Benefit of even more cores

multi-core engine

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

Hello,

Regarding the mutli-core ai engine and multi-core nature of the game engine itself would there be any noticeable differences in game play/performance if I were to upgrade from my 4-core i7 to Intel's upcoming 10-core Broadwell-E chip or to AMD's "rumored" 16 core FX Zen chip?  More specifically, would the ai be even smarter and execute even more complex strategies, or would the differences and benefits be a bit more subtle under the hood type improvements? Any insight into this would be appreciated!

64,120 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Performance wise, you're already seeing degradation in the efficiency of your processor by the time it hits 50% utilization.  At that point, it's like having a saturated connection and things slow way down on getting through the queue.  Upgrading would get you a lower power utilization and and smoother and more speedy execution even if there aren't any game play factors.  I highly doubt there are, getting smarter with more resources available is a pretty high end feature.

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Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting psychoak, reply 1

Performance wise, you're already seeing degradation in the efficiency of your processor by the time it hits 50% utilization.  At that point, it's like having a saturated connection and things slow way down on getting through the queue.  Upgrading would get you a lower power utilization and and smoother and more speedy execution even if there aren't any game play factors.  I highly doubt there are, getting smarter with more resources available is a pretty high end feature.

 

I see, makes sense.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I think the game can use up to 12 cores, a Dev did say once but I am a little foggy on the number, it was at least 12 though. I'd be amazed if it made the AI smarter but it would make your sim speed bulletproof for when we can play on Huge maps with 12 players. 11 AI with thousands of units is going to be a challenge I would think, unless the 12 player mentioned on their roadmap is just for MP/Humans. 

I've not heard of that particular Zen rumour, cool if it comes true (assuming they are good cores). 

Reply #4 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Up to 16 cores are supported by Ashes currently. The real world benefit of more cores is that the CPU won't bottleneck the GPU. If you play Ashes on low settings with a decent GPU you can actually max the CPU before the GPU. Here is an example. Note the CPU and GPU framerates are identical, indicating the CPU bottlenecked my performance.

So, if you have a very fast GPU (or two of them more realistically) you might max a 4-core CPU even on the higher graphics presets. More cores would allow your GPUs to reach their full potential.

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Reply #5 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Ticktoc, reply 3

I think the game can use up to 12 cores, a Dev did say once but I am a little foggy on the number, it was at least 12 though. I'd be amazed if it made the AI smarter but it would make your sim speed bulletproof for when we can play on Huge maps with 12 players. 11 AI with thousands of units is going to be a challenge I would think, unless the 12 player mentioned on their roadmap is just for MP/Humans. 

I've not heard of that particular Zen rumour, cool if it comes true (assuming they are good cores). 

 

I think the rumors and speculation come from reports like these:

http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-opteron-processor-32-core/

Apparently CERN will be using a 32-core Zen based Opteron processor which turns out to be several smaller cpus connected on die by an interconnect.

Obviously the core count on AMD and Intel cpus for the server market is way higher than consumer variants, but we will just have to wait and see if Zen turns out well and is competitive.

Reply #6 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Mellified_Man, reply 4

Up to 16 cores are supported by Ashes currently. The real world benefit of more cores is that the CPU won't bottleneck the GPU. If you play Ashes on low settings with a decent GPU you can actually max the CPU before the GPU. Here is an example. Note the CPU and GPU framerates are identical, indicating the CPU bottlenecked my performance.

So, if you have a very fast GPU (or two of them more realistically) you might max a 4-core CPU even on the higher graphics presets. More cores would allow your GPUs to reach their full potential.

 

Ok, that's good to know.  :)

Reply #7 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

It will be fun if they do higher than 8 cores but 6-8 will be the sweet spot for the average person I think.