In your opinion? If you were building a Gaming PC right now, how many cores would you go with? Is there really any point in building a computer right now with say an i5? Assuming games will become more CPU dependent when the PS4/Xbox 720 are released?
Do you think games like BF4 will instantly be designed to use all 8 cores or will they faze it in and take a few years so that they don't end up like the current consoles where they've been outdated for far too long?
Of course right now, nobody can really tell. Just looking for an opinion, thanks.
It depends on the speed (GHz) of the octo-cores that will be in the next-gen systems. As if it is a slower 8 core (eg 1.6GHz) A fast Quad (3.2GHz+) could perform roughly the same. As through the magic of CPU scheduling this can occur.
If the cores are fast (eg around 3GHz) then I imagine we will see much quicker deployment to a full 8 core utilization (even if it isn't full utilization it will certainly be programmed with greater multi-threading capabilities).
But then we may not see 8 core utilization, as a single core maybe reserved for system use, such as running the OS and keeping background process alive.
But what ever happens it is inevitable that consoles shall be choking PC gaming. My guess, yet again, in the GPU side of things. The only way this won't happen immediatley is if they put the fastest next gen chip in.
Maybe next year, some games may have the capability to start using hexa/ octo-cores, since these two main, new consoles are gonna use 8 cores, and since a lot of games also have a console version. Meaning if console games use 8 cores, why not PC games, too? <==== Hopefully in developers mind.
Current predictions say that Moore's law is slowing down by the end of 2013 to a doubling every 3 years instead of every 18 months, so Silicon chips are starting to get close to their max potential, I think the end of the doubling is predicted by 2015-2020. So this console generation might not get as badly outdated as quickly as the previous one.
I'm pretty sure quad-cores will still be usable in a few more years. I mean, just because games can use more than 4 cores now, doesn't mean that quad-cores are irrelevant. If they want to sell, they need to make it work on them on most settings, if not all, as in a few years, a majority of gamers will probably still have quad-cores, or have just moved to quad-cores. I mean like now, with games that can use all 4 cores can still be played with high/decent settings with dual-cores, triple-cores and dual-cores with hyper-threading. This simply means that in a few years, with games capable of using more cores, than if you have, say an 8 core running on a specific setting, it would perform better than a quad core with the same architecture on the same settings, but the quad can still get playable framerates, just with less FPS compared to the 8 core. Hope that was easy to understand
Recon-UK, there was a rumor that the CPU of PlayStation 4 will be clocked at 2ghz. I think it was confirmed, so PlayStation 4 was downclocked at PlayStation conference...
I mean PC wise, by the time games take up 8 cores. We will probably have CPUs that double the amount of cores. I think games will be playing catch up with that for some time.
I don't think we will ever get above 12 core's, it would be complex to program a game to use all those core's and its a waste. Only the arhitecture of processors will improve to take full potential and not just more core's, smaller, smaller, more ghz... Kaboom, fryied like a chicken.