Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

(10-31-2011, 06:04 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]As I said the GTX 560 is 50% more in price but performs twice as high as the GTS 450, it's the best bang per buck out of those three choices.

Thanks, still being that out of my budget I'm likely going to buy GTX 460, which should be better over 450 still considering the "bang per buck" thing right?

Yeah a GTX 460 is about 50% faster than a GTS 450 if I recall (regular GTX 460 not the 1GB edition). Over here they are the exact same price as a GTX 560 so it's stupid not to get a GTX 560.

Could you refer me a good place/site I could buy there then? A friend is probably going to the USA this holiday season, I might buy it and ask them to deliver on his hotel room. Thanks.

Also about the CPU clock thing, you got me thinking, why wouldn't a dualcore with 3.0 ghz per core perform equal a single core 6ghz CPU? My knowledge about multithreading is limited but following this logic:

Imagine a cpu can do 2 cycle in 1 second, calling it a 2Hz CPU. Then, take another CPU, that can make 1 cycle per second, then it should be called 1Hz, right? Now Take a dual core CPU, each of the cores working at the frequency of 1 Hz. After 1 second, each of the cores performed one cycle, meaning in total 2 cycles were done, right? So wouldn't it be right to say this last CPU has the same performance than the first one, because even if it has half of the frequency in each core, the two of them working together processes things twice as fast?

I came to this conclusion thinking in pendulums, that swings two times a second, and two others that swings 1 time per second. After one second, the pair of pendulums together made two swings, one each, the same number of swings the first one did.

Now I don't know why wouldn't this apply to a processor when considering a dual core aplication that can use the two cores at the same time, for exemple a rendering app that can use each core to render a different set of frames simultaneously, like After effects.

Now as I said this is all probably wrong for some reason since you guys said it different, could you please point me why ?

i can't explain why a 3ghz dual core != 6ghz single core ; i lack english grammer for that but it doesn't. google why, thats what i did long ago XD

Daco, since when did you start to become dumb ?

(11-01-2011, 06:48 AM)Anti-Ultimate Wrote: [ -> ]Daco, since when did you start to become dumb ?

when was i ever intelligent and all knowing ?

Quote:Also about the CPU clock thing, you got me thinking, why wouldn't a dualcore with 3.0 ghz per core perform equal a single core 6ghz CPU? My knowledge about multithreading is limited but following this logic:

Imagine a cpu can do 2 cycle in 1 second, calling it a 2Hz CPU. Then, take another CPU, that can make 1 cycle per second, then it should be called 1Hz, right? Now Take a dual core CPU, each of the cores working at the frequency of 1 Hz. After 1 second, each of the cores performed one cycle, meaning in total 2 cycles were done, right? So wouldn't it be right to say this last CPU has the same performance than the first one, because even if it has half of the frequency in each core, the two of them working together processes things twice as fast?

I came to this conclusion thinking in pendulums, that swings two times a second, and two others that swings 1 time per second. After one second, the pair of pendulums together made two swings, one each, the same number of swings the first one did.

Now I don't know why wouldn't this apply to a processor when considering a dual core aplication that can use the two cores at the same time, for exemple a rendering app that can use each core to render a different set of frames simultaneously, like After effects.

Now as I said this is all probably wrong for some reason since you guys said it different, could you please point me why ?

This is difficult to explain if you don't grasp the concept of a clock signal to begin with. So I'll give a super quick summary.

The clock signal is an electrical signal intended to keep everything in sync. THAT'S ALL IT DOES IT DOES NOT ACTUALLY CARRY DATA OR DO ANYTHING ELSE. It's used in most digital electronics. The microprocessor is a set of circuits designed to do many different things, everything from basic arithmetic operations, to loading and storing data to/from memory, to copying/moving data between registers, to conditional evaluations, etc. Depending on how the chip is structured different parts (sets of circuits) of the chip all do different things and the clock signal "activates" them. So you might have a set of circuits that adds two numbers together that is activated when the clock signal pulses.

The clock signal rapidly oscillates between two voltages (a low and a high). Random pictures from google to visually demonstrate what I mean:




Each oscillation or "period" contains a rising edge (transition from lower voltage to higher voltage), a falling edge (transition from higher voltage to lower voltage) , and two intermediate points (the flat areas). The clock rate is the number of oscillations in the signal per second (frequency) and is measured in hertz (Hz). 1 Hz = 1 oscillation per second.

Most circuits "activate" once per clock cycle either at the rising edge or the falling edge. Some circuits are DDR (double data rate, also called double pumped circuits) and activate at both the rising and falling edge, allowing them to fire twice per clock cycle. And then there is QDR (quadruple data rate, also called quad pumped) which fires 4 times per clock cycle on all 4 points, these are extremely rare in electronics.

