, not that much slower than a single LGA 1155 I7 core.

This is definitely not true. Clock-for-clock Core is much more powerful...Hell in some cases Atoms can beat the P4.

[kaffis]

For people considering upgrading -- lots of people make the mistake of ignoring their CPU -- modern gaming uses a lot of CPU, simply because the rate of advancement in CPU design has been slower than the leaps and bounds made in GPU design over the last 10 years.

Furthermore, display sizes have stagnated since the introduction of HD TV's, so again, the requirements for the GPU haven't scaled in proportion to the needs for CPU power.

[Coreldan]

While not the best architechture and all that, I believe I should manage pretty long with my AMD Phenom II x6 1090T. Currently only mildly overclocked at 3,5ghz (stock 3,2ghz), should be able to get it to 4ghz with default cooler, even higher with a new cooler.

I'm just a bit noob with computers, so I'm afraid I break something :D

[Was_Ash_Emerald]

This is definitely not true. Clock-for-clock Core is much more powerful...Hell in some cases Atoms can beat the P4.

Yes, it is more powerful, but consider that the Pentium 4 3.0ghz (with HT) existed in 2003 and had a pipeline that was mostly starved due to slow memory.

One can run Windows 7 32 bit on such a machine just fine even today as an acceptable desktop computer for normal stuff.

Speed improvements, based on single cpu core, have slowed drawn dramatically in the last 10 years, as the clock rates cannot get much above 3Ghz. Almost all of the "speed" improvements have been more cores and lots of cleverness.

If you use the benchmarks of 1993 vs 2003 computers were radically faster, almost incomparably so. No 1993 computer could run Windows XP Circa 2003.

The top computer in 1993 was a 486 or Pentium 1 at a blazing 66MHZ. In 2003, the fastest cpu was 3000Mhz!

To bring the discussion back to Planetside- making use of more cores seems paramount to getting the huge scale of battles to work well.

[Landtank]

To bring the discussion back to Planetside- making use of more cores seems paramount to getting the huge scale of battles to work well.




I'll say it again, the amount of cores for a game like this will not be critical to the games performance. A good dual core will likely run the game just as well as a good quad core depending on the support given to the quad core.

More cores=/=better performance for all games. It depends on how much of the game can be parallelized, and in a game like this, a huge majority of the calculations can be parallelized, especially with hyperthreading.

More cores improves performance for games that have multiple applications, such as strategy games which require huge amounts of processing power to calculate the AI and massive amounts of troop movements.

[CyclesMcHurtz]

I'll say it again, the amount of cores for a game like this will not be critical to the games performance. A good dual core will likely run the game just as well as a good quad core depending on the support given to the quad core.

Depending upon how settings are implemented in a game, this can be true. It's not the kind of statement you can make on broad terms, however.


More cores=/=better performance for all games. It depends on how much of the game can be parallelized, and in a game like this, a huge majority of the calculations can be parallelized, especially with hyperthreading.

This is not true. There are significant dependencies on calculations and at many points you need to wait for certain operations to complete and other operations are not possible to spread across threads. The complexity of coordinating data structures across threads can be more expensive than the gains you get from spreading the work across the cores.

Linked lists are the devil on multi-threaded systems and also for cache coherency but they are also the most efficient type to manage, while arrays are the best for multi-threaded systems and cache coherency but are a terror to manage efficiently.


More cores improves performance for games that have multiple applications, such as strategy games which require huge amounts of processing power to calculate the AI and massive amounts of troop movements.

Physics and animations are typically much more expensive than AI, when done correctly. Many games try to make AI that operates at CPU speeds which causes significant performance problems - reducing the rate at which the AI makes decisions results is better AI behavior and lower CPU cost. One of the most expensive operations in AI is path-finding, and most of that is pre-calculated in modern games to some extent (which can dramatically increase memory requirements).

Animations and Physics typically need to be done each frame of the game and there is typically no way around this at the macro level.

[Whalenator]

Do you really think PS2 isn't going to be too CPU intensive? I've been debating on whether I should build a new gaming desktop or not. The one I currently have might still be strong enough to handle PS2. Here are my specs, let me know what you think...

