i7 CPU's

[MADe]

Hello,

I use an Intel i7 920 DO cpu. Its a quad core with HT. With HT enabled thats 8 logical processors. Is AH coded to work with this cpu?
If not, what are the best choices to make for AH gaming?

ty

Same question about multiple vid cards, SLI and Crossfire. How does AH deal here.?

ty

[Skuzzy]

Natively, Aces High uses 2 cores.  There is no practical way to use more as virtually everything in the game is dependent on an event happening before the next thing can happen.  That is the wya it is with most software.

Very few applications can really take advantage of more than two cores and see a performance gain.  Video/Audio editing packages are the ones that can get the most gains from a high number of CPU cores.

[gyrene81]

  Since when did Hyperthreading increase the number of cpu cores in a processor?

[Skuzzy]

It always has.  There are two physical sets of registers for each core of the HT enabled family of CPUs.  Intel doubles the number of ALU's for each core as well.  They did it in to take advantage of the bandwidth available in the cores.

Just like the Xeon quad core CPU's which report 8 cores per CPU.  The Xeon's take it one step further and double the number of FPU's, per core, as well.

[MADe]

I have disabled HT because no software uses 8 threads really, it gave me a bit of ram speed boost 5000MB/s +/-.

Is there a method for asigning AH to specific cores and if so what is the recommended choice?

ps many of the console game hardware and software has been using 8 logical processor cpu's for awhile now, home pc's are behind the curve.

[gyrene81]

It always has.  There are two physical sets of registers for each core of the HT enabled family of CPUs.  Intel doubles the number of ALU's for each core as well.  They did it in to take advantage of the bandwidth available in the cores.

Just like the Xeon quad core CPU's which report 8 cores per CPU.  The Xeon's take it one step further and double the number of FPU's, per core, as well.

But hyperthreading is not actually doubling the processors, it's virtual duplication of part of the physical processor through OS support. Put any hyper threading processor into a system with an OS that isn't optimized for multiple processors and hyper threading and it's only the physical core(s) is getting recognized and used.

[MADe]

Gentleman stay on target please.

[Skuzzy]

But hyperthreading is not actually doubling the processors, it's virtual duplication of part of the physical processor through OS support. Put any hyper threading processor into a system with an OS that isn't optimized for multiple processors and hyper threading and it's only the physical core(s) is getting recognized and used.

No, it is not a virtual implementation, it is a physical implementation.

MADe, Windows controls the thread allocation.  At any given time a Windows system may be running hundreds of threads.  Video and audio editing packages will use all 8 cores, if you want them to.

When I said the game natively uses 2 cores, that does not count the thread where sound is running, nor the thread where the graphics pipeline is running, nor the thread handling input and so on.

Like the consoles, all those threads block waiting for input.  Do not get sucked into the hype about how many CPUs/cores a console will use to run a game.  Regardless of what hardware the game runs on, there is very little that can be done to take advantage of more than a couple to 4 cores for a game, and then only for brief periods of time.

[Krusty]

I'm confused.

So the i7s actually have 8 physical cores?

Because even with HT enabled, my dual-core Conroe still only has 2 cores.

Does this mean the i7 has twice the cores of the older C2D quad cores? Or is it all a trick for selling more i7's?

[Bino]

I'm confused.

So the i7s actually have 8 physical cores?

Because even with HT enabled, my dual-core Conroe still only has 2 cores.

Does this mean the i7 has twice the cores of the older C2D quad cores? Or is it all a trick for selling more i7's?

An i7 has four physical cores (CPUs).  Each core has two full sets of support hardware (registers and such) right there on the chip, allowing each core to run two threads simultaneously.  If you have an i7 on a mobo that supports hyper-threading and also run an O/S that supports hyper-threading, applications will see eight CPUs.

[Buzzard7]

My 930 show 8 logical cores. Video editing software is the only thing that uses all 8 right now on this machine.
Krusty I don't think the dual cores have HT. Someone told me it had been disabled in the intructions set.
AH runs rock solid maxed out everything including Hires textures at 60 FPS even on TT.

[MADe]

i7's are quad core processors. Electricity is a wave form. HT seems to use the bottom side of the wave form. Many modern electronics can use both sides of the wave form. Enabling HT adds 4 logical processors. Each physical core works both sides of the wave form, 2 threads each. 4x2=8
Core2 Duo's are two core processors with out HT. HT was first with the P4's, went away with the dual and quad cores, came back with the i7's.


But no one ever said which cores are the best choice for AH, which was the point of the thread. You can assign which cores do what if you want. If AH uses two cores native, which two has proven best. Or is no choice possible?
Task Manager process cpu affinity.

[Krusty]

Pretty much any of them can run AH. Your bottleneck will be more graphical (and only if you turn AH graphics up). Anything semi-modern, say 2GHz and up with at least 2 cores should run AH without any problem.

[Getback]

If AH is using two cores, then can the other two cores be assigned to other processes?

[Ghosth]

I won't get into the 2 core thing, but I've yet to see any real proof that going crossfire or SLI adds over 15% at best over a single video card.

Much better and simpler to spend a few dollars more on a single good card.