Re: Elite: Dangerous - and the return

[Diziet Sma]

Hooligan:

http://youtu.be/7JhQKOzBTdQ

Heh heh heh... helluva way to dock a 'Conda..

[zevans]

i7 processors are hyperthreaded, so each core can do two things at once. So a dual core i7 is effectively a quad core.

I'm a bit confused about this. I've seen lots of talk about E:D having a requirement for four cores, but

a) Core count has not been well related to actual performance since... I don't know, the Xeon days.
b) Is E:D really, truly coded for multiple cores? Does it ACTUALLY do two things at once?

[Cody]

Is E:D really, truly coded for multiple cores? Does it ACTUALLY do two things at once?

As I understand it, yes - from what I've read, it uses all four cores, and is designed that way.

[zevans]

Is E:D really, truly coded for multiple cores? Does it ACTUALLY do two things at once?

As I understand it, yes - from what I've read, it uses all four cores, and is designed that way.

So... HT might not be good enough then, because if the game is EXPECTING four cores it seems likely that stalls will be down to keeping them fed with data; which means NEITHER virtual processor on the core will be able to do anything...

[Cody]

From the executive producer, and main man...

Hyperthreading doesn't count as cores. The game is multithreaded.

... does that help? <grins>

[zevans]

From the executive producer, and main man...

Hyperthreading doesn't count as cores. The game is multithreaded.

... does that help? <grins>

Perfect

After half an hour of looking on the official forum, it seems yer man needs to tell a few hundred of his forum users some basics about hardware ...

[Cody]

<grins> I sometimes wish he'd simply tell a few hundred forum users to shut-the-****-up!

If you haven't seen it already, this page is informative - their in-house engine simply had to be named Cobra, eh?

[Diziet Sma]

their in-house engine simply had to be named Cobra, eh?

Even the logo for the Cobra Engine has a certain "look" about it..

[zevans]

Must annoy the hell out of devs of a certain age who remember CORBA

[zevans]

So after a Sunday afternoon reading about this nonsense it seems the CPU and memory bandwidth differences between Sandy -> Ivy -> Haswell are pretty marginal, so it's all about having 4 actual cores rather than two, provided you go for one of those generations.

(The improvements have largely been in power consumption or the on-chip gfx acceleration, or more widgets for non-gaming use cases, so won't make any difference if you're going for a meaty GPU anyway, as you would with E:D.)

"If you bought a Core i7-2600K a while back, then we can tell you without the shadow of a doubt, that there is absolutely no need to get rid of it and replace it with a Core i7-4770K."
http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsec ... 23&page=14

Thus, I am in the market for a used Sandy or Ivy 3GB+ and I shall now stop this thread hijack!

[Cody]

There are several people playing E: D happily on a Q6600, btw.

[Zireael]

Pissed as hell because it turns out the specs (those with quad core) that have been oft-quoted are recommended, not minimum, and people have been quoting them as minimum.

If I had known, I'd have bought the beta, and now it's too late, not to mention I don't have 35 pounds on hand.

[Gimi]

Pissed as hell because it turns out the specs (those with quad core) that have been oft-quoted are recommended, not minimum, and people have been quoting them as minimum.

If I had known, I'd have bought the beta, and now it's too late, not to mention I don't have 35 pounds on hand.

Actually, back before the Alpha started there were quite a few discussions about this in the PBF. In one of those Michael Brooks said that he considered a true 4 core CPU running at 2GHz as a minimum for running the game well.

Quad core is the minimum spec, anything under that is likely to be unplayable.

Michael

Together with all the other comments and discussions I think the result is that this has been considered an undeniable truth even though there are a few who claim that they are running the game fine on 2 core CPU's.

[Cody]

In one of those Michael Brooks said that he considered a true 4 core CPU running at 2GHz as a minimum for running the game well.

Quad core is the minimum spec, anything under that is likely to be unplayable. Michael

That's the thing, ain't it - running the game well. I see those claims too, and I see some very low fps numbers from people using dual cores.

[Gimi]

In one of those Michael Brooks said that he considered a true 4 core CPU running at 2GHz as a minimum for running the game well.

Quad core is the minimum spec, anything under that is likely to be unplayable. Michael

That's the thing, ain't it - running the game well. I see those claims too, and I see some very low fps numbers from people using dual cores.

True, but I still see some that claim to run it well (on low graphics settings mind you) with a duel core. They do have a decent graphics card though (but still below what Michael recommended).

Only time will tell, but since ED is using true multi threading I wouldn't bet on a decent experience with just two cores.