I've been doing quote some reading about Dual Core gaming the past couple of days and also experienced some things myself.
Here's the full story...
(Follow up to http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=81725)
As far as I understand there are hundreds of people experiencing problems with gaming on Dual Core machines. The common problems seem to be random slowdowns, speedups, frames problems, stuttering, freezing and more. There seems to be a few ways around this although I never seems to fully resolve the problems and only apply to certain games on certain machine configurations as explained here.
This is the rundown...
Some people resolve the problem by using the following method
1) start the game
2) ctrl, alt, del to the task manager
3) Under the Processes tab, find the .exe of the game you are running
4) Right Click on the process and select the "affinity" option
5) make sure only one CPU core is checked
6) Go back to the game and play
7) If problems still persist, try setting the affinity to the other core.
where other fixes include the Microsoft Hotfix (not included in windows updates) for both Intel and AMD, or the AMD Dual Core Optimizer driver or by disabling Cool & Quiet and even changing registry entries.
Some forums with dual core problems can be found here.
It's good to know that certain companies are releasing or developing games that fully support Dual Core.. (like the latest patch for Quake 4)..as where other companies warn you about Dual Core and recommend driver and patches before installation (Company of Heroes actually requests you to install the AMD Dual Core Optimizer driver before installation.)
But these are only for newish games, what about all the other older games? I found a thread about dual core problems with NeverWinterNights with over 250 users having various dual core problems. One dude actually just changed his 3600+ AMD to 4400+ X2 and found 70% of his games to have problems. (He changed back to his old cpu and his new dual core is on ebay now)
Most of us users on Mybroadband are more than fimiliar with downloading drivers, patches and updates or even editing registry but there are Thousands of people playing games of Dual core machine who dont even know what a registry is. I personally think it kinda sucks to go buy a game only to come home to discover that your kickass dual core machine runs the game worse than your old P4 2.4 PC. Are these issues the reason (except for piracy) why PC games are so much cheaper than console games. The fact that you can't really be guaranteed even though your specs are up to date that machine will actually be stable/compatible with the game.
Sorry for the long boring post, but after reading all the thousands of problems people are having while playing games on Dual Core and even experiencing these problems myself I actually feel sorry for these people.
We just want to play and enjoy our games. Maybe consoles are the future of games.
Here's the full story...
(Follow up to http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=81725)
As far as I understand there are hundreds of people experiencing problems with gaming on Dual Core machines. The common problems seem to be random slowdowns, speedups, frames problems, stuttering, freezing and more. There seems to be a few ways around this although I never seems to fully resolve the problems and only apply to certain games on certain machine configurations as explained here.
This is the rundown...
Some people resolve the problem by using the following method
1) start the game
2) ctrl, alt, del to the task manager
3) Under the Processes tab, find the .exe of the game you are running
4) Right Click on the process and select the "affinity" option
5) make sure only one CPU core is checked
6) Go back to the game and play
7) If problems still persist, try setting the affinity to the other core.
where other fixes include the Microsoft Hotfix (not included in windows updates) for both Intel and AMD, or the AMD Dual Core Optimizer driver or by disabling Cool & Quiet and even changing registry entries.
Some forums with dual core problems can be found here.
It's good to know that certain companies are releasing or developing games that fully support Dual Core.. (like the latest patch for Quake 4)..as where other companies warn you about Dual Core and recommend driver and patches before installation (Company of Heroes actually requests you to install the AMD Dual Core Optimizer driver before installation.)
But these are only for newish games, what about all the other older games? I found a thread about dual core problems with NeverWinterNights with over 250 users having various dual core problems. One dude actually just changed his 3600+ AMD to 4400+ X2 and found 70% of his games to have problems. (He changed back to his old cpu and his new dual core is on ebay now)
Most of us users on Mybroadband are more than fimiliar with downloading drivers, patches and updates or even editing registry but there are Thousands of people playing games of Dual core machine who dont even know what a registry is. I personally think it kinda sucks to go buy a game only to come home to discover that your kickass dual core machine runs the game worse than your old P4 2.4 PC. Are these issues the reason (except for piracy) why PC games are so much cheaper than console games. The fact that you can't really be guaranteed even though your specs are up to date that machine will actually be stable/compatible with the game.
Sorry for the long boring post, but after reading all the thousands of problems people are having while playing games on Dual Core and even experiencing these problems myself I actually feel sorry for these people.
We just want to play and enjoy our games. Maybe consoles are the future of games.
