Are modern games all Multithreaded now?

007 · Sep 1, 2008

What I mean to say is - are all the new releases these days optimised to make use of more than one core - irrespective of what cpu it is, amd or intel - firs dual core series to come out or the very latest in either maker?

007

technoViking · Sep 1, 2008

I believe they all try to take advantage of 2 cores but doing it well is not as easy as some make it sound.

Today's programming languages aren't designed to take advantage of multiple cores (well Java I think does a good job but thats mainly for application programming not Game programming), and gaming libraries also don't.

So the programmer is learning just tricks of the trade on how to best make a game multithreaded.

Lots of smart people are working on creating a new language that is designed for multiple processors and once it comes out there is going to be a huge increase in performance in gaming.

But who knows when it will come out and even worse, new languages just aren't learned, unless they have a strong market value and people really trust it will become mainstream.

So other people are working on making libraries that can make it easier to do concurrent programming.

Right now I'm taking a course on concurrent programming in C so that's where I'm getting this information. C has 2 libaries that are mainly used in multithreaded programming called OPEN MP and MPI

OldSkool · Sep 1, 2008

Most do not, no. Not getting into too many details as this is heavily discussed in many threads like the one in my sig.

Shiggity · Sep 1, 2008

+1 to a new programming language, C++ is gettin pretty old

technoViking · Sep 1, 2008

I heard DX11 is allowing for better multiprocessing power, so that means they are just adding libraries to C/C++ I think Direct X 10 is a mix

Shiggity · Sep 1, 2008

Lets hope DX11 actually gets widely accepted, DX10 set things in reverse kinda.

technoViking · Sep 1, 2008

yah well I think Windows 7 will be a better OS than Vista, its suppose to look like vista but be super light weight and Windows 7 will use DX11.

This is suppose to be happening in 2010 though

Mr.Guvernment · Sep 1, 2008

easy answer - no
more detailed answer - a small % of games are (like sub %10??)

deathman20 · Sep 1, 2008

technoViking said:
yah well I think Windows 7 will be a better OS than Vista, its suppose to look like vista but be super light weight and Windows 7 will use DX11.

This is suppose to be happening in 2010 though

DX11 is coming to Vista as well, suppose to be released for Vista before Windows 7 is even released.

technoViking · Sep 1, 2008

oh cool, I might have to reinstall vista for that then

YellowDart · Sep 2, 2008

technoViking said:
its suppose to look like vista but be super light weight and Windows 7 will use DX11.

This is suppose to be happening in 2010 though

This is something I'd LOVE to see MS do. I'll believe it when I see it, as we all know and "love" the bloat-ware they've released and named Vista. Hell, I'm a .NET guy, and I could think of many ideas they could implement to lighten things up. It'll be interesting to see, if this "super light weight Windows" happens, what sort of impact it will have on future .NET framework iterations.

As for the OP's question, like many have said: Multi-threading is fairly well implemented by most main stream programming languages, multi-core, however, is not very well supported currently. I focus more on app development for the web, though, so I rarely work with that functionality (though I really look forward to seeing what can be done with web servers to leverage multi-cored systems).

technoViking · Sep 2, 2008

YellowDart,

Multithreaded servers are a must, which most are, like if a client connects to a port, thats multithreaded, if it isn't, you would be in trouble.

Is that what you ment when you said web servers? like servers that manage users connecting/requesting information? If so, then yes, most are already unless I'm confused on what you ment.

I do alot of application development and I haven't ever developed a server that wasn't mutlithreaded and I havn't been in the industry long infact I'm still in school but worked in the industry for 1.5 years so far.

Hardin · Sep 2, 2008

Do you people play new releases? Most of them do support dual cores. Especially any game that has the Games for Windows label. I haven't played any yet that don't support dual cores.

YellowDart · Sep 2, 2008

technoViking said:
YellowDart,

Multithreaded servers are a must, which most are, like if a client connects to a port, thats multithreaded, if it isn't, you would be in trouble.

Is that what you ment when you said web servers? like servers that manage users connecting/requesting information? If so, then yes, most are already unless I'm confused on what you ment.

I do alot of application development and I haven't ever developed a server that wasn't mutlithreaded and I havn't been in the industry long infact I'm still in school but worked in the industry for 1.5 years so far.

Right, not quite what I was getting at... heh. I was simply mentioning that it would be neat to see more built in support at the API level for more direct control over multi-cored servers.

Hardin said:
Do you people play new releases? Most of them do support dual cores. Especially any game that has the Games for Windows label. I haven't played any yet that don't support dual cores.

Yes, a lot of games now support dual core, but the big question is, "Do they take full advantage of that technology?" The answer, in most cases, is "no".

Hardin · Sep 2, 2008

I'd say that they do. Sure they don't use each core at 100% but it gets pretty close. Now quad core support can still use some work.

John G · Sep 2, 2008

I would say that almost all new games use multi-cores to some extent, but how much use they make of them is a mixed bag.

Mr.Guvernment · Sep 2, 2008

Hardin said:
I'd say that they do. Sure they don't use each core at 100% but it gets pretty close. Now quad core support can still use some work.

love to see some screens of task manager with all these games...

Games like Flight Sim X are supposed to use multiple cores, most i have seen on my uncles quad was around %10 of a 2nd core used..

most game "support" multiple cores, cause they don't care they use one core and are done, or offload very little, to nothing to a 2nd core. as said the question is do they USE the other cores well, well enough that it makes a diff between 1 or 2 or more cores - no.

deathman20 · Sep 2, 2008

Mr.Guvernment said:
love to see some screens of task manager with all these games...

Games like Flight Sim X are supposed to use multiple cores, most i have seen on my uncles quad was around %10 of a 2nd core used..

most game "support" multiple cores, cause they don't care they use one core and are done, or offload very little, to nothing to a 2nd core. as said the question is do they USE the other cores well, well enough that it makes a diff between 1 or 2 or more cores - no.

FS X I've seen use 100% on both my cores.

Neural Net · Sep 2, 2008

If I tell UT3 to use 2 cores only (setting the affinity) I lose 10fps. So yes a lot of games are multithreaded and more games use quads then you'd think, but they're not essential for good performance - a better GPU or well overclocked Dual core will do a better job.

Hardin · Sep 2, 2008

Mr.Guvernment said:
love to see some screens of task manager with all these games...

Games like Flight Sim X are supposed to use multiple cores, most i have seen on my uncles quad was around %10 of a 2nd core used..

most game "support" multiple cores, cause they don't care they use one core and are done, or offload very little, to nothing to a 2nd core. as said the question is do they USE the other cores well, well enough that it makes a diff between 1 or 2 or more cores - no.

While I was home I had two monitors and I always had a cpu monitor on the second monitor. It'd be too long to list all the games that I have played that has multi threaded support. Although I have no reason to lie I can list all the games that I can remember if you want me to.

Are modern games all Multithreaded now?

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