Now if the core clock rate is 3GHz that simply means that the clock signal inside the cores runs at a frequency of 3 billion oscillations per second. That means all of the circuits in all of the cores (or at least most of them) fire 3 billion times per second because the frequency of the clock signal is 3GHz and they are triggered by the clock pulses. The clock signal travels through all of the cores and has that frequency regardless of where it is. No matter how many cores the clock signal goes through and how much hardware is triggered by it the frequency will still be what it is as long as you don't change it. Different hardware can have different clock rates by running the clock signal through clock multipliers and clock dividers to change the frequency of the signal.

It's simply the frequency that the clock signal runs at, nothing more. Make sense?

Quote: i lack english grammer for that but it doesn't

What country are you from if you don't mind me asking?

Quote:when was i ever intelligent and all knowing ?

Well we all considered you to be one of the people on these forums that wasn't retarded and usually knew what they were talking about (which you should take as a complement). So that's why our jaws all collectively dropped to the floor earlier in thread when you posted something that seemed....to not fit with your usual level of understanding (that's the nicest way I can put that).

(11-01-2011, 09:46 AM)DacoTaco Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-01-2011, 06:48 AM)Anti-Ultimate Wrote: [ -> ]Daco, since when did you start to become dumb ?

when was i ever intelligent and all knowing ?

But you were able to use google back then

(11-01-2011, 04:09 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:when was i ever intelligent and all knowing ?

Well we all considering you to be one of the people on these forums that wasn't retarded and usually knew what they were talking about (which you should take as a complement). So that's why our jaws all collectively dropped to the floor earlier in thread when you posted something that seemed....to not fit with your usual level of understanding (that's the nicest way I can put that).

sure, but nobody can know everything.
that, and i usually dont mess when i dont know the subject to the fullest.

and about where im from; lets just say english isn't my native language and that i learned everything i know about computers in my native language. which makes explaining things a bit hard form time to time (or if im lazy).

also, i read your explanation a bit (i hate wall-o-texts); but i didn't directly notice you mention that the performance of a DC cpu also depends on the the code of the programs and that for example doing the following will process faster on , lets say, a 6Ghz single core then a 3Ghz dual core
that is also proof that you dont add the clock speeds CAUSE ITS 2 CORES11!1!1!1!1!!!!1!1!!11

(why it would process faster is cause the second instruction is dependant of the first. meaning on a dual core the second instruction , which runs on a different thread , needs to wait for the first one to get processed. on a single core they are nicely processed after each other.)

Yeah... I guess I wrote too much, this was more like a personal thinking than a forum post, feel free to ignore it. ^^

(11-01-2011, 04:09 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]Well we all considering you to be one of the people on these forums that wasn't retarded and usually knew what they were talking about (which you should take as a complement).

You just managed to put into words the way I always have divided people inside my mind when browsing this forums, thank you

---
But about what you explained:

Yeah I already knew how a microprocessor works and what is a CPU cycle basically, actually that was what gave me the idea about the pendulums, because there I wasn't talking about what a cycle does, I was trying to measure CPU performance/production by cycle number and consequently by clock rate, so that's why I didn't understand why a 3GHz dual core won't perform like a 6GHZ dual core. I wasn't directly adding the frequencies but comparing the performance of those two hipothetic processors.

Turns out that what I didn't understand was how multithreading worked, so I was ignoring what Daco just explained, I will google a little for a more detailed explanation.

The first time I was taught how a microprocessor works, I already knew how basic eletronic circuits works, and about those components (I don't know how it is called in english) AND, OR, etc. But then it was over a draw of a Z80, so I learned what was a CPU cycle, and, in a basic manner, how data changed inside the processor from one cycle to another, and what was an opcode, etc.

Problem is, to understand that I already have to abstract a lot of concepts, because even on that simple CPU it's hundreds of transistors, forming dozens of those things I don't know how to call in enlglish. To bring this concept to modern processors, I have to abstract it a lot more on my head, since I'm trying to imagine a ridiculous number of components working together.

In fact, I'm very curious to know how CPUs are designed today, because I can't imagine those engineers seeing the logical ways and adresses for a milions of elements and imagine how all of that will work simoutaneously. Still this was important because I finally understood how the "magic" works (in fact, there is none ), I finally saw a computer running a program not as something static that could be operated, but as a giant system where it uses a pattern to define the output based on input.

It's even harder for me to understand when we take it to a higher level as the CPU working along with peripherals and other processors. Even harder to imagine how it is for the processor when a Windows is running. There are too much layers of logical systems running one over the other, so I guess there are things I just have to accept. Still, I would really like to know how this works, I would like to see it like the people who projected it, but a lot of things seems just to big to be understood.

So is this thing about multithreading, I started reading about it a while ago, but they never explained as much as I wanted to understand, so soon I had to accept some concepts without explanation, so I couldn't understand how it really worked, physically talking, that made me quickly frustrated, as I couldn't find what I wanted anywhere, so I guess that's one more piece of information that only the people who invented could understand for real, then with time I stopped searching on this subject.

Unlike Daco, I love wall sized texts, they make me lazy but I want all the details, so I can go right back to the ground and build the concept inside my mind so I can see it working, as a giant logical machine.