(Rothgar) Re:Re:Quad Core Support

Official Forums · 10-16-2009, 05:20 AM

salty21db wrote:

Any possiblity to get a dev response on this one?

Im just really curious why not, i mean its ok if its too hard or complex i spose it just really urks me to the fact as i stated above about the single core vs quad atm in this game.

And yeah i understand the step would have to be toward dual core first which is fine that would be awesome alone imo lol.

The client already supports dual and quad-core machines. Resource management, animations, voice chat and several other tasks are offloaded to their own threads. We'll never be able to spread the load evenly across all cores. The main thread will always have a lot more work to do than the other threads. Trying to squeeze out more multi-threading takes a very long time and is very error-prone. It can also have a negative performance effect for players on single core and hyper-threading machines due to the extra overhead of thread-safety code.

As I've mentioned in other posts, we're always looking at ways to improve performance with the best bang for our buck. And right now we get more "bang" out of other initiatives.

LINK

Grim · 10-16-2009, 08:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Official Forums

salty21db wrote:
we're always looking at ways to improve performance with the best bang for our buck. And right now we get more "bang" out of other initiatives.

In other words,"we are fucking cheap and would rather sit back and collect cash from lon

Deson · 10-16-2009, 10:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grim

In other words,"we are fucking cheap and would rather sit back and collect cash from lon

No, in other words they pick what's the best use of their time with both their users and very real time costs in mind. At no point was money mentioned in that post.

Diknak · 10-16-2009, 11:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deson

No, in other words they pick what's the best use of their time with both their users and very real time costs in mind. At no point was money mentioned in that post.

I agree with you, but he DID technically mention money with the phrase bang for your buck.

The moral of the post is that they are prioritizing changes that will impact the most people and will be a significant improvement without having to gut the entire engine. ie: shadows and shaders. The thing I would like done the most would be to separate particle effects from animations and put them on the GPU. This would not only impact performance, but would allow them to create a lot more variety.

Illuminator · 10-16-2009, 12:00 PM

My fear is that they learn to saturate the cores without a proportionate increase in performance. Then boxing will suck.

EQAditu · 10-16-2009, 05:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diknak

I agree with you, but he DID technically mention money with the phrase bang for your buck.

The moral of the post is that they are prioritizing changes that will impact the most people and will be a significant improvement without having to gut the entire engine. ie: shadows and shaders. The thing I would like done the most would be to separate particle effects from animations and put them on the GPU. This would not only impact performance, but would allow them to create a lot more variety.

I seem to remember them explaining that the particle system had to remain on the CPU because of the particles being reliant on the polygon faces. IE, particles that followed the model's shape and would form-fit. That being said... didn't they already move animations to that second major thread in the so called dual-core support change? Even so, I don't think they moved the majority of particle generation to that thread as well or I'd think my frame rates wouldn't differ as much by killing particles.

Diknak · 10-16-2009, 05:44 PM

Yes, they did say that they were going to remain on the CPU, but it is still what I would like done the most. He said it COULD be done, but it would take a lot of work. I don't think animations are entirely on the second thread, but I think the particles went untouched and remain on the primary thread.

Illuminator · 10-16-2009, 05:49 PM

Particle effects is what needs to be taken off the CPU the most. Funky how this priority is inversely proportional to what it should be. With and without particle effects are two fucking completely different experiences, and one of those experiences is gay as hell.

Deson · 10-16-2009, 10:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diknak

I agree with you, but he DID technically mention money with the phrase bang for your buck.

Because I should respect the ignorance of idiom from some random guy being an ass and give him the technicality? Ok, lets take the techinicality and still make the point that it's still the more return for your money and not theirs, you know, since we're being technical.

Grim · 10-17-2009, 06:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deson

Because I should respect the ignorance of idiom from some random guy being an ass and give him the technicality? Ok, lets take the techinicality and still make the point that it's still the more return for your money and not theirs, you know, since we're being technical.

so your calling the dev an ass for using an idiom?,cause I sure didn't use one...tool.