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Hardware How many CPU cores does StarCraft 2 use?

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Sifter3000, 18 Aug 2010.

  1. leveller

    leveller Yeti Sports 2 - 2011 Champion!

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    I'll rephrase. There is no increase in FPS with more than 3 cores.

    In an age when we can have multiple CPU running with lots of cores I am disappointed that games aren't benefitting.
     
  2. Xir

    Xir Modder

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    Maybe they just don't like the idea of having 1/4 of the chip dead in the system. :D

    Where you're right is that you get 3 for the price of 2...and mostly 4 aren't needed (yet)
    Still if I buy a 4 core chip*, I want all 4 to work, and no amound of 3 core branding will help that.

    *and 3 core chips are just that
     
  3. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    I tried it last night but for some reason the whole motherboard was electrocuting me and very, very hot (have you ever felt hot rear I/O ports and plastic PCI sockets before??) :worried::worried: so I'll try again later.
     
  4. V3ctor

    V3ctor Tech addict...

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    Better kiss that mobo goodbye... But those are some strange symptoms, that's too bad that u can't do the additional tests :( I was looking forward to it...

    And If u could dig up some old hardware (if u have it, and find some time) , why not just bench some old quad cpus? Too see if the game suffers alot if it has a Q6600 or a Phenom 9800/9950...

    I would love to see if they could be fast enough, or if instead of 3 cores utilized in the 980X, the game would actually use the 4 cores of slower cpu's

    And thanks for the great reviews ;)
     
  5. void

    void What's a Dremel?

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    Ewww that doesn't sound healthy....

    Hopefully you haven't killed your board for my sake.
     
  6. rickysio

    rickysio N900 | HJE900

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    Q6600 and a 9600GT is chugging along mighty fine (I have SC2 running in the background right now - settings assigned was Ultra on everything.) on 1280x1024. :D
     
  7. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    2+2HT = 57 min, 61FPS average at 3.3GHz. Even lower than just two cores on its own :/

    I tried it with the 980X and 940 at their stock speeds with 2+2 - same result for both.
     
  8. thehippoz

    thehippoz What's a Dremel?

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    ugh so ht is a no go.. well I can vouch for 3.3 on two cores E6600- ultra everything up on a oc'd gtx 260 smooth 1080p

    I'm actually shocked it ran without a hitch- thought it would be time to retire this rig this year and it keeps on going (like a toyota) but she does have a lot of good aftermarket parts on her :blush:

    I'll put her out to lan machine black friday for sure and build my next leobeater =] sad kinda, but she's done well and talk about bang for the buck.. system lasted longer than any I've ever built- even the amd rig with the 800xl, it took me 3 different video cards though

    the 8800 gtx on release wasn't fast enough so went to the 9800gtx when huang dangled that pos on his milk runs.. actually turned out to be a downgrade in some ways but it oc'd like a bat out of hell.. then the 260 has played nice with everything, my upgrade days were finally over

    think ati is coming out with the fermi beater to put the pressure back on.. I'm not even sure I need to upgrade the board and chip as they run 3.6 np- 3.3 seems to be the sweet spot of diminishing returns on the voltage and fps though
     
  9. CrusnikMachine

    CrusnikMachine What's a Dremel?

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    i cant understand how its a good thing that someone with a dual or tri can get the same level of detail as the guy with an overclocked 980 and a jacked VGA. directx 9? seriously? there are far lower budget games that support even DX11.

    "People with stuff like i7s and 6GB of RAM can brag all they want but IMO its kinda like driving a hummer with a little better gas consumption. The vehicle sure looks cool,"

    well some games actually come very close to maxing my 4GB, i could easily max it if i wasnt aware of my limit. for example gta4/avp + os(75%) then ad chrome and boom your maxed XD
    for me its also a longevity thing. spend 600ish on mobo,cpu and memory and your good for 3-4 years or more with overclocking.

    what pisses me off is that if i have 8GB my OS or any game still only uses the minimum.
     
  10. perplekks45

    perplekks45 LIKE AN ANIMAL!

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    And why would any software use more RAM when it doesn't need it? Are you a fan of sloppy programming? :p
     
  11. Daveoh

    Daveoh What's a Dremel?

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    A review on the performance of BFBC2 with varying numbers of cores would be nice. As far as I know, this is the most CPU-demanding game I can think of! I only have a dual core at the moment and it's unplayable, with about min 10fps and max 20fps (when on the edge of a map looking outwards). I have seen a small test before which showed quad cores improved the performance to twice that of dual cores.
     
  12. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

  13. Daveoh

    Daveoh What's a Dremel?

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    Ah, thanks for that link! I googled before but didn't find bit-tech or think of searching it :p
    I agree the MP requires even more performance, I was able to get up to 30fps in SP. (My system is pretty terrible.) The test I actually found before was of the beta version, which may have been quite different from the final build. They reported 38fps average on dual core and 79fps average on quad core.

    Anyway, thanks for the heads up! I plan on buying an i5-750 soon, so I am also fairly interested in whether hyper-threading adds any performance to games or otherwise nowadays, seeing as it does not support it. From what I have read recently (although there are no recent tests within the last year or two I could find), HT is useless, and can even reduce game performance.
     
  14. bhougha1

    bhougha1 What's a Dremel?

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    Great Artical and a great idea for an artical. Most of the other articals have focused on the gpu and I think it's the cpu we need to look at.
    I didn't read all the comments on this, so sorry if this is a repeat.
    I think to properly investigate the title of this artical, you needed to underclock the I7 down to like 1.7 or add a second GPU. I think you got bottlenecked on that 5870 and we were not able to see what really happened. Those graphs proved part of it, but to be sure we really need to run it as such.
    It would be nice to see how some of the older AMD and Intel processors would perform. The i7 at any freq would perform better then most other processors at the same freq, so it would be nice to understand that. It would also be nice to understand with an old processor how the Havok physics impacts on and off. Basically want to understand what is the minimum processor that is needed to have all the settings on ultra.
    One other question I have is, if there is a lot of lag with a bunch of troops on screen, is that most likely due to the cpu or the gpu?
     
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