Games that properly use quad cores. Suggestions?

[Leo]

Quad cores have been mainstream for 2 or 3 years now, but we do not see many games taking full advantage of them. My laptop has a pretty decent graphics card (7970M), but it is severely bottlenecked by my quad core CPU (A10-4600M) (up to 3.2 GHz per core) because games are still more or less running on one core.

Planetside 2 (released in 2012) was unplayable for me (constant stutter and lag) because it would not use more than 20% of my CPU. Rising Storm (2012/13) does not use more than 19% of three cores (despite quad cores being recommended on the Steam store page). These games are pretty much running on one core.

If you have a high end Intel CPU this may not be a problem for you, but the gaming industry expects us to buy expensive hardware for games that really do not need it if developers were not too greedy to optimize their games properly. It's really sad that 6 years old single or dual core systems can still run some recent games better when quad cores have been the damn standard since 2011.

Lol, I guess my post turned into a rant. What I really wanted to know is, are there any nice games out there that properly use more than 2 cores? I enjoy FPS, RTS and RPG video games. I've read that Rome: Total War 2 will be making pretty good use of multiple cores.

[Soylent_Merchant]

Most games use 2 cores know, the games you mentioned might not be dual cpu optimized since there from smaller developers .

[_I_]

ue3 games can use 4 cores
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games#Unreal_Engine_3

source games can only max 2 cores

[Soylent_Merchant]

The problem is Amd cores are underperforming on per core performance, so the games will be lacking if only 30% is being used.And since their laptop based cpu's thats even lower performing whats the speed per core?
Edit. Nvm i got it, yeah better optomized games are your best bet

[Chas.]

Doesn't Cry Engine/Dunia Engine use 4 cores? Coulda swore they do.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

For gaming purposes, ensure Power Profile in Windows is set to High Performance.
If you use NVIDIA GPU, open NVIDIA Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings; set Power Mode = Prefer Max Performance; and Threaded Optimization = On

As for CPU, most games just have to be forced to do this; when u load up a game, once it's either at main menu, or fully in-game, ALT+TAB back to desktop (or CTRL+ALT+DEL) and open Task Manager; find the game's .exe within the Processes listing, right click it and change Affinity Level to just 1 Core and apply, then repeat and enabled All Cores and apply. Now switch back to game.

[[UFO] rad87gn]

Strange, but the truth. Almost never is my i7 3770K not using all cores. Only ones I notice with hot spots are some of the Valve games. One that works my CPU the hardest on all cores is Crysis 3. Hate to say it but I see HT on i7's doing wonders on the newer games. I can run fully loaded multiple dedicated servers in the back ground while gaming as a host and not effect the dedicated servers running. That's pretty cool in my book. And I can run full monitoring of 2 GPUS, CPU cores, and Internet bandwidth usuage on my G510 keyboard at the same time with game stats.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

It just depends on the game.
Also u have to consider both, your CPU and GPU load. These are not the only factors, but to be blunt and basic, that is what I'd focus on.

Alot of times if u see your GPU has a very high load and your CPU has below 50% (or otherwise low) load. Then it can be a case of your CPU being much more powerful then the GPU and the GPU is a bottleneck and it and/or the game are not high stress factors for your CPU.

TBO though, low or otherwise evenly distributated CPU loads are good. As the app is not stressing your CPU. But that doesn't mean it's not using it's full potential.

Now with a HyperThreading Intel CPU of an FX series AMD CPU, they contain virtual cores. Which most games simply cannot use. But the physical cores of your CPU (regardless of cores) should be used to certain extent. Maybe not high loads, but again u don't want that anyways.

[Wampum Biskit]

Originally posted by vadim:

Originally posted by Leroy:

My laptop has a pretty decent graphics card (7970M), but it is severely bottlenecked by my quad core CPU (A10-4600M) (up to 3.2 GHz per core) because games are still more or less running on one core.

