Author Topic: multi-threaded AH2? (Read 345 times)

eagl · « **on:** March 09, 2005, 04:12:32 PM »

Intel is apparently working on helping game developers take advantage of hyperthreading and multiple cpu systems. Is HTC getting in on this? HardOCP has a little news clip...

http://www.hardocp.com/index.html#13115-1

Those of us with new socket 939 Athlon 64 systems may have dual core upgrade options by the end of the year, and Intel seems to be pushing hard towards mainstream dual core cpus this year as well. I'm sure we'd all appreciate it if HT took Intel up on their offer of assistance and coaded some tasty dual core goodness into AH2

That plus an official Nvidia SLI driver config for AH2 would be a nice mid-year enhancement for the game. I suspect the whole world will be moving to dual core cpus in the next year or two, so it might be a worthy investment similiar to bumping AH up to DX9. Next comes a rewrite to 64 bit windows standards, but that'll have to wait for microsoft to decide when that will become mainstream.

Just a thought...

jodgi · « **Reply #1 on:** March 09, 2005, 04:20:29 PM »

I know one thing, AH2 is DX9.

eagl · « **Reply #2 on:** March 12, 2005, 06:09:00 AM »

I know it's DX9. My point is that muti-threading might have the same long-term benefits as going to dx9 did.

jodgi · « **Reply #3 on:** March 12, 2005, 06:16:53 AM »

Oops, had a brainfart.

Or was it my attention deficit?

Schutt · « **Reply #4 on:** March 12, 2005, 06:40:47 AM »

The topic was brought up and some htc official mentioned ah2 potential for multi threading was small.

I doubt that... could really run at least 4 threads in parallel and profit from it as not the whole game hangs when one thing gets delayed.

I am sure future processors go for more parallelism for a while and ah2 could run faster when porting the code to parallel, but thats a lot of work. But think of running in a dual core hyper thread setup, 4 threads running like vox & sound, flight model, network, graphics could give next to 3 times more speed. And that means better graphics, no sound related stutters, more solid network and more realistic flight model calculations.

If AH2 does not pick up on that someone else certainly will, think of IL2 next generation or some Sony sponsord game. And if they do it right they might manage to get a good head start being one or two years ahead of ah2. So i would certainly try to write future ah2 code portable.