Are (2) CPUs better than 1?

[hcornea 4]

The problem is that some are suggesting 8 cores gives a HUGE boost in FPS. This is absurd.

Actually - I think you're missing the point Max.Perhaps my last post was too much on the subtle side.What I'm saying is that you are using a theoretical knowledge to support your point of view - whereas others who have purchased and run the hardware have had a very different experience.So, absurd in your eyes or not, incomprehensible to you or not - the hardware does appear to exist, and there are people out there using it to good effect.For you to comment, you would probably have to have had some experience with Skulltrail or a similar platform, would you not? So I am certainly interested to here your experiences there ...Theoretical knowledge is fine. Informed theoretical knowledge is better .. but when the knowledge doesn;t quite explain what is being observed ... it's time to go back and reassess preconceived ideas.I am still interested to hear of your personal experiences experimenting with dual CPU platforms ...

[gman! 1]

More cores is not always better. Infact if my memory serves me well, I think Intel said they were canceling one of their 8 core products. Let me tell you. As you get more cores, heat and limited space makes things difficult. You also have to remember that all games are not optimized for 8 cores. There are even some games today that still aren't quad optimized. As you get more cores it becomes very difficult for the programmers to program for all of them. The programmer can have different threads on different cores or different processes on different cores, but it becomes hard to keep track of all of them because one processes has to be broken down into many others and run in parallel, and when you do that one completed processes may be waiting on the other and it becomes one big mess. Also you have to keep track of an enormous list of code. The less code you have, the better it is, the easier to manage, and most of the time the less time it takes to process. Now what 8 cores is good for is for video encoding, photo editing, large batch conversions, multi tasking cpu intensive programs, or if you just want to show off playing two games at a time :(More cores = more data processed, but little performance increase in the real world. What CPU manufacturers should be focused on is getting default frequencies higher. From 1990-2000 there was a MASSIVE increase in core speeds for the time. 2000-2005, pretty good too, we doubled the speeds (Around 1GHZ to 3GHz @ '05) 2005-2009 it seems like we hit a wall, we are stuck around 3 GHz. They should be testing frequency @ R&D...With 8 cores I think performance may be the same as a high end quad core, or it will be worse, because splitting up so many tasks and keeping track will hard for the CPU. Also with FSX everything is sent back to the first core so it would just create enormous overhead and latency problems. Now if the 8 cores are running over a certain frequency you may be able to overcome some problems and get great performance...EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_programminghttp://www.cilk.com/multicore-e-book/

From:http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?s=&...t&p=1646725To the poster that said FSX can use up to 256 cores, maybe in your dreams.... in real life, FSX will never utilize that many cores and will instead end up crashing because of tremendous, unheard of overhead. You are thinking of Windows XP Pro and Vista. The max cores they can support is 256, which is pretty much useless.Also the poster that said you can't make a serial task parallel, you are spot on!Like I said, in FSX, everything is set back to Core 0 so it is pretty much useless to have 8 cores, because once the other cores are finished with their processes they will be waiting on Core 0 to process data received from other cores... Read the links in my quotes, they have a far better explanation. To understand why more cores isn't better you have to somewhat understand programming and efficiency of software and hardware.The other problem you have with more cores like I said before is that even though the dies shrink from 65 to 48nm to 32nm, etc, the addition of cores can still make the processor bigger than its predecessor, which ends up limiting the clockspeed due to TDP which has a relationship with heat.Always remember, that having more cores, doesn't mean software can just split up the code automatically, the developer(s) have to produce the code themselves and make them run in parallel. They have to split up various processes then assign them to different threads/cores which becomes a mess when you have more than 4, because your code becomes inefficient and slow when you have to do more operations just to get your result. Many multithreaded programs are also referenced back to the first core (core 0) for validity checks/processing of results. A very good example of this is FSX its self. When it was first in development it was in the era of single core and dual core processors. Then all of a sudden quad cores were released (Q6600 for example) and ACES had to quickly rush and get FSX to utilize those extra cores. The problem was the code was very inefficient for quads, since operations had to be put in parallel, when it wasn't designed for that in the first place, which probably added more code, less optimization, and created many race conditions. Which is why almost 4 years later after the release of FSX people are still puzzled on how to get good performance. You can see the race conditions very easily when you change the fiber fraction values in the fsx.cfg and mess with the slider. If the scenery is not done loading from the last 3 cores or is still being processed in Core 0, then FSX can crash very easily. You can tell if FSX takes a long time to load the aircraft sound and the scenery is blurry.Race conditions can be very disasterous in the real world. One example of this is Therac-25http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25There was also a power outage in the USA due to race conditions:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_conditio...ritical_systemsNow with editors, such as audio, video and photo, those programs are multithreaded in the sense that one core can perform one operation, while other cores do other operations all simultaneously and not wait on other threads to finish, which can increase speed.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_%28computer_science%29

