Intel kills off 8th-gen desktop CPUs

[wizardofid]

I know it's what they target, but if they really wanted 60GB of RAM, and were streaming assets only because we don't have enough RAM, they would have filled up the available RAM first.

I'm really interested to see how they will handle the SDD deficit of the average PC compared to next gen consoles.

Little to no impact at all, while there will be exclusive titles on release, we will likely see a few titles release on console first. Considering it takes up to 4 years, to develop a game it will be a while before we see PC titles released with the new unreal, reasonable by that time GPU/CPU processing power would have surpassed any thing a console might have been able to do any ways, As long as there is a mid range and budget market, developers will still keep on catering for them. People was of similar view when SLI made a come back years ago with fear mongering as it would mean the end of normal gaming and game requirements going to be insanely high. yet we are still gaming on single GPU's pretty much the same as before.In fact it has only been about 2-3 years that a quad core CPU became a min system requirement for a few high end titles and at that second generation Icore 5. So other then needing a bit more GPU ram and system ram, nothing is going to drastically change.Current system is still highly efficient, why change some thing that ain't broken.

With the amount of tools out there, unreal and unity is no near the only tools, there are several insanely good and productive tools out there. Here is an example of a R130.00 royalty free engine developed by a single person, actually have a collection of several game engine with the most expensive being a 1K, which is a completely open and programmable engine. This R130 engine is less programmable and pretty much a click and play easy assembly game engine, while it has short comings directly related to being a easy to use engine, it has nothing to be graphical ashamed off.

 

[WanderingMind]

If you get 10 FPS more in game benchmark using an SSD versus a HDD I will print this page and live stream eating it.

SSD does not improve frame rates not now not ever, nor will it increase CPU usage, it will however speed up loading of applications, copying and writing of data.

Increase in FPS is directly tied to ram, CPU and GPU, not an SSD.

I did not say anything about games, but lets talk about games...
A SSD will increase load times for games, which is great.
A SSD will not increase FPS. Duh... So I am agreeing with you.

If you have a core 2 duo you can clearly observe the CPU is working harder while loading apps or while Windows is starting. This is a good thing because everything is loading much faster. The 6GB of RAM was not a issue. I did not run out of ram when browsing internet etc... It becomes a problem with heavier applications and games.

I will not ever recommend a SSD just for games. The SSD is for the Operating System and frequently used software.

 

[WanderingMind]

Tell me about it, having to support an entry level laptop with a 5400rpm drive.

To answer your question. Get the SSD. Just do it, Today!

I used to work as a technician at a company. We replaced all the older laptops hard drives with SSD.
The users stopped complaining about slow laptops after that.

At that company I had a Lenovo T520 (With a second generation i3 processor and 8GB RAM). After inserting a SSD into the laptop it felt like a brand new machine. It was lovely. Thinking back it was a great laptop.

I will actually buy a entry level laptop with these specs.
Intel i3
4gb RAM
Small HDD

A little bit of research is required to make sure the laptop is upgradable and how easy it is to do.

Upgrade the RAM to at least 8GB. (Personally I would insert 16GB. I like to "future proof")
Remove HDD and insert Sata SSD.

The bigger the SSD the better and remember not to fill that final 10% of space.
I think some SSD already have a 10% overhead so that you cannot use but if you are not sure just don't fill it over 90%. You will shorten the live of the SSD.

 

[wizardofid]

I did not say anything about games, but lets talk about games...
A SSD will increase load times for games, which is great.
A SSD will not increase FPS. Duh... So I am agreeing with you.

If you have a core 2 duo you can clearly observe the CPU is working harder while loading apps or while Windows is starting. This is a good thing because everything is loading much faster. The 6GB of RAM was not a issue. I did not run out of ram when browsing internet etc... It becomes a problem with heavier applications and games.

I will not ever recommend a SSD just for games. The SSD is for the Operating System and frequently used software.

