PoV
06-02-2006, 08:25 PM
It's been discussed briefly (http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=7316&highlight=dual+core) in another topic, but not in much detail. It's also a similar problem (http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=2394) to the laptop/power save fun that was an exciting discussion early last year, albiet new. So as a service to the community, I want to make more non dual core PC users aware of it.
I'm sure many of you are well aware that there's these nifty CPU's out there that have the equivalent of 2 CPU's on a single chip. The hip kids like to call this "Dual Core". And early next year, we'll have these highly sophisticated systems with this space age technology they like to call "Quad Core".
They point is, they're making there way in to consumer desktops. I opened up a Future Shop flyer (Like a Best Buy, but slightly more Canadian), and saw an impressive Dual Core AMD system for a mere $999 CAD (about $900 US). Now, that's an impressive price, and would make a great upgrade for a family sick of their 1 ghz eMachine. After all, the kids will be going to college soon.
So sure, that sounds great. Just like every year there's some big change, it up's the minimum spec, and we can all write more complicated games. Hooray. How is that bad?
It's not, but there's a problem, and unless you're on dual core, you're probably not aware of it. This sums up to something that seems to be named "Thread Affinity".
Now, applications still work on Dual Core machines, but sometimes exibit strange behaviors. For some games it's performance. For others, for some odd reason, scrolling seems to break.
A short list of games off the top of my head, with issues.
- Kaptain Brawe. Game runs great (no framerate drop), but playfields can't scroll (stopping you from getting important items from certain rooms).
- Balloon Express. Similarly, the playfield can't scroll (which is vital to the gameplay).
- Warcraft 3. Game runs ok, with a little stutter. However, edge scrolling moves you a few steps, then instantly jumps you to the extreme far side of the map in the direction you were scrolling.
- Adobe Audition 2. Not a game, and not ruined, but playing a sample, as it tracks along, the visual tracking stops dead. Not a critical issue, but annoying, as the sound still plays fine.
There's a few things that can be done by the user (which is half the problem).
As an AMD user, there's a pair of patches out there. One, a hotfix from Microsoft, and a driver of sorts from AMD. They fix some issues which I've forgotten. I tried find official references from AMD and Microsoft for the patches, but all I seem to find is game support forum posts and the files hosted locally on some game sites.
Also, there was a time up until a few months ago when NVidia drivers broke several applications (Paint Shop Pro of all things). Latest Beta drives do the job though.
However, these don't do anything for the above apps. Instead, there's a little trick you have to do once you run an application. You need to alt+tab your way out of the app first. Then with a stroke of CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the task manager in XP, you need to find the misbehaving application under processes. Right click on it and select "Set Affinity", and deselect a core (CPU 0 and 1 are always both selected). This fixes most problems, but is probably too much work for the less computer included users.
And even still, there are apps that don't work correctly on a Dual Core. Tower, from last month's round up, for example.
Now I don't have all the details about it, and that's why I've started this post. I'm an AMD X2 3800+ (Dual Core) user, and I experience these problems. An end use will have no desire to deal with this, and there's certainly things that we can do on the development end, since it's only a handful of applications that do this.
I'm also curious to hear of issues Intel Core Duo users have had, if they differ at all.
Please, do share if you have something.
I'm sure many of you are well aware that there's these nifty CPU's out there that have the equivalent of 2 CPU's on a single chip. The hip kids like to call this "Dual Core". And early next year, we'll have these highly sophisticated systems with this space age technology they like to call "Quad Core".
They point is, they're making there way in to consumer desktops. I opened up a Future Shop flyer (Like a Best Buy, but slightly more Canadian), and saw an impressive Dual Core AMD system for a mere $999 CAD (about $900 US). Now, that's an impressive price, and would make a great upgrade for a family sick of their 1 ghz eMachine. After all, the kids will be going to college soon.
So sure, that sounds great. Just like every year there's some big change, it up's the minimum spec, and we can all write more complicated games. Hooray. How is that bad?
It's not, but there's a problem, and unless you're on dual core, you're probably not aware of it. This sums up to something that seems to be named "Thread Affinity".
Now, applications still work on Dual Core machines, but sometimes exibit strange behaviors. For some games it's performance. For others, for some odd reason, scrolling seems to break.
A short list of games off the top of my head, with issues.
- Kaptain Brawe. Game runs great (no framerate drop), but playfields can't scroll (stopping you from getting important items from certain rooms).
- Balloon Express. Similarly, the playfield can't scroll (which is vital to the gameplay).
- Warcraft 3. Game runs ok, with a little stutter. However, edge scrolling moves you a few steps, then instantly jumps you to the extreme far side of the map in the direction you were scrolling.
- Adobe Audition 2. Not a game, and not ruined, but playing a sample, as it tracks along, the visual tracking stops dead. Not a critical issue, but annoying, as the sound still plays fine.
There's a few things that can be done by the user (which is half the problem).
As an AMD user, there's a pair of patches out there. One, a hotfix from Microsoft, and a driver of sorts from AMD. They fix some issues which I've forgotten. I tried find official references from AMD and Microsoft for the patches, but all I seem to find is game support forum posts and the files hosted locally on some game sites.
Also, there was a time up until a few months ago when NVidia drivers broke several applications (Paint Shop Pro of all things). Latest Beta drives do the job though.
However, these don't do anything for the above apps. Instead, there's a little trick you have to do once you run an application. You need to alt+tab your way out of the app first. Then with a stroke of CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the task manager in XP, you need to find the misbehaving application under processes. Right click on it and select "Set Affinity", and deselect a core (CPU 0 and 1 are always both selected). This fixes most problems, but is probably too much work for the less computer included users.
And even still, there are apps that don't work correctly on a Dual Core. Tower, from last month's round up, for example.
Now I don't have all the details about it, and that's why I've started this post. I'm an AMD X2 3800+ (Dual Core) user, and I experience these problems. An end use will have no desire to deal with this, and there's certainly things that we can do on the development end, since it's only a handful of applications that do this.
I'm also curious to hear of issues Intel Core Duo users have had, if they differ at all.
Please, do share if you have something.