They are available.

I think Q4 had some command for multigpu/cpu use, not sure tho..

QL has the command r_smp for multicore use, but doesn't work :'(

In my experience multiple cores work in QL by default, without r_smp 1

I'm pretty sure QL only works on 1 core. I'm probably wrong though.

I've always thought so too, but ever since I started streaming I get more fps (more stable) in QL if I use 2 cores compared to 1. That could mean that QL can use more than 1 core, but smite me if I'm wrong.

"Do I really need this much CPU power if I'm just playing games, viewing photos, and browsing the internet?"

No. Most of the time, half of the cores are way more, than sufficient too.
For just viewing photos and browsing the net, one core is enough easily.

Where you can profit from more cores is for example 3D modeling, animation, VFX, video-coding / encoding, virtual simulations of complex systems and other massively multi-threaded applications - which is clearly not the average home user's territory.

I like xbox.

hahah i chuckled. short&funny.(you like turtles too?)

Actually, multiple cores are usable, because they allow to use interrupt affinity feature, binding each specific hardware (USB concentrators and hubs, sound cards, hard drives ets) to specific processor core.

I can't do it on win8 anymore :/

Fuck Microsoft then. :(

Windows 7 for life!

For playing games there is no real added value in having more than 4 cores.
In general the biggest win factor you can have is when 'windows' (and all of it's sub-processes and small extra programs like chat stuff) on one core and then the game on the other (as in 2 cores).
This is just because you can't really split games into many threads without having huge overhead.
There are some obvious threads that can run seperately from eachother though like the AI can run on a different core without overhead. However I am unaware of any games using this (there might be a few though).

But when you start to really thread a game... it will slow down quite drastically because you have to keep on synchronising stuff...

If you want to see the individual pube particles on the tigers nutsack in Crysis 3 you will defo need all those cores.

Or you might just get an alpha texture instead!!!

"browsing the internet?" means watching HD pr0n 24/7, right?

Couple misconceptions here.

For your uses, get a quad core and be happy, enough future proofing power to last you. The sweet spot for price to performance is sandy bridge at the moment. Especially second hand Core i5 chips.

CPU power is overrated for gaming (except in a few extreme cases or with some terrible console ports, and even then it's just meh), and the jazz about interrupt affinity has little practical benefit on modern computers. Windows scales everything over different cores automatically. You aren't missing out on anything by having four cores. Artificially branching processes of games is just ridiculous anyway, Windows does what windows does and there's little need to talk about it.

CPU power is overrated for gaming (except in a few extreme cases or with some terrible console ports, and even then it's just meh), and the jazz about interrupt affinity has little practical benefit on modern computers. Windows scales everything over different cores automatically. You aren't missing out on anything by having four cores. Artificially branching processes of games is just ridiculous anyway, Windows does what windows does and there's little need to talk about it.

Considering that interrupt affinity present only on Windows 2008 Server and Windows Vista operating systems (and later ones), one can conclude that you don't know a flying fuck about how interrupt affinity works and what it, basically, is. :)

Also, apart from device driver interrupts, there is possibility to execute a process on specific core, It could be done using several ways, but the most simple could be found in Task Manager application. And believe me, it works!

Taking above into account, your comment sounds especially moronic and hilarious for those who really knows. Too bad that it represent usual level of expertise one can meet when trying to find help with some technical problem, using the Internet as source of information.

He miss with process/thread affinities but main idea is right: you don't need to care about it in case of well-written applications

Do you realize that applications and drivers are executing on totally different levels, with different priorities, and that applications cannot influence execution of hardware interrupts?

Have you ever written a driver? Have you ever ran xperf for DPC and ISR latency with affinity monitoring?

Why there is so much self-proclaimed experts that don't really know what they talking about here?

Guys, seriously, if you can assemble a consumer PC worth 2000 USD, it doesn't mean that you really know hot it works.

Cool down, I wrote my first win32 driver (s2k bd + custom hw monitoring) many years ago
Question set as 'does regular user should care about all this affinity/interrupts stuff?' Answer is 'no' - just buy modern hardware and enjoy. As if you tuning/digging registry of your system for every single app then your hw/os/drivers is buggy or you think in wrong way
/thread

Well said.

And the whole point of this thread is exactly like you said, for the benefit of regular users.

Ok guys, you both right.

@ #16
Read my post sir, forget about your theorycrafting and look at the practical points. I am telling the good people of this forum to
1. not worry about input affinity
2. get a quad core
3. forget this assigning processes to cores business.

Seeing as you took the pains to argue with this simple advice, it seems pretty clear you have a problem with these points.

Do you want people to buy 8-core processors to assign more peripheral interrupts to more threads? Interrupt affinity is not something any average user should be using as an excuse to get more cores.

And this stuff about assigning processes to specific cores, (of course you can do it) again the average user shouldn't be taking it as a point to get more cores.

If you want to talk about the minimalistic benefits of those two points, go the fuck ahead, but if you would be so kind as to understand the wisdom behind my advice, you may realise it's of considerable benefit to stop filling peoples minds with such shit like it ACTUALLY makes a conceivable difference to the everyday user.

Theorycrafting? Man, I do this shit for the living, don't make bigger idiot from yourself then you are really are.

What you told previously about affinity was pure bullshit, and there is no amount of words that can change that fact. And I don't care about everything else - because our argument was not about home customer priorities in hardware provisioning.

Yeah this is what i love. A hot headed asshole taking stuff way out of proportion, finds something to argue about, and then proceeds to argue his ass off with no benefit or aim in sight other than asserting his ego. WP son, you win.

Wtf "our argument"... FYI I was TOTALLY talking about customer priorities, you're the one coming up with all the intricate details of whatever, which is all but irrelevant to this thread. Then you have the audacity to call it "our" argument. Ridiculous.

And learn to speak English, wtf is "make a bigger idiot from yourself"

F**k I've had enough, you really aren't worth talking to.

Amen!

I managed to buy a 2008 mac pro for $600 last week. 2x Quad Core 3.0ghz Xeon processors :D

To be fair, I don't think it matters much in games, still waiting for a drive bay for my ssd so I can install windows and do some benchmarks. Still it runs blizzard/valve games over 100fps (just going by feeling on my 120hz monitor) on an unsupported 6850.

I think my windows pc (i5-2500) is probably better for games, but I'm probably just going to stick in a gtx 670 and it should kill everything.

(Why I got a mac? I like developing in OSX :)

Xeon is a server chip and is not meant for gaming or regular CPU activities.

Xeon processors are merely the higher grade versions of that architecture generation. So for example the Xeon processors that I got would be comparable the the Core 2 Duo Extreme quad core chips. The i5 and i7 sandy bridge processors are definitely faster, but it makes up for that by being 2 processors. I don't think it will make much difference in games though unless the game uses multiple threads. Any game that uses a single core, the sandy bridge processors will be faster.

On that note, the modern architecture Xeons are definitely faster than the modern Sandy/Ivy bridge processors, but anything over an i5-2500 is pretty pointless for games.

Strafe jumping is a movement bug and is not meant to achieve higher speed and trick jumps in Quake.

For games, it isn't necessary to have more than four cores.

The ONLY game to use more than that is Flight Simulator X