Bold huh ?
Just think about, why would a program that uses X amount of resources suddenly use more resources because your using an SSD. If a program uses 30% CPU and 30% ram Resources it will remain EXACTLY the same regardless of whether you use an HDD or SSD, The only PHYSICAL way to reduce or increase CPU resources, is setting CPU affinity for an app.( Was useful back in the day for older apps.) If you have enough ram you can turn off the page file entirely which will drastically increase RAM Usage.

Other then that system resources that apps use is going to be exactly the same regards of using a HDD or SSD.
Perhaps multitasking is a bit snappier which gives you the impression of more resources being in use.


Secondly bold bit, since the dawn of popular online multiplayer games, spawning first drastically improved the odds of getting to the best vehicles or weapons ect, SSD's have games written all over it, infact in many instances, like my self personally using a SSD as scratch disk, for video editing and photoshop as do thousands of other artists.

While the reliability of SSD's in general have improved drastically over the years, video stream services like netflix or facebook even and youtube are making use of SSD's in their data centers., Generally makes up for about 10-20% of their entire storage.

SSD isn't a selective use only device.

 

[wizardofid]

To answer your question. Get the SSD. Just do it, Today!

I used to work as a technician at a company. We replaced all the older laptops hard drives with SSD.
The users stopped complaining about slow laptops after that.

At that company I had a Lenovo T520 (With a second generation i3 processor and 8GB RAM). After inserting a SSD into the laptop it felt like a brand new machine. It was lovely. Thinking back it was a great laptop.

I will actually buy a entry level laptop with these specs.
Intel i3
4gb RAM
Small HDD

A little bit of research is required to make sure the laptop is upgradable and how easy it is to do.

Upgrade the RAM to at least 8GB. (Personally I would insert 16GB. I like to "future proof")
Remove HDD and insert Sata SSD.

The bigger the SSD the better and remember not to fill that final 10% of space.
I think some SSD already have a 10% overhead so that you cannot use but if you are not sure just don't fill it over 90%. You will shorten the live of the SSD.

BULL DUST. Perhaps with SSD controllers and the nand flash technology of yesteryear. Filling up an SSD, won't reduce the life expectancy, it will however reduce performance of the drive, however it will still be faster then an HDD.

With a decent current gen SSD you should get in excess of 100+ years of use even for a heavy user. Leaving space open on a SSD is recommendation nothing more

Worst POSSIBLE advise to buy a entry level laptop, and then upgrade, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, show me where it is cheaper to buy and then upgrade a laptop.

Dell Inspiron 3593 both has 8Gig ram, 10th gen CPU, unlikely there is a 4Gig ram version, if there was there isn't a huge difference in price like SSD vs HDD versions., so you could knock off R500 ish on each version for the lower ram.

1T HDD version is 10K
256gig m2 SSD drive 10700K to 10800K ish.

Consider the M2 drive not on special is at least 1k for a decent drive, and decent 8gig DDR4 2666mhz ram sodimm is at least 1K. Which means doing your upgrade path costs more.

Between you and me Icore3 laptops aren't entry level they are mid range, entry level price is generally between 3k and 4.5k Latest 10th gen Icore3 brand name Icore3 start at around 7k ish.

I am glad you were a technician as in past tense , I wouldn't allow you near any of my hardware.

 

[kolaval]

Just think about, why would a program that uses X amount of resources suddenly use more resources because your using an SSD.

Imho, It might appear this way because the CPU is not idling long periods whilst the HDD tries to fetch the data.

I don't think people realise just how slow spindle drives are in computer terms.
AFAIK a 5400rpm drive theoretically gives +- 100 MB/s VS old ram, DDR 266 gives 325 MB/s VS ddr4 at 2125 MB/s VS average SATA SSD at 550 read 520 write MB/s

 

[wizardofid]

Imho, It might appear this way because the CPU is not idling long periods whilst the HDD tries to fetch the data.

I don't think people realise just how slow spindle drives are in computer terms.
AFAIK a 5400rpm drive theoretically gives +- 100 MB/s VS old ram, DDR 266 gives 325 MB/s VS ddr4 at 2125 MB/s VS average SATA SSD at 550 read 520 write MB/s

Might appear this way as there is less idle clock cycles. Implying that there is higher cpu usage as a result of using an SSD, implies theoretical improved performance as well. Considering that why don't we see an increase in FPS in games then, after all he is saying there is higher cpu usage, since we know this isn't true with regards to games, why would windows and applications be any different.

