Gaming and DUAL CORE

[willirob]

Hey all, was wondering...

THe general perception is that multiple cores won't have any performance benefit for gaming at the moment - because games are coded as single threaded.

Is this true - what about HyperThreading which has been around a while, surely games were coded to take advantage of this and surely the code will take advantage on dual cores.

Also find it hard to believe that games are coded all in one thread - multithreading has alway been possible and it would be pretty impossible to code a game without it.

Anyone shed any light on this

 

[Luke7777]

Just something on Dual Core Gaming

 

[Claymore]

There is some benefit. Firstly, the recent Nvidia and ATI graphics drivers take advantage of multiple cores. Secondly, even if the game doesn't, the background processes in Windows can use the other core, so that the core the game is running on can handle the game exclusively.

 

[supersunbird]

Some new games already benefit from dual cores...

 

[lord_spaceman]

Some new games already benefit from dual cores...

But some don't and performance can be hampered. I believe this happens with NFS : Most Wanted

 

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

Games that support dual-core processors:

Age of Empires III

Battlefield 2

Battlefield 2: Special Forces

Black & White 2

Call of Duty 2

City of Villains by NCSoft

F.E.A.R. by Vivendi (allegedly enabled, but real world no real performance increase to FPS, tho it still performs)

Peter Jackson’s King Kong

Quake 4

Quake 5 (promised when released)

Serious Sam 2 by Croteam

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (on pre-order)

The Movies

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3

Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland

Vangauard Saga of Heros

World of Warcraft

 

[Nickste]

For COD 2 and Battlefield 2, does one have to enable this anywhere, or get a special version?

Cheers, Nick