New nVidia drivers to have more peformance, dual-core support!

[dangel]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26276

Blimey. Kudos to nVidia they just keep piling the pressure on ATI atm and i'm very happy to see some initial support for dual core now

[Rys]

Let's try again shall we, this time without the name calling, childish behaviour or petty squabbles? This is a technical forum. Talk tech without the grief, or chat somewhere else.

[Butcher]

The current drivers are very unstable. They're ok for a bit of testing and benching (and give good results) but not for general usage.

[sawyen]

tried it, rolled back...

plenty of artifacts in BF2... Flight Simulator and GTR crashed for no reason.. guess you can't expect miracles for beta drivers.

Will be really cool if they sorted out its problems, pretty high gains all round..

[dangel]

I'm def. going to wait for the finals - obviously they've made some fundemental changes here which need lots of testing!

(BTW i'm unaware of any reponses post-friday afternoon as i've not checked the board since then sorry [probably a good thing if it got deleted!] - I still had the following response to butcher in my clipboard manager tho:

"Butcher - any games i'd know? Certainly interesting to hear it from your perspective too! I'm no games programmer, I work in applications development (nanotechnology) so I appreciate you may have knowledge over and above my own.

I actually agree with you, it's just that i'm not so sure that a difference in instruction set will fundementally change the situation for porting - does it become any harder?
Machines will still share the same AI, shaders etc should they not? Does the graphic API for the current XBOX not have anything in common with DX (i'd heard it was basically dx 8.1 with extensions)? I thought all you needed for development was the XBOX SDK?

Out of interest, i'd like to know how much of - per say - Unreal Engine 3 was rewritten for each platform they target - percentage wise i'd suspect it's less than you'd guess as there's a heck of alot of code in there abstracted away from the hardware itself.

In any case, back on topic really - the point is do people believe the inherent multicored-ness (!) of all platforms _won't_ cause developers to multithread as a matter of course at the overall design level?" )

[Lee H]

Fingers crossed they'll release some new drivers for MCE2005 as well. Its a PITA when they release drivers for XP and not MCE as the MCE drivers haven't been updated for a while. The XP drivers seem not to like working with MCE (before you ask...) and seem to blue screen or even reboot random.

Pah... Microsoft have this whole trumpet blowing for a "digital home" and then all the manufacturers go and blow it back in their face by releasing drivers much slower than they do for say standard XP

[StormPC]

The thing you should realize by now (being the hardcore gamers you are) is that videogames are not written for the highest spec'd machines, they are written for as many machines as possible (in other words, for the minimum specs). Dual-cores (like multi-CPU platforms) are simply NOT min spec, and it will be many years before they are. As I said before, the situation has not changed just because the X2 is here. Can you play games on a dual-core? Of course, but that's not what they're good at. X2s are good at the same things multi-CPU and Hyper Threading CPUs are good at.

The X2 is not a gamer's CPU!

[sawyen]

The X2 is not a gamer's CPU!

uh oh... not again... back to the topic please?

[herulach]

The thing you should realize by now (being the hardcore gamers you are) is that videogames are not written for the highest spec'd machines, they are written for as many machines as possible (in other words, for the minimum specs). Dual-cores (like multi-CPU platforms) are simply NOT min spec, and it will be many years before they are. As I said before, the the situation has not changed just because the X2 is hear. Can you play games on a dual-core? Of course, but that's not what they're good at. X2s are good at the same things multi-CPU and Hyper Threading CPUs are good at.

The X2 is not a gamer's CPU!

Dude, drop it, you already had the thread deleted once.

Back On topic, does anyone know how multi threading the graphics drivers is supposed to improve performance? they cant use that much cpu power surely?

[dangel]

Oh lord here we go again..