 

[Barbarian Conan]

Imho, It might appear this way because the CPU is not idling long periods whilst the HDD tries to fetch the data.

I don't think people realise just how slow spindle drives are in computer terms.
AFAIK a 5400rpm drive theoretically gives +- 100 MB/s VS old ram, DDR 266 gives 325 MB/s VS ddr4 at 2125 MB/s VS average SATA SSD at 550 read 520 write MB/s

Ding ding ding, we have winner. It won't just appear that way if you look at CPU usage, it could also feel that way. Theoretically, you launch an app on your Core 2 Duo on your old HDD, and you know that while it loads your PC still feels OK for the 30s seconds it loads.
Now, you get an SSD, loads the same app, and everything slows to a crawl for 10s as your CPU is maxed out.

 

[Barbarian Conan]

Little to no impact at all, while there will be exclusive titles on release, we will likely see a few titles release on console first. Considering it takes up to 4 years, to develop a game it will be a while before we see PC titles released with the new unreal, reasonable by that time GPU/CPU processing power would have surpassed any thing a console might have been able to do any ways, As long as there is a mid range and budget market, developers will still keep on catering for them. People was of similar view when SLI made a come back years ago with fear mongering as it would mean the end of normal gaming and game requirements going to be insanely high. yet we are still gaming on single GPU's pretty much the same as before.In fact it has only been about 2-3 years that a quad core CPU became a min system requirement for a few high end titles and at that second generation Icore 5. So other then needing a bit more GPU ram and system ram, nothing is going to drastically change.Current system is still highly efficient, why change some thing that ain't broken.

With the amount of tools out there, unreal and unity is no near the only tools, there are several insanely good and productive tools out there. Here is an example of a R130.00 royalty free engine developed by a single person, actually have a collection of several game engine with the most expensive being a 1K, which is a completely open and programmable engine. This R130 engine is less programmable and pretty much a click and play easy assembly game engine, while it has short comings directly related to being a easy to use engine, it has nothing to be graphical ashamed off.

SLI and even the largest GPU advances are small changes compared to what the PS5 (and to a lesser extent, Xbox series X) bring. With SLI and high powered GPUs, you just lower settings and remove some effects.
Ubiquitous fast SSDs will enable games to be designed in a different way. For example, in The Division, when you enter your base, you have to walk slowly through a decontamination area, which probably takes about 7s.
Lets assume it is like that to allow for the loading of 7 x 100mb/s = 700mb data, because most people playing the game still did so on mechanical HDDs.
Now, a large chunk of your players, maybe even a majority, will be able to load that amount of data in a quarter of a second. You don't need them to walk anymore. Hell, you don't even need the area, or even a door anymore, unless you have to cater for those with SATA SSDs or slower.
Now expand it. You can use a completely different texture set/models/audio samples between one city block and the next, as you can just suck it into memory in a second or two from one or two blocks away. For those with ~5GB/s SSD transfer speeds (assuming decent compression on Xbox)
This isn't even getting to some of the more fantastical ideas of Mark Cerny.

Since there will still be a large group of players with mechanical HDDs, what will happen? Will games be designed to cater for them, and come of feeling old against competitors?
Will games cater for SATA SSD players (probably the vast majority of the PC player base) with slight compromises and maybe higher RAM usage as it holds on to assets for longer?
Will bad PC Ports now still port games without much care, and now totally suck for SATA SSD players and slower?
Will PC players have settings that maybe re-use textures more?

