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About LinkBacks8 threaded console games will make the i7 a better choice the longer we go in to the console cycle.Originally Posted by Mister
8 threaded console games will make the i7 a better choice the longer we go in to the console cycle.
They said the same thing in the past as well. It still hasn't borne out yet.
There has hardly been any new console games since launch. i5 shows less frames in some games from last year let alone next year or year after.
Eurogamer
"There was a time when games only utilised one or two cores - and for those titles, an overclocked Pentium G3258 remains the best price vs performance processor on the market. Then gradually, we saw a migration across to titles using four threads - good for the Core i3 line (two cores/four threads), great for the i5 (four full cores). Throughout this time, an i7 offered virtually nothing extra for gamers, but times have changed. The new wave of consoles has moved us into the many-core era; out of all the games we tested here, all of them - bar Shadow of Mordor - appear to utilise all eight threads available to an i7."
This is games from last year...
They use them, but they're not CPU limited, so they spread the same load over more cores. There are occasional times when CPUs become limited, but these tend to be limited in single/not very multi threaded processes so clockspeed is the best way of improving such hiccups. Yes, you need to get to about 4 cores, but once there clockspeed/cache is king.
gupsterg (17-10-2015)
Most particularly, they tend to be limited in the DX11 render thread, which is still very much single-threaded. DX12 will remove that single thread limit, but all that means is that most games will simply stop being CPU limited at all.
If we indulge in a little conjecture that Mantle and DX12 will provide similar benefits in terms of CPU utilisation, AMD tested Mantle on an FX-8350 and found no reduction in frame rates even when clocked down to 2GHz. The implication there is that each core had less then 50% utilisation to start with. I'm pretty sure that a stock speed i5 would beat a 2GHz FX 8-core in most multithreaded tasks. If DX12 provides similar benefits, then a fast quad core is going to be just as good as a fast octo-core, because neither is going to be the bottleneck in the game.
gupsterg (17-10-2015)
^ precisely.
I'm at an odd conjecture: I have a free update from retail win 7 to win 10 waiting, but the 'use once'/convert to OEM nature of it means I want to wait until I build a new machine in order to get the most out of it from a reliability perspective. But DX12 will mean I don't actually need a new machine, yet I don't get DX12 unless I go win 10!
Hmmm, I can see the frustration - must be awful for you
one thing I'm intrigued by - I know that DX12 has feature levels that allow fall back on GPUs that don't have the full feature set, much the same way that DX11 had feature levels all the way back to DX9. That meant my DX10 GPUs could run (appropriately written) DX11 software with a DX10 feature level, despite not "supporting" DX11. Will the same thing happen with DX12, and if so will those GPUs get the CPU-easing benefit where DX12 games are written with DX11 fall-backs? My gut feeling is they won't, but I can't see any practical/technical reason why they wouldn't....?
If I remember rightly, there's two paths for/types of DX12 - one is the low overhead/close to metal programming akin to mantle. The other is more DX11 like and just builds on the feature set. The latter I expect would have a fall-back path but not the former.
Really? So there's going to be DX12 games that benefit from low CPU overhead and multiple threads, and DX12 games that won't? that's not going to be confusing at all then...
I can't remember whether it was still labelled DX12 or was a variant of DX11. But also remember that some of the low overhead stuff comes at the expense of increased need for developer optimisation. I think DX12 will always have slightly better threading, and slightly lower CPU overhead, but the real gains are when the devs put in the work.Really? So there's going to be DX12 games that benefit from low CPU overhead and multiple threads, and DX12 games that won't? that's not going to be confusing at all then...
edit: OK yes it's 11.3 rather than DX12.
scaryjim (18-08-2015)
If I'm not mistaken I don't think that's the case? I was concerned it might be before release but having read into it more, the type of license remains the same through the upgrade i.e. OEM>OEM, retail>retail, so you if had a Win7 retail license you can still swap out hardware etc.
I'll try to dig out the source if you like?
Please do, that'd be handy. From what I could see in the windows 10 free upgrade FAQ they said you could only reinstall the upgrade on the same hardware. The only versioning I thought that remained was pro->pro type, not retail->retail. Unfortunately the link to 'click here for more information', didn't.
Found it.
The FAQ is here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/i...4-45f4b7ed2fb9
But the part about the licensing is quoted in this post too (to save searching for it): http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...e1553c6?auth=1
Thanks, so no answer from MS, just a community member :/ Doesn't fill me with great confidence to be honest.
looks like the i7 pulling ahead slightly, worth the extra pennies, if u have em sure
Well normally the bottleneck is not the CPU if you have an i5, where DX12 shines is with CPU's that would normally be struggling or bottlenecking the GPU, a good example of this is the test results with AMD CPU's which seem much more competent now.
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