Look, games are written to be scalable - from the lowest common denominator to the flagship PC. Scalability can be done at many levels, and making your code multithreaded can mean it will scale nicely on to a dual cpu system without taking a hit in a single cpu system. This thread (now in it's second iteration because some people got silly) is about the fact that nVidia have put (like it or not) lots of new stuff in a future driver package - one of those things (see title) is that they've started adding support for dual core systems. The situation has changed because of this (and the fact that two forthcoming games, one a big title available in a few days time *also* support this) and i'd suggest that the line you draw between a dual and single core (not gaming/gaming) doesn't really exist.

I'll admit that dual core has taken over the debate to a large degree - but that's hardly suprising: it's a new, interesting technology (at least on a single die) and many of us haven't had SMP systems at home because of the prohibitive costs. Personally I didn't expect to see any major takeup of the technology for gaming in such a short time, and yet we're already seeing use of it here. A technology doesn't need to be 'min spec' for it to gain use - see graphic cards where game engines scale appropriately for the features you have (texture size, shader model etc) but it does have to be something you need. You need a graphic card, you need a cpu but you don't need a physx card for anything other than gaming - so i'd suggest that technology will have a harder time getting off the ground than dual core.

Can we perhaps keep this thread on topic this time round? I'm fine with you not liking dual core for gaming but i don't agree with it. We can go around all day arguing about it but i think we're a fundemental loggerheads. I started this thread because I'm interested to see what benefits (small speed increases so i hear) the dual core support will make, which for those of us (including you by the looks of it) with dual core is essentially a free speed boost (as are the general gains for everybody else).

[dangel]

Dude, drop it, you already had the thread deleted once.

Back On topic, does anyone know how multi threading the graphics drivers is supposed to improve performance? they cant use that much cpu power surely?

As I understood it, the cpu is holding back things now - certainly on SLI systems where the only real benefit of the second card is being able to turn on more effects (heavy antialiasing for example). I've got a small LCD second screen and it's quite revealing to see what cpu load, ram load etc is like during gaming. It's with this i discovered that Half Life 2 need more than 1 gig of memory (on system) to run much smoother and precache the sounds correctly.
It does depend at what resolution you're going for too tho..

[StormPC]

Dude, drop it, you already had the thread deleted once.

Back On topic, does anyone know how multi threading the graphics drivers is supposed to improve performance? they cant use that much cpu power surely?

Yeah that was all my fault. Comments like yours had nothing to do with it, right?

You want something on topic? How's this?

MULTI-THREADED video-drivers are rediculous. They will run like crap on a single-core system, as will multi-threaded games. Remember, the single-core CPUs run multiple threads, they just don't do it well.

How stupid is this thread? It deserves to be hosed.

[herulach]

Yeah that was all my fault. Comments like yours had nothing to do with it, right?

You want something on topic? How's this?

MULTI-THREADED video-drivers are rediculous. They will run like crap on a single-core system, as will multi-threaded games. Remember, the single-core CPUs run multiple threads, they just don't do it well.

How stupid is this thread? It deserves to be hosed.

Since they obviouisly dont run like crap on single core systems (have you looked at the benchmarks) I think ill reserve judgement

[Nox]

Well, completely ignoring the chat about whether the X2 is a gaming CPU or not (and please can everyone else now!!) the new drivers seem to give a bit of a free boost to X2 users in some situations. I just hope fixing all the bugs doesn't take it away again!

And a free boost in speed is a good thing imho.

Nox

[Rys]

To say "MULTI-THREADED video-drivers are rediculous. They will run like crap on a single-core system, as will multi-threaded games." is to completely misunderstand how threading works on a modern operating system and how 3D graphics drivers are already multi-threaded anyway.

It's ridiculous that you keep crapping all over threads in my forum with your constant tirades about dual-core. Enough of the aggressive tone and nature of your posts about dual-core or I'll find you a forum that only you have posting rights for and you can sit and crap all over yourself.

Everyone: Stay on topic or I'll summon Zak and his enormous ban hammer.

[dangel]

Well said, thank you