6 ms·
Most games aren't CPU bound anyway, would be interesting to see compiler benchmarks or other tasks that actually stress the CPU.
by mahmoudhossam 2y ago
Most games aren't CPU bound anyway, would be interesting to see compiler benchmarks or other tasks that actually stress the CPU.
- throwaway71271 2y agomany are cpu bound for stupid things like https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times-by-70/ https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times... or various accidentally quadratic functions of course they shouldnt, but such is life
- mahmoudhossam 2y agoThat's a perfect storm of bad coding though, not something I'd buy a new CPU for.
- throwaway71271 2y agowell ultimately you buy a new CPU so that your software runs faster sadly after few years faster CPUs are normalized and we write sloppier code that makes the programs slow again then amd has to work on next generation of speculative execution innovations and almost AGI branch predictors :) and we go again
- homebrewer 2y agoIf you spend as much time in online games as some people do (it's not rare to find a steam account with thousands of hours in GTA 5), it would absolutely make sense to get a new CPU which will save you 10-15 minutes of waiting time per day. Also, "perfect storm of bad coding" is the norm for games, and not the exception, no?
- hu3 2y agoMuch easier to buy faster CPU than to decompile, debug and fix bottlenecks in games.
- dundarious 2y agoWhen you socialize the benefit with 0 cost to players, that's "easier" still. It's all about perspective.
- KingOfCoders 2y agoInterested in that too, we probably need to wait for a Phoronix review.
- deng 2y agoYou would think that, but multicore programming is really hard. Balancing all the tasks of your game across available cores is not easy, and given the intense crunch with which games are developed, there's often no time to do this properly. So single-thread performance is still very important, especially for newer titles, which is why Intel was still considered the best CPU for gaming (which is now changing, but mostly due to the stability problems). So this very much depends on which games you test and how you configure them graphics-wise. AMD was accused of heavily skewing their initial marketing numbers when introducing Zen5, almost exclusively testing with older games and testing them with very weak graphics cards to make them GPU-bound. In this case, MSI only tested with three games, which is a tiny, tiny data point. Channels like HardwareUnboxed test with up to 30 games to get a complete picture of the performance.
- Epa095 2y agoHow does the domination of a few big game engines(unity/unreal) change this? I get the impression that they handle more and more of the actual compute intensive stuff, and 'nobody' writes their own engines anymore? So then the economy of scale changes it a bit, and maybe they can make abstractions which use many cores under the hood, hiding the complexity?
- diggan 2y ago> How does the domination of a few big game engines(unity/unreal) change this? I get the impression that they handle more and more of the actual compute intensive stuff, and 'nobody' writes their own engines anymore? You still have to know what you're doing. Cities: Skylines 2 is a good example, as the first installation had awful performance when playing bigger cities, and it wasn't very good at parallelizing that work. For the second game, they seem to have gone all in with Unity ECS, which changes your entire architecture (especially if you use it wholesale like developers of Cities: Skylines did), which is something you have to explicitly do. Now the second game is a lot better at using all available cores, but it does introduce a lot of complexity compared to the approach they took in the first game.
- deng 2y ago
- Jamie9912 2y agoRust certainly is. I get the same FPS in 4k than at 1080p
- time0ut 2y agoThe impact of going from a non-X3D to X3D CPU is incredible in that game. I could be off on the details, but I recall benchmarks showing that just switching to an X3D has a much larger impact than jumping multiple generations of GPU. I get like 120 FPS with a 5600X and RTX 3080. I've been dreaming of a 9800X3D based build when it comes out, but realistically don't have the time to actually play.
- alkonaut 2y agoThe key metric for gaming is how to split a certain budget between GPU and non-GPU components, and where the sweet spots are on that budget curve. The trend in recent years have been to always go for a cheaper cpu and expensive GPU, but not too cheap.
- diggan 2y ago> Most games aren't CPU bound anyway With the important disclaimer that this obviously is different for everyone. I play a lot of simulation/strategy games (like Cities: Skylines and Hearts of Iron) and most of the games I play actually are CPU bound, especially in later stages of the games.
- lrae 2y agoSame for many (competitive) FPS games, which some have quite a bit of players (Valorant, CS, CoD, all the Battle Royales, ...) So, while saying most games is true, it's still a good junk of players that do play CPU bound games.
- scotty79 2y agoWhy are Valorant and such CPU bound?
- rcxdude 2y agoMainly because they're relatively simple graphically but they want to run at super high framerates, so the bottleneck is the CPU feeding the GPU each frame.
- olavgg 2y agoWhich is basically memory bandwidth problem, which a large L3 cache helps a lot with. I've seen the same things with ClickHouse, having a larger L3 cache and fewer cpu cores can increase performance significantly.
- chronid 2y agoDoesn't a lot of optimization target making your code and data more cache friendly because memory latency (not bandwidth?) kills performance absolutely (between other things like port usage I guess)? If something is in L3 it is better for CPU "utilization" than stalling and reaching out to RAM. I guess there are eventually diminishing returns with too much cache, but...
- broodbucket 2y agoA lot of games are, especially MMOs. Single-threaded performance still matters, and the additional L3 cache from the X3D series is a ginormous upgrade.
- guilamu 2y agoWrong. Any competitive FPS is cpu bound and those 3ds amd cpus are doing great with those 1%low FPS.
- heraldgeezer 2y agoIf you go by number of games and console ports, sure. But those you play once or wait for a good price and play the story for 8-20h. If you look at consistent player numbers, some top games are CS2, Valorant, WoW, FXIV, LoL and Dota2. Competitive FPS are CPU bound as they are easy to run, but people want the highest framerates possible due to new 200+hz screens and general player input is better with higher framerates. MMOs are CPU bound once you get into large groups and into big towns with lots of players, even brand new MMOs like Throne and Liberty. MOBAs Im not sure, but in general, same with FPS games. More framerates = good for player input. These games are not a single player game you lock at 30 or 60 frames.
- Netcob 2y agoInteresting outlier: Factorio and probably other games from this genre. I usually upgrade my CPU just to prevent it from becoming a bottleneck (that's the official version, I very often buy technology for the sake of having cool new technology, who am I kidding). So a CPU upgrade hadn't been something that made a game "playable" for me since GPUs became a thing. But when I got my 7800X3D, that was the difference between having reached a limit with my Factorio megabase and being able to keep building it bigger! Also, since the simulation in that game has to churn through a lot of data in every tick, it's also a rare case in general where RAM speeds have a visible effect.
- robdar 2y agoFlight simulator games (i.e. Digital Combat Simulator) tend to be CPU bound, though, depending high-end VR or having enough monitors with enough pixels can quickly become GPU-limited, the underlying simulation, systems modelling, sensor simulations, AI, etc, will still all be CPU limited.
- jamesy0ung 2y agoHopefully ED delivers on some solid performance improvements rather than releasing new early access modules.