How many CPU cores you really need for DirectX 12 gaming ! AMD wins ??

[MrNeil]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/30395...12-gaming.html

Could this be true ? I don't really understand but if this is true then does this mean an extended life for the FX chips ?

Only you Hexus guru's can explain to me

[DanceswithUnix]

TBH I think it is too early to tell, a better spread of games is needed.

According to this: http://semiaccurate.com/2016/03/01/i...2-cpu-scaling/

AotS reports up to 6 cores as being better, but doesn't give any extra frames per second so 4 cores is still fine.

Plus, if you have an Nvidia card then so far DX12 isn't helping all that much. Perhaps because game engines were actually written for Mantle and converted? Who knows, more data needed so we can only guess.

Still, I haven't seen any *bad* news for FX yet, so keeping mine for now

[HalloweenJack]

more cores in aots helps the bottom end not the top - lots and lots of units needs cores and games written for mantle? they are written for DX12 and a lot are now using or will use Async compute ,which AMD is strong at

[kalniel]

You need one core.

The rest depends on the game as to whether extra cores are taken advantage of or not. As you can see from the gears of war test, DX12 doesn't innately need more cores.

From OP's article (http://www.pcworld.com/article/30395...12-gaming.html)

[scaryjim]

... DX12 doesn't innately need more cores.

This, all over. More cores will only help if the game is written to take advantage of them. I suspect a lot depends on the DX12 feature set in use too - there are uses of DX12 that don't involve using all the deep threading benefits.

What might help AMD more is the theoretical reduction of single-thread load, since their single-thread performance has been well behind Intel for quite some time. Problem is we're getting little snippets of data, none of which actually paints a very conclusive picture: so we know what difference more cores make in certain games, but those cores were all running at roughly the same speed, so we don't know what effect clock speeds would have on those results. We know those are the results with a Fury X, we don't know how they compare to DX11 results on the same setups or what difference running an nvidia GPU would make. We don't have *any* results there for different numbers of cores in use in an AMD CPU. So there are way more questions to address than we actually have answers for, and even the answers we do have are far from clear cut.

[DanceswithUnix]

You need one core.

From the above Semiaccurate test, AotS won't run properly on a single core. I think it is fair to say these days in all practicality you need two.

The linked image is "forbidden" for me, probably protected against embedding. Any chance of a link to the article?

[kalniel]

From the above Semiaccurate test, AotS won't run properly on a single core. I think it is fair to say these days in all practicality you need two.

The linked image is "forbidden" for me, probably protected against embedding. Any chance of a link to the article?

That AotS won't run on a single core just means that AotS needs more than one core, not DX12.

Sorry img was from the OP's link:



As shown, another DX12 game runs on a single core, so DX12 doesn't need more than one. AotS might though.

[scaryjim]

As shown, another DX12 game runs on a single core, so DX12 doesn't need more than one. AotS might though.

Kind of sad that he didn't run that test with 1 core/no hyperthreading. Of course, a modern OS will happily timeslice on your CPU so the program can have as many threads as it likes, regardless of how many simultaneous threads your hardware can cope with (I remember doing horrible things to the single core dev machines at uni with my threading coursework )

[shaithis]

Surely the GoW:UE tests just backs up that the game is predominantly non-DX12 code (and is in fact, mostly the old DX10 code from GoW)

[DanceswithUnix]

Kind of sad that he didn't run that test with 1 core/no hyperthreading.

Which given every other setup was run is *really* odd, so I expect he did but just didn't get a result back. Because creating threads is really easy, creating deadlocks is too and a single core can really flush those out

[kalniel]

Surely the GoW:UE tests just backs up that the game is predominantly non-DX12 code (and is in fact, mostly the old DX10 code from GoW)

Well I guess if you create a new definition of DX12 gaming as something that uses a brand new engine that has to use multiple cores then you could say DX12 gaming needs multiple cores, sure.

But DX12 is going to be made up of game engines from all sorts of sources, new and old.

[DanceswithUnix]

Surely the GoW:UE tests just backs up that the game is predominantly non-DX12 code (and is in fact, mostly the old DX10 code from GoW)

That is probably true. Was reading stuff about the Vulkan port for The Talos Principle, it seems it was the work of a single developer working for three months to get the game to where it is today. From user comments, one core is maxed out at 100%, the others are bumping around 10%. The developer happily states that the game has had years of optimisation for DX11, and so that is where the performance is bound to be best for some time to come.

[khanmein]

4 cores can still last few decades as the games is badly optimize with their own engine.

[D.king88]

Whilst I agree with those saying that the more cores won't help, the OP is right and there is no need to ditch the FX chips just yet.