AMD vs. Intel

amd for the win.. ive always been a fan of amd and never realy liked intel.. just my opion though

I was doing some reading on processors. What is coming out is Dual Cores that actually do indepentent functions. Share their caches....right now they don't. What we have now is mainly two single cores side by side. Once these newer processors come out then it will be a new step up in computer tech.

AMD Ftw

That's all well-and-good, but the CPU is actually doing very little work in the video driver's app-process. The driver is going to make a difference with GPU performace, but the CPU has very little to do with it. The CPU is doing 99.999% (roughly ) of its work within the game's app process to handle AI, physics, etc. What I'm saying is that dual-core does not offer ANY inherent performance boost. It will allow your system to multi-task better when you're dealing with separate apps. Unless you are running actual multi-threaded apps, dual-core is doing exactly nothing for any single application. The only time dual-core is going to give you a boost within an actual game is when the game programmers design the application from the ground up to take advantage of parallel processing. Doing so is a BIG DEAL. The amount of design and planning work that must go into a truly multi-threaded application is much, MUCH larger than what goes into the design of a single-threaded application. Windows Vista, or any OS for that matter, is not going to change that fact. That is how multi-threading works with current computer architectures.

I'm not saying that I don't recommend buying a dual-core processor. In fact, I just got one. All I'm saying is that dual-core processors DO NOT make ANY game run faster unless it is a multi-threaded game. As far as I know there aren't any yet, and probably won't be any time soon due to the extreme increase in development costs. Trust me. I'm not lying to you or speaking from my buttocks. I do this for a living.

It cant be that much larger. The Nintendo DS uses two processors. One for the top, and one for the bottom screen. Most of the first few games were just imported from the N64 which was one processor. Cant be that huge of a difference.

*sigh*


Nintendo DS?!?! C'mon! That kind of embedded hand-held stuff is a different world (except maybe the PSP, which is supposedly hard to program for to begin with). I'm talking about 'real' computers.

Trust me, the DS situation you speak of has no bearing on the topic of multi-threaded PC gaming. The DS uses two different processors to run 2 different applications. They may be linked applications, but it's just 2 completely different threads, not a single multi-threaded process. That's pretty easy to do, as would be separating 2 different parts of a simple N64 app into a top screen/bottom screen format. Multi-threading a single process is no easy task when said process is very complex. We're talking about two different things here.

Trust me, I didn't go to university for computer engineering and spend 15 -- almost 16 years programming to not understand how threading and SMP app development work! If you're still skeptical, I'll dig up some 3rd-party info on the subject that isn't too technical and post back here for your perusal. Take care!

In regards to multi-threading:

Intel P4 2.8 -- Running two copies of GW at the same time to farm UW, pretty effortless and smooth with a 55 monk and n/me combo.

Athlon 64 3200+ -- tried the same thing, but when switching to the other window, everything has to "catch up" to what happened in the first window. NOT smooth and I normally have to wait about 5 seconds for everything to go back to normal (since it looks like everything is just fast forwarded). Runs 1 GW ok, and other than the switching issue, both GW's run smoother than the Intel.

Now I'm not an expert on this, but I think Intel's Hyperthreading has alot to do with it. I don't know if the same thing happens on dual core proccessors or not.