Future-proofing your PC for next-gen gaming

[vickybat]

This article should not be neglected as it comes straight from the guys in Digital Foundry.

With the advent of next-gen consoles, this is how we should prepare our pc's to match their computing power and closed box development advantage.

Article

 

[darkv0id]

^Nice read. The article raises a lot of valid points as far as CPU's are concerned. However, in all honesty I think the end of a console cycle is a bad time to think of "future proofing", especially when it comes to GPUs.

I agree with the top comment on the article. I would much rather wait for the PS4/Durango to come out and see how the hardware requirements change, that put money on a new PC right now.

 

[gameranand]

I guess I am covered.

 

[Cilus]

^^ Thanks to me
This is the thing I was trying to convey for a very long time but most of us didn't try to understand and some tagged me as an AMD fanboy. It was the Game Engine architecture which isn't optimized for Multi-threading environment due to the different RISC based In Order Vector architecture of the consoles like PS3 or Xbox 260, which is the reason behind poor performance of games in Multi-Core AMD CPUs, not the AMD Processor architecture.
Now Heterogeneous Computing, unified memory design for CPU and GPU, dynamic code path selection, parallel processing and task sharing between CPU cores and GPU etc are pretty well known and have been implemented in the PS4 and Xbox 720. So obviously these are going to come to PC game design very soon and believe me, multi-threaded work distributionis going to play the major role here rather than strong single threaded performance.

You might think I am exaggerating things a little but tell me one thing: in Video Encoder application like Handbrake which has OpenCl acceleration for using CPU + GPU as an heterogeneous compute platform where it can divide the work among CPU and GPU as per requirement, a Phenom II 965 + HD 6670 combination can beat a Core i7 3960X. So, when HSA in action, a X86 single threaded performance is not a very good thing to compete with it.

The future is going to be HSA and from now on Software developers will be targeting that platform instead of optimizing performance for a single core. AMD is promoting HSA for very long time and their APUs are product of the same thought. In Maxwell Design, nVidia is doing the same thing for their GPU design where it can work as an unified unit with CPU rather than a separate unit. Current generation GCN has the ability to use X86 based memory management and that is why it has far better compute or HSA performance as it can work more closely with the CPU.

 

[vickybat]

^^ You also have to thank me for putting that article here.

Actually multicore cpu's are the way to go from now on. Things are going to be seriously parallel.
HSA is the future and its starting to show with the advent of next gen consoles and the way amd and nvidia are designing their gpu's.
Computing is going to be very interesting.

 

[Hrishi]

Next time i'll spend in buying a GPU with better memory than spending on a Expensive Intel CPU.

 

[Cilus]

^^ Right choice.

Also thanks to our Batman for sharing the article with us.

 

[Hrishi]

^^ Right choice.

Also thanks to our Batman for sharing the article with us.

So in one way the PC users will be sort of stranded even with the top notch hardware untill arrival of DDR4 ?? Its the bandwidth which's becoming the turning point (apart from the hardware diversity ), right ??

 

[vickybat]

So in one way the PC users will be sort of stranded even with the top notch hardware untill arrival of DDR4 ?? Its the bandwidth which's becoming the turning point (apart from the hardware diversity ), right ??

Its not about bandwidth only but HSA implementation. In next-gen consoles, both cpu and gpu access data from same memory. This involves extremely low latencies and nobody has to wait for one another. Upcoming cards from nvidia and amd are going to do the same. The gpu can fetch data directly from main memory and won't wait for the cpu for an interrupt.

Consoles closed box design will help them to perform significantly faster than similar pc counter parts as we windows has a layer called direct x that denies direct low level access to underlying hardware. There is a significant slowdown involved there. To overcome this, pc's have to rely on brute force.

But the ebright side is that x86 is going to be common from a development perspective. That means no crappy pc ports and level of optimization will be significant.

 

[Hrishi]

Its not about bandwidth only but HSA implementation. In next-gen consoles, both cpu and gpu access data from same memory. This involves extremely low latencies and nobody has to wait for one another. Upcoming cards from nvidia and amd are going to do the same. The gpu can fetch data directly from main memory and won't wait for the cpu for an interrupt.

Consoles closed box design will help them to perform significantly faster than similar pc counter parts as we windows has a layer called direct x that denies direct low level access to underlying hardware. There is a significant slowdown involved there. To overcome this, pc's have to rely on brute force.

But the ebright side is that x86 is going to be common from a development perspective. That means no crappy pc ports and level of optimization will be significant.

Yep , I meant the Unified Shared Memory.

 

[NVIDIAGeek]

Errr... forgive me as it was TL; I DR. Can you guys make it to a sentence or two of what the whole article is about?

Go for AMD octa-core with GTX680? Or HD7970?

EDIT: NVM, I read it. I think I'm not gonna be upgrading. I'll wait for Steamroller or PS4.

 

[vickybat]

^^ Its not about 680 or 7970 buddy. Its about multicore cpu's coz games won't really depend on strong single threaded performance. So buying a cpu with more number of cores will be beneficial because game code will use a much wider path from now on. It will be more multithreaded and octa core cpu's will be a wise choice.

HSA capabilities of consoles like unified memory aren't present in current cpu architecture. Amd apu's are the closest but not that powerful.
Nvidia has announecd that its upcoming maxwell gpu's will use unified memory and directly access main memory while cpu can directly access gpu vram, much similar to ps4. It will also have ARM 64 bit cores embedded for compute. Considering AMD'S massive push of HSA, its next gen GCN 2.0 gpu's have a high chance of supporting unified memory too.

You can wait for steamroller cpu's buddy. Haswell cpu's also have a chance of releasing higher SKU's featuring more than 4 cores. Haswell-E although not for home pc's already have 12-16 core models planned. So the future is definitely about multicore cpu's and high performance gpu's with full HSA capabilities.

 

[NVIDIAGeek]

^^ Its not about 680 or 7970 buddy. Its about multicore cpu's coz games won't really depend on strong single threaded performance. So buying a cpu with more number of cores will be beneficial because game code will use a much wider path from now on. It will be more multithreaded and octa core cpu's will be a wise choice.

HSA capabilities of consoles like unified memory aren't present in current cpu architecture. Amd apu's are the closest but not that powerful.
Nvidia has announecd that its upcoming maxwell gpu's will use unified memory and directly access main memory while cpu can directly access gpu vram, much similar to ps4. It will also have ARM 64 bit cores embedded for compute. Considering AMD'S massive push of HSA, its next gen GCN 2.0 gpu's have a high chance of supporting unified memory too.

You can wait for steamroller cpu's buddy. Haswell cpu's also have a chance of releasing higher SKU's featuring more than 4 cores. Haswell-E although not for home pc's already have 12-16 core models planned. So the future is definitely about multicore cpu's and high performance gpu's with full HSA capabilities.

So when do these next-gen hardware actually release? Heard AMD'll push this year with their HD7xxx cards.

 

[vickybat]

So when do these next-gen hardware actually release? Heard AMD'll push this year with their HD7xxx cards.

Most probably by october or november. Both AMD and Nvidia will push their current gen cards this year with some minor updated ones. No new architectures based cards this year.

 

[NVIDIAGeek]

Most probably by october or november. Both AMD and Nvidia will push their current gen cards this year with some minor updated ones. No new architectures based cards this year.

And a request, please use a proper Bat avatar. Your avatar doesn't do justice to the Caped Crusader. No offense though.

 

[vickybat]

^^ Done. Does it do justice now?

 

[NVIDIAGeek]

^^ Done. Does it do justice now?

That's more like it. Dayum, it's awesome.