(08-04-2010, 05:50 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]Cool it guys. Don't let this thread degrade into a flamefest.
Naw, no flaming. Thats not what I posted to do. I just believe having more power than you need,is a better idea. Instead of having the emu running up all my cpus power, I have extra to burn.
(08-04-2010, 05:36 AM)Hero Wrote: [ -> ] (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.
even though quad cores are extremely cheap nowadays , the extra power is not always needed so why spend extra money if don't actually need too.
(08-04-2010, 05:58 AM)leet Wrote: [ -> ] (08-04-2010, 05:36 AM)Hero Wrote: [ -> ] (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.
even though quad cores are extremely cheap nowadays , the extra power is not always needed so why spend extra money if don't actually need too.
I do not see how its extra though. Honestly, I build my pc for 650 bucks, and it can do everything maxed out. Even most games on this emu run at 80% speed or better. I probably could have done better but I needed a monitor. Anywho, if dolphin did take up another core, you dont think it would run faster? Hell I get better frames with just a 221mhz increase on my cpu clock. I honestly believe a third core in use might give it substantial power increase.
woah, easy Hero. i was just trying to put some useful information into this thread regarding the usefulness of quad cores for anyone that happened to read it. not 100% on topic i know but pertinent nonetheless. please, i'm not flaming but you should learn to gracefully accept when you're wrong. i do believe that your intentions are right and you were aiming along the right lines - i'd certainly recommend that every enthusiast get a quad core, but certainly not everyone. i agree that pc games are starting to take more advantage of >2 cores, although the only game i'm aware of where the gpu won't become the experience defining (that is to say ruining) bottleneck first is gta4, which suffers from poor code translation. for every other game a triple core is (for the time being) sufficient.
as for the stuff about core unlocking, maxing cpu's, not needing l3 cache and such like, there really isn't much point in me replying.
(08-04-2010, 06:04 AM)Hero Wrote: [ -> ]I honestly believe a third core in use might give it substantial power increase.
And do you understand how to implement that on Dolphin? or are you talking out of your arse?
It is not that simple.
no but if a third core was for dsp lle (in the future where dsp lle worked as good as hle) u would just get better sound. right now a third core only gives dolphin a little boost. because it does not have to share core(s) with windows
(08-04-2010, 06:15 AM)naoan Wrote: [ -> ] (08-04-2010, 06:04 AM)Hero Wrote: [ -> ]I honestly believe a third core in use might give it substantial power increase.
And do you understand how to implement that on Dolphin? or are you talking out of your arse?
It is not that simple.
I don't know, and quite honestly, I don't care. You talk big yourself, but it doesn't seem you do either.
(08-04-2010, 07:15 AM)Hero Wrote: [ -> ] (08-04-2010, 06:15 AM)naoan Wrote: [ -> ] (08-04-2010, 06:04 AM)Hero Wrote: [ -> ]I honestly believe a third core in use might give it substantial power increase.
And do you understand how to implement that on Dolphin? or are you talking out of your arse?
It is not that simple.
I don't know, and quite honestly, I don't care. You talk big yourself, but it doesn't seem you do either.
he's right though, to add another thread you have to have something to run on it and right now the only thing we could run on it would be lle sound (which would only provide a VERY minor speedup). Right now the cpu is on one thread and the gpu is on another. If you were to try to split the cpu or gpu onto a second thread there would be insane syncing issues. It really just isn't worth adding another thread. People have tried and failed multiple times.
(08-04-2010, 07:15 AM)Hero Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know, and quite honestly, I don't care. You talk big yourself, but it doesn't seem you do either.
I don't know the internal detail but I at least have some understanding of it.
Quote:Anywho, if dolphin did take up another core, you dont think it would run faster? Hell I get better frames with just a 221mhz increase on my cpu clock. I honestly believe a third core in use might give it substantial power increase.
Naoan is right. What you need to understand is their is no magic way to say "Ok I want this program to use 3 threads and 1/3 of the work will go to each thread". Proper multithreading means assigning different tasks to different threads that run independently of each other, however sometimes the threads need to run in snych since they depend on each other. Synchronizing threads is extremely difficult and because of the type of program that dolphin is it is a requirment for dolphin to function properly. Also you have to keep in mind that different tasks don't require the exact same amount of work/s so you are never going to get a linear speedup. Right now dolphin has two threads, one for cpu and one for gpu. Although it is possible to assign a third thread for the dsp you would get less than a 5% speedup because as I mentioned, task loads aren't equal. In other words to summarize multithreading dolphin past 2 threads would be a stupid and an utterly pointless waste of developer time, even the developers think it's pointless even IF it was possible.
Quote:I don't know, and quite honestly, I don't care. You talk big yourself, but it doesn't seem you do either.
I can't believe I'm saying this because I have argued with him in so many threads but trust me when I say this. Naoan knows what he is talking about. He may not be a developer but he's like me, we're both obsessed with understanding things, and he's been an active member of the dolphin community for quite a long time now. He understands the dolphin multithreading issue quite well. In fact I think he was around when the devs were still working on dual threading.