On Source Engine & Multi-Core Support
Tech Report is the latest site with an article on Valve adding multi-core CPU support to the Source Engine, taking a look at what all is involved to make this possible and the new possibilities that become available.
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ShadowRam
replyWell then,
They didn't really tell us much, that wasn't already covered before, and its looking less and less like some kind of special leap in threading/gaming programming.
I was hoping to see some HL2 Framerate comparisons,
not some Valve only developer tool benchmark.
(Wow, a level can compile faster with more than 1 core.. who knew!)
I have a feeling although their going this route, its probably still only a 10-20% increase in overall performance, and the idea that
'Multi-core will provide more and better Physics, Particle, AI' is an already obvious forseeable advantage of multi-core... nothing new
I'm disappointed.-
It might not be a super duper performance increase at the moment, but wait until the quad core chips come out, and dual socket quad cores, or octicores or whatever the hell is coming out.
It will pay off in the long run I'm sure.-
precisely the same reason that dx10 isnt a big deal to us just as dx9 wasnt when we were still gaming on dx8 games... (doom 3 was a dx8 game if you all remember correctly). Its all about introducing the crap asap so that developers can get used to programming/using the tools for the new api's/technologies etc.
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It's still good that there's another engine which can use multiple cores for more physics etc.
The idea that you can do more with more CPUs is old and obvious but the implementation of that idea is far from trivial when everything has to be synced at each frame and so many things depend on each other.
It's nice that the 360 and PS3 have forced developers to tackle using multi-core CPUs, which have been all but ignored and wasted by PC gaming until recently, but it's still early days. Some 360 and PS3 won't take advantage of the cores either, since it is more work, but the more generic engines (like Source) that people can licence with the hard work done already, the better.
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