 

[wizardofid]

SLI and even the largest GPU advances are small changes compared to what the PS5 (and to a lesser extent, Xbox series X) bring. With SLI and high powered GPUs, you just lower settings and remove some effects.
Ubiquitous fast SSDs will enable games to be designed in a different way. For example, in The Division, when you enter your base, you have to walk slowly through a decontamination area, which probably takes about 7s.
Lets assume it is like that to allow for the loading of 7 x 100mb/s = 700mb data, because most people playing the game still did so on mechanical HDDs.
Now, a large chunk of your players, maybe even a majority, will be able to load that amount of data in a quarter of a second. You don't need them to walk anymore. Hell, you don't even need the area, or even a door anymore, unless you have to cater for those with SATA SSDs or slower.
Now expand it. You can use a completely different texture set/models/audio samples between one city block and the next, as you can just suck it into memory in a second or two from one or two blocks away. For those with ~5GB/s SSD transfer speeds (assuming decent compression on Xbox)
This isn't even getting to some of the more fantastical ideas of Mark Cerny.

Since there will still be a large group of players with mechanical HDDs, what will happen? Will games be designed to cater for them, and come of feeling old against competitors?
Will games cater for SATA SSD players (probably the vast majority of the PC player base) with slight compromises and maybe higher RAM usage as it holds on to assets for longer?
Will bad PC Ports now still port games without much care, and now totally suck for SATA SSD players and slower?
Will PC players have settings that maybe re-use textures more?

No that isn't how games work. I have my work cut out for me it seems. lol Will reply later, which might help with a better understanding, and how things might work in the future especially with regards to unreal 5.

 

[Barbarian Conan]

No that isn't how games work. I have my work cut out for me it seems. lol Will reply later, which might help with a better understanding, and how things might work in the future especially with regards to unreal 5.

I will wait for your full explanation, but I also want to know why they can't work that way.
Because the way that I understood Mark Cerny's explanation, the PS5s SSD will enable that and more.

 

[wizardofid]

I will wait for your full explanation, but I also want to know why they can't work that way.
Because the way that I understood Mark Cerny's explanation, the PS5s SSD will enable that and more.

I don't have the time right now, ironically I am working on new game content right now, a starting point and the short, short, short version, there is quite a few differences between the APIs in use.

With regards to unreal 5 and ps5, until I can see what is actually going on, it is sketchy AF.

 

[Lupus]

@Johnatan56 @wizardofid

Technical question I have been wondering about for a while

New games that are DX12 capable keep throwing out warnings once you go over 4GB of video memory..... what would actually happen if you do would the games just slow down? What's wrong engine wise with funneling secondary assets to RAM assuming there is enough of it?

Texture pop in or flickering.

 

[rambo919]

Bold huh ?
Just think about, why would a program that uses X amount of resources suddenly use more resources because your using an SSD. If a program uses 30% CPU and 30% ram Resources it will remain EXACTLY the same regardless of whether you use an HDD or SSD, The only PHYSICAL way to reduce or increase CPU resources, is setting CPU affinity for an app.( Was useful back in the day for older apps.) If you have enough ram you can turn off the page file entirely which will drastically increase RAM Usage.

I don't get you. People report incidents that are both observable and easily repeatable and you flat out deny the possibility of that happening.

Perhaps you are so focused on the commonly accepted theory that you ignore practical realities? What should normally happen (if everything plays by the set out rules) and what sometimes happens especially in situations not catered for by devs are clearly not the same thing. It's like the patchlogs of CoD Black Ops "increased performance on CPU's with only two cores"..... as if having "only" two cores was somehow odd, in the mind of the devs no one still used "only two" cores but in actual reality there were plenty still left in use.

Fact is in some games having a SSD actually improves ingame performance because not all games actually stick to the regular way of loading.... shift happens. Maybe there is another reason other than what I am assuming..... fact is there is a major observable ingame improvement.

And yes on older CPU's a SSD can increase CPU load..... probably because those CPU's are optimised for HDD's (i.e. the devs of the CPU's never considered such fast I/O speeds), maybe there is another explanation maybe not, fact is.... it actually happens.

I'm fine with being wrong as to why something happens.... but I don't get why someone would just flat out deny it happens.

 

[rambo919]

Texture pop in or flickering.

As long as nothing explodes or the game at worst just gets slow..... I might just try going over the limit to see if it bothers me.

 

[Lupus]

As long as nothing explodes or the game at worst just gets slow..... I might just try going over the limit to see if it bothers me.