ASUS A8N32 SLI Deluxe Mobo
AMD 64 X2 4800+ @ 2.4 Ghz
Dual BFG 7900GTX GPUs in SLI
3GBs of RAM
Windows XP x86

I would upgrade to 4GB (2x2GB) of RAM at least. It's cheap, so pile it on.
I would also upgrade to Win 7 (x64)
I would get an Intel Processor over an AMD anyday.
The 7900GTX should be able to run PS2 smoothly (35FPS+) on Medium.

[Landtank]

Depending upon how settings are implemented in a game, this can be true. It's not the kind of statement you can make on broad terms, however.




This is not true. There are significant dependencies on calculations and at many points you need to wait for certain operations to complete and other operations are not possible to spread across threads. The complexity of coordinating data structures across threads can be more expensive than the gains you get from spreading the work across the cores.

Linked lists are the devil on multi-threaded systems and also for cache coherency but they are also the most efficient type to manage, while arrays are the best for multi-threaded systems and cache coherency but are a terror to manage efficiently.




Physics and animations are typically much more expensive than AI, when done correctly. Many games try to make AI that operates at CPU speeds which causes significant performance problems - reducing the rate at which the AI makes decisions results is better AI behavior and lower CPU cost. One of the most expensive operations in AI is path-finding, and most of that is pre-calculated in modern games to some extent (which can dramatically increase memory requirements).

Animations and Physics typically need to be done each frame of the game and there is typically no way around this at the macro level.

Thank you very much for the clarifications! My knowledge of processors is limited, I'll be the first to admit that.

[kaffis]

Yeah, it always makes me happy to see CyclesMcHurtz happy to come around and explain some of the neat technical details about the challenges he and his fellow coders face.

[Whalenator]

35 FPS is horrible to play at. I will turn down every single setting until I can hit 120 on average.

The Human eye, even trained and young, cannot discern a difference in framerate after ~60FPS. 45FPS is optimal for twitch shooters and fast-paced games, but I can play slower ones like Arma 2 at 30FPS.

After 65FPS you're just senselessly heating up your processor.
Besides the point that most modern monitors can't display more than 75 FPS...

[Rbstr]

Historically they have always favored lower voltage (and have hinted at that already for the next gen cpus) and more cores. But you really approach a point of diminishing returns in doing that. They claim 3X clock at same power level of todays chips or either run the cores at 0.5 volts and same clock. Hope they venture more into the former.

There are problems with increasing voltage when you go down in size because things like electromigration become more significant the smaller your feature size. (A small movement doesn't mean much to a big thing but can mean everything to a small thing).

I would upgrade to 4GB (2x2GB) of RAM at least. It's cheap, so pile it on.
I would also upgrade to Win 7 (x64)
I would get an Intel Processor over an AMD anyday.
The 7900GTX should be able to run PS2 smoothly (35FPS+) on Medium.

That's a complete conjecture. That card is over 6 years old and doesn't even support DX10.
Everyone needs to stop quoting system specs like they have any idea how the game runs.

[Whalenator]

Thanks for quoting popular science. Unfortunately it's wrong, but there's no way for me to prove it. You have to play a game at 120FPS on a 120Hz monitor and see it for yourself. I can guarantee you that you will see the difference with 60FPS.

Is the difference worth it?
You expect a game, in beta, with a 1km viewdistance running 1,500 other players on a 10x10km map, to run at 120FPS for anyone?

If that's your minimum you sir need to lower your expectations.

[Was_Ash_Emerald]

The Human eye, even trained and young, cannot discern a difference in framerate after ~60FPS. 45FPS is optimal for twitch shooters and fast-paced games, but I can play slower ones like Arma 2 at 30FPS.

After 65FPS you're just senselessly heating up your processor.
Besides the point that most modern monitors can't display more than 75 FPS...

You can see it because that FPS is calculated as an average over 1000ms.

At 45fps (even 60fps), you will likely have 10ms, 20ms, 30 ms moments where you are actually below 30fps, if that time were conceptually extended out to 1000ms. Some users are very sensitive and can perceive those moments.

In my subjective estimate, you need to be > ~80fps at all times to be above slight but perceptible motion lag.

[Aaron]

I might be installing a Intel Core i3 2100 for my sister. Do you have any opinions on the PS2 performance, McHurtz?