Quad core support for Dolphin

[thepepi182]

Sorry if this a a frequently discussed topic but I'm somewhat new to Dolphin.

Does the Dolphin development team plan to implement support for quad cores in the future ? Technically speaking , is it possible ? And how much would it improve in terms of fps and stability ?

Thanks in advance and sorry for my crappy english

[fagoatse]

short answer: no
long answer: well, who knows what the future brings, but I don't think any dev want to end up in a nuthouse.

[turingpest]

long answer: no, sort of, and it wouldn't.
short answer: hell no!

[kirbypuff]

Possible, but only for speeding up the dog-slow software renderer.

[thepepi182]

I get it. But I still don't know why exactly , is there any thread dedicated to this topic?

and thanks

[turingpest]

it has been discussed (requested...) many times, particularly over the past year or so. just search the forums. the gist of it seems to be that introducing more threads is neither feasible nor is it really necessary. the current builds are fast enough in the main, and are improving all the time and at a decent pace too. you simply need fast enough hardware (which is also improving all the time) and you're set. basically, the dev's know what they're doing, and quad core support simply isn't going to happen.

[Hero]

Maybe not quad. Tri would be nice. I'd like to leave 1 core opened for my system to live on. Honestly, everyone should have a quad core by now. Coming as cheap as 100 bucks, I'm poor as hell and I managed to get one in a budget desktop build.

[turingpest]

same thing that applies to four cores applies to three. it simply isn't needed. the only way dolphin'll use more than two cores is if dsp-lle is ever in a sufficient usable state that it warrants putting on its own thread.

"everyone should have a quad core by now". wrong - it depends what the computer is to be used for. there are in fact many situations when any more than two cores is complete overkill. indeed alot of people still get on perfectly well with just one core, although they are pretty awful for anything more than the lightest of mutli-tasking, e.g. web browsing whilst playing music, and definitely not much good for playing modern games.
i haven't really come across a scenario where my triple core phenom II isn't enough, but then i don't do that much encoding and never game whilst doing anything really heavy in the background, like multithreaded encoding, which is the only realistic way that i could grind my system to a halt.
you are of course right that quads are reasonably cheap now, and amd's low/middle end cpus are pretty much all excellent value. i was going to get an athlon x4 for my budget htpc/gaming rig, but took a risk on a phenom x2 550, and was fortunate to be able to get three cores stable at 3.4ghz (wasn't that easy cooling wise, as my case isn't much bigger than an xbox 360, and is alot quieter), which is more than enough for my needs.

[Hero]

(08-04-2010, 05:26 AM)turingpest Wrote: same thing that applies to four cores applies to three. it simply isn't needed. the only way dolphin'll use more than two cores is if dsp-lle is ever in a sufficient usable state that it warrants putting on its own thread.

"everyone should have a quad core by now". wrong - it depends what the computer is to be used for. there are in fact many situations when any more than two cores is complete overkill. indeed alot of people still get on perfectly well with just one core, although they are pretty awful for anything more than the lightest of mutli-tasking, e.g. web browsing whilst playing music, and definitely not much good for playing modern games.
i haven't really come across a scenario where my triple core phenom II isn't enough, but then i don't do that much encoding and never game whilst doing anything really heavy in the background, like multithreaded encoding, which is the only realistic way that i could grind my system to a halt.
you are of course right that quads are reasonably cheap now, and amd's low/middle end cpus are pretty much all excellent value. i was going to get an athlon x4 for my budget htpc/gaming rig, but took a risk on a phenom x2 550, and was fortunate to be able to get three cores stable at 3.4ghz (wasn't that easy cooling wise, as my case isn't much bigger than an xbox 360, and is alot quieter), which is more than enough for my needs.

Wrong? Pah, you're computer is slow as hell then. Quad cores are so mainstream, anyone and everyone can get one cheap. Not to mention if you have an amd pc, and you have an II series dual core, you can pop in a quad or even the new hex and its supported either by nature or with a bios update. Pc games are also starting to take advantage of quad cores.

Also, if you turn on thread lock, and dsplle on thread, it actually uses 2 cores on full 100% usage, and dsplle uses its own thread, so yes, its already using triple core.

And using a core with locked threads can be very dangerous. The cores get locked because they are bad, or damaged in some way. Many people will unlock them and they work perfect, but its always a huge risk, yes.

BTW, on consumer knowledge, an athlon II x4 is equal to a phenom II x4, but the athlon does not have L3. You wouldn't need l3 unless you were raping your cpus bandwidth with 4 cores maxing.

[NaturalViolence]

Cool it guys. Don't let this thread degrade into a flamefest.