Your CPU has only 2 physical cores (AMD calls them "modules") and 4 logical. And Bulldozer's cores have pretty low performance. So, your CPU will always be a bottleneck. Dependless of number of game's threads.

why do you keep spreading this nonsense around with "modules" ?

he has infact 4 Physical cores , they are NOT logical , the only difference is that a pair of cores share some of the cache and some other hardware , never the less they are physical cores , because of the shared resources AMD calls them "Modules"

Just because there are 2 cores in a package (module) doesn't make them any less physical.

[Velmarshal]

Only games I've seen that can push my 3770K are Crysis 3, Planetside 2 and minecraft (heavily modded).
Even seen PS2 use HT threads from time to time, though I'm not sure about other games.

APUs are generally lackluster, I don't really see the point of an APU being used with 7970M, which is a really good card.

[Velmarshal]

Originally posted by Leroy:

Velmarshal, the point of combining the two is to save energy and battery life.

With a 7970M onboard it's hardly saving any energy. xD

Optimizing games for multiple cores is much harder than everyone thinks. It' usually requires rewritting a good portion of the game's code, which usually isn't profitable. Those same coders could work on new games that will bring in money, if they stay writting patches it will yield little to no profit.

Originally posted by SyPTo:

why do you keep spreading this nonsense around with "modules" ?

Because calling them fully fledged cores is AMD's way of marketing. To put it simple it's AMD's hyperthreading. That's why task manager sees 2 cores and four threads.

[_I_]

the 4600m has the 7660g apu
combined they are only 35w

when not needed the 7970m is in low power mode and shouldnt draw much power

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Doesn't matter what Windows says. You have to look up the specs of the CPU model.
An i7 for example is 4 physical cores, 4 virtual cores. Windows and all apps will say "8 cores" Overall it is your Motherboard Chipset and Drivers that really determine how those cores are used, and how the OS tells the different between Real Physical Cores and Virtual Hyper-Threading Cores when it comes to software usage. And for games to use them properly, the game engine and overall game coding has to be written to utilize a certain number of cores. 90% of games are written with consoles in mind, which is mostly why we never see many games fully using all cores on a PC.

But from a distance and to make an OS user friendly, physical and virtual # get added up to a total # value.

Now on FX series CPUs, it basically takes 2 of those cores to equal 1 of the Intel Core series CPU cores. So what you end up with really is this.

FX-4 series = approx 2 physical Intel cores
FX-6 series = approx 3 physical Intel cores
FX-8 series = approx 4 physical Intel cores
This is how FX-8 is comparable in performance to an i7, but in reality, that same i7 already has 4 physical cores; plus the 4 virtual cores, making it outperform in apps that can utilize HyperThreading feature.

If something like FX-8 series was really 8 cores, it would blow Intel away and AMD would price it according, surely not no $200. So you have to understand how the architecture works and compares, and also a little common sense.

[Velmarshal]

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

An i7 for example is 4 physical cores, 4 virtual cores. Windows and all apps will say "8 cores"

Just to set this right: http://i1007.photobucket.com/albums/af193/Velmarshal/Untitled_zps1fc7d75b.png

Windows actually sees HT cores as parked cores. And apps such as speccy detect the cores/threads properly.

[Velmarshal]

Originally posted by Leroy:

It's confusing, searching on Google I see a lot of people disagreeing with each other about whether the A10-4600M has 4 physical cores.

It's a unusual architecture mostly because those "cores" are packed in pairs in modules and share the CPU cache. While commonly CPU cores are separate and each has it's own piece of cache.

So they arent fully fledged cores, but you cant really deny them being physically there, unlike hyperthreading which adds performance boost in some apps at the expense of the CPU heating up more.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

In regards to confusion over AMD APU Mobile CPUs.
People just need to know the specs, not speculate...

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bulldozer/AMD-A10-Series%20A10-4600M.html

Scroll to very bottom, u will see the Core count there for a range of AMD Mobile APUs.