Though as stated newer systems will just start borrowing System RAM

 

[wizardofid]

I don't get you. People report incidents that are both observable and easily repeatable and you flat out deny the possibility of that happening.

Perhaps you are so focused on the commonly accepted theory that you ignore practical realities? What should normally happen (if everything plays by the set out rules) and what sometimes happens especially in situations not catered for by devs are clearly not the same thing. It's like the patchlogs of CoD Black Ops "increased performance on CPU's with only two cores"..... as if having "only" two cores was somehow odd, in the mind of the devs no one still used "only two" cores but in actual reality there were plenty still left in use.

Fact is in some games having a SSD actually improves ingame performance because not all games actually stick to the regular way of loading.... shift happens. Maybe there is another reason other than what I am assuming..... fact is there is a major observable ingame improvement.

And yes on older CPU's a SSD can increase CPU load..... probably because those CPU's are optimised for HDD's (i.e. the devs of the CPU's never considered such fast I/O speeds), maybe there is another explanation maybe not, fact is.... it actually happens.

I'm fine with being wrong as to why something happens.... but I don't get why someone would just flat out deny it happens.

Then show me a game with increased FPS, SSD vs HDD, simple enough, if you going to defend the stance, you should easily be able to provide benchmarks that shows exactly that, no. ?

Hopefully this answer your question, rather I will pose question(s), why do computers and GPU have RAM, and why do you think RAM in a GPU or on a Motherboard was placed where it is.?

Then consider things like SATA bus width (not speed) The actual width of the bus versus the bus width of ram on motherboards and GPUs.Then consider what and who shares bandwidth in a group and who has dedicated bandwidth ect. What happens when you read and write to storage device at the same time and what happens with multiple instances especially with regards to shared bandwidth that SSD needs to contend with.

 

[rambo919]

Then show me a game with increased FPS, SSD vs HDD, simple enough, if you going to defend the stance, you should easily be able to provide benchmarks that shows exactly that, no. ?

Hopefully this answer your question, rather I will pose question(s), why do computers and GPU have RAM, and why do you think RAM in a GPU or on a Motherboard was placed where it is.?

Then consider things like SATA bus width (not speed) The actual width of the bus versus the bus width of ram on motherboards and GPUs.Then consider what and who shares bandwidth in a group and who has dedicated bandwidth ect. What happens when you read and write to storage device at the same time and what happens with multiple instances especially with regards to shared bandwidth that SSD needs to contend with.

On one hand, not everything happens in FPS, on the other.... I have never checked FPS. All I can talk about is general responsiveness, the almost complete elimination of infinite loading screens and speed of texture pop-in and so on.... the latter two having nothing to do with FPS. And I am not about to do multiple installs to run experiments to prove anything, ur just gonna have to take my word for it.....FO4 has severe memory problems late game in crowded areas and a SSD helps with that for whatever reason.

I don't know why it works, I just know it works. I also know that getting a SSD is basically standard advise given on forums for FO4 to deal with IFS when the other methods don't work.... or at least it was years ago when last I searched.

EDIT: to be fair for some people apparently nothing works to deal with IFS.... I got lucky that a SSD solved the issue for me, and no this is something that was never patched out, probably a hard limit on the game engine that they went over is my guess.

 

[wizardofid]

On one hand, not everything happens in FPS, on the other.... I have never checked FPS. All I can talk about is general responsiveness, the almost complete elimination of infinite loading screens and speed of texture pop-in and so on.... the latter two having nothing to do with FPS. And I am not about to do multiple installs to run experiments to prove anything, ur just gonna have to take my word for it.....FO4 has severe memory problems late game in crowded areas and a SSD helps with that for whatever reason.

I don't know why it works, I just know it works. I also know that getting a SSD is basically standard advise given on forums for FO4 to deal with IFS when the other methods don't work.... or at least it was years ago when last I searched.

EDIT: to be fair for some people apparently nothing works to deal with IFS.... I got lucky that a SSD solved the issue for me, and no this is something that was never patched out, probably a hard limit on the game engine that they went over is my guess.

