Why Don't Games Use More Cores?

Why aren't high core count CPUs good at gaming? Stay tuned...

[GamerMeld]

I do want to make sure everyone knows that when I'm talking high core count CPUs, I'm talking a minimum of 10 cores. The honest truth is that parallel processing takes a certain pipeline to work, and when there are different things going on with each core at the same time, they have to finish in a certain order, or one will have to wait for the other to finish etc. That's the issue. Programming all of that out with tons of cores is really really tough. Things like rendering, on the other hand, are far more predictable than the tasks given to the CPU in gaming.

[kodaloid]

20 year coder here, most of the issue comes down to not knowing if someone is going to have more cores, and how strong each of them will be. See by default most developers let the OS decide how to spread the load, however they can set affinity for threads. Say for example a developer took advantage of 6 cores to make an MMO-RPG, they may divide the threads up into one core for networking, one for entities (objects in the world), one for AI etc.. What happens then if you try to run that game on a 4 core? the game would stick the massive delegated tasks from 5 and 6 back onto the first, and you'd get a sluggish nightmare. Optimising for dual or quad makes sure they can give the majority of people a smooth game that works predictably, only when the majority are moving to 6-8 cores will that become the new developer norm.

[Thanxforthecheese]

You've got a pleasant voice and you articulate very well. Hard to find with a lot of channels. Keep it up!

[superben]

because intel has been gimping us to 4 cores for a decade.

[jervez]

Grats on 20k it's only going to keep going up @gamersmeld. Keep up the good work.

[ParanormalIndiana]

Planet Coaster will utilize however many cores your PC has. So do a lot of modern simulation games like Cities Skylines. Planet Coaster will use any number of cores, but is designed to only use about 75% of each core MAX, to prevent running your CPU like you're running Prime95, and to make sure there is enough overhead for the OS to function on the CPU as well. So in the case of some games, Planet Coaster a good example, the more cores you throw at it the better.

Ultimately the reason I don't think a lot of non-simulation games use more than, say 4 cores, is because it's pointless. A 4-core CPU (considering no bottle-necks on the GPU) will be plenty fast enough to run pretty much any non-simulation game easily, even more so now that DirectX and Volcan are putting more and more of the things that normally went to the CPU onto the GPU.

[travelsonic]

1:24 THANK YOU for mentioning this. Too many people who talk about core count seem to miss that people might like to use multiple multithreaded applications simultaneously (say, a game that is multi-threaded, as well as photoshop and/or video editing of some kind, etc, for which having more threads is absolutely beneficial if I understood operating system architecture / process scheduling correctly in my CS studies.

[rodrigotvgad]

Congrats for the 20k! You deserve it and much more

[SweetMusiic]

Been here since under 1k
:3 awesome video btw

[crowbar]

How is ur voice so calm? Its tough to find people with a voice like this nowadays :) great work btw pls keep uploading more :)

[pec]

…so that intel doesnt lose in everything

[marcusc]

You deserve more than 20k subs. More like 2 million. I've learned so much from you! Keep up the good work!

[KingOfYouAllGamerBoy]

i have a 6 core so i am in the middle of to less cores and to many

[czlowieknoz]

the good channel must grow, so keep up the good work ;)

[chesterogilvie]

Awesome vid that is just as important today as it was 10 years ago when everyone was freaking out about dual core vs quad core cpus and the gaming architecture that was lagging behind with hardware. Same issue, bigger scale.

[fast.biking_freddy]

FIRST MATE, LOVE THE CHANNEL. Your professional videos deserve those 20, 000 subscribers! Keep up the wonderful work. (I clicked off of Awesome hardware Livestream faster than you can blink).
And thank you for the precise explanation of a GPU.

[vitaobatera]

Most importantly, game engines like the future Unreal Engine 5 should be the main "multi-core" supporters. Without that no game built within it would do any miracle.

[mathyoooo]

Atm even some workstation tasks scale poorly above 16c/32thd and that's where I think the limit will be for consumer cpus for quite a while. Additionally if a workload scales to more than 32threads it's likely better to just offload the work to a gpu.

[xander]

Steam lists 0.01% of consumers use 5 core CPUs, but what CPU actually has that number of cores?

[deekdouglas]

i love how hopeful you are for the future of gaming tech. speaks true to your passion that you always keep it real but you arent shy to share your dreams either :) fake gamers recommended i5s but real gamers long for 16 core 32 thread utilization Gamer Meld FTW