You won't get a more frames period. Fallout has specific settings tailored to your system, this includes things like LOD , shadow distance, MSAA, SSAO, ect especially with regards to GPU and system memory. Using settings over and above what is recommended is going to eat away at the memory, which means the next set of assets needs to be loaded into memory of both the system and GPU ram.

While SSD would improve loading and swapping content to memory it is all it would do, with plenty of GPU memory or even just enough system ram should make light work of preloading content into memory, which while initial preload will be slower on a HDD it would make an SSD irrelevant for the most part with enough system resources.

Most issues with regards to fallout is driver and hardware related especially with pascal cards at the time.Mirco stuttering isn't a result of the lack of an SSD, as the games isn't being played on the HDD or SSD but from system and GPU memory.

Believe it or not, average SSD bandwidth is a theoretically 6 gigabits these days, additionally the SSD needs to share bandwidth with other motherboard hardware, while Sata allows for two way data transmission it does come with a performance hit, if it isn't enough that bandwidth needs to be shared with other things it needs to share bandwidth with read and write as well.

Consider the bandwidth of a 960gtx, the bandwidth between GPU and GPU memory is 112 gigabits, the actual bus bandwidth between the GPU and CPU is around 48gigabits, 256bit card 96gigabits and considering the GPU PCIe lane isn't being shared with the rest of the system with the exception of pcie slots and the pending the chipset in use.

Compared to the SSD's dismal theoretical bandwidth of 6gigabits and having to share bandwidth, it isn't even remotely capable of meeting those bandwidth requirements let alone, on the fly asset loading you are insisting games are doing.

Which is why game data when starting a new level is preloaded into memory, especially geometry and textures is loaded into GPU memory due to the extremely high bandwidth of GPU memory.

However not every thing is handled by the GPU, CPU deals with every thing else the GPU doesn't and this is delegated to between the CPU and system memory which also has memory bandwidth far better then what an SSD can muster.

Textures and geometry is handled exclusively by the GPU, however this still needs to be passed on from the Storage to the system ram, cpu and then GPU memory, where it is processed into a useable raw format for the GPU to use.

Considering a storage device isn't part of the rendering pipeline at all, the storage device is only able to pass on data to where it is needed more slowly or faster with regards to feeding data to the system, doesn't in any way decrease or increase performance based on storage in use.

Theoretically you could load an entire 5 gig game into the system memory or preload part of the data as games normally do via storage and the framerate will remain exactly the same, irrespective of the method used.

I hope this some how puts to bed any issues with regards to on the fly assets loading or apparent physical performance gains as a result of using an HDD or SSD.

 

[rambo919]

snip

That's all fine, I never expected to get FPS gains, this is about negating unfortunate FPS drops due. You are looking at it from the wrong end.

If the loading is something that happens constantly and the player does not move faster than the devs anticipate, then it's possible to have assets constantly streaming from storage, but as you said this is severely limited. An alternative explanation is there is in some games much more preloading than in others and sometimes there is more preloading than is practical, here the user can easily move beyond the preloading speed and a SSD would make a difference. Either could be wrong, that's not what matters, what matters is in some cases a SSD helps while in most cases it does nothing other than accelerate initial loading which in the largest games (40GB+) or games with a lot of files like the clauswits engine games generally is a good idea. Loading times in the latter show a remarkable difference between HDD and SSD.

I'm not saying SSD's (unless maybe it's a PCI 4) make a major impact, I'm saying they sometimes make just enough of an impact to make a difference. Some of this is due to general engine design, I have for example seen no UE game ever actually need a SSD, they all load so efficiently (partially due to a tendency to having levels with less clutter) that a SSD just makes no sense.

As an aside currently playing The Outer Worlds (UE) maxed out on a HDD, it ran sluggish until I used this (https://www.nexusmods.com/theouterworlds/mods/9) and now it's smooth and a SSD would make no sense for this game unless you had a slow CPU. I wish the game did not do the combat zone regen nonsense that becomes a obvious exploit but nvm that.

I am not claiming that a SSD is a cureall of any sort.

While SSD would improve loading and swapping content to memory it is all it would do

Nothing to argue with there. I think you might have been seeing arguments I never made to a certain extent.