[Clutch Cargo 388]

I hear ya gman and Max. Your explanations make a lot of common sense. But I was also told by Microsoft's SDKs that it was not possible to have higher resolution in ground scenery than 4.8m per pixel in FS2004. The program was not designed that way and will not work. Guess what, I have created 1.2m photomesh for FS9 and it works quite well. BlueSky Scenery has even created higher resolution... but this is not possible. Shadows from moving clouds are not possible in FSX - not possible. But REX is doing it!? All I am saying things can still happen even if the are not supposed to, we find a way around it.I do think TechGuy makes a good point. A single simmer makes a posts with remarkable claims (granted an aquaintance of mine whom I believe), but there should then be several others that could make the came claim, right? Just like when overclocking a i7 920 to 4Ghz seems to be the accepted method these days to run FSX because so many people are here doing it.Not sure how many simmers are running Skulltrails - not a $ drop in the bucket. The guy I know dropped $16K for his system. Yikes! So not sure how many people can just say, "Sure, I'll try it and see if it works for me too". Any takers??? :(

[gman! 1]

I hear ya gman and Max. Your explanations make a lot of common sense. But I was also told by Microsoft's SDKs that it was not possible to have higher resolution in ground scenery than 4.8m per pixel in FS2004. The program was not designed that way and will not work. Guess what, I have created 1.2m photomesh for FS9 and it works quite well. BlueSky Scenery has even created higher resolution... but this is not possible. Shadows from moving clouds are not possible in FSX - not possible. But REX is doing it!? All I am saying things can still happen even if the are not supposed to, we find a way around it.I do think TechGuy makes a good point. A single simmer makes a posts with remarkable claims (granted an aquaintance of mine whom I believe), but there should then be several others that could make the came claim, right? Just like when overclocking a i7 920 to 4Ghz seems to be the accepted method these days to run FSX because so many people are here doing it.Not sure how many simmers are running Skulltrails - not a $ drop in the bucket. The guy I know dropped $16K for his system. Yikes! So not sure how many people can just say, "Sure, I'll try it and see if it works for me too". Any takers??? :(

I think I'll pass for now :(

[hcornea 4]

I do think TechGuy makes a good point. A single simmer makes a posts with remarkable claims (granted an aquaintance of mine whom I believe), but there should then be several others that could make the came claim, right?

Hmmmm ... but then, would you value a repetitive theoretical approach over an actual event or experience.I've read a lot about appendicitis ... would you like me do your operation, or would you be interested in someone who had actually done the operation before performing it for you. Theory is theory. Experience is completely different.Theoretical knowledge is just that .... theoretical. Sound, well considered, informed - it may well be.Can well thought out knowledge get it wrong?History answers that question repetitively.Basically the technical comment here is "I don't believe it should work, so it doesn't". Perhaps the question is "That seems to work, despite what I would have thought. I wonder why that is?"Open your mind and see possibilities, close it ... and diatribe shall be yours.

[Guest djt01]

Not sure how many simmers are running Skulltrails - not a $ drop in the bucket. The guy I know dropped $16K for his system. Yikes! So not sure how many people can just say, "Sure, I'll try it and see if it works for me too".

Take a look in some of the hardware forums, Hardocp, Xtremesystems, Anandtech, and see what you find. I

[JayKae 1]

....The discussions never went into any detail about the settings in FSX....

#1 because there was no detail to go into, as said, untweaked machine #2 I am not obsessed with FPS #3 You get what you pay for and at $15,890,41AUD that I paid for that system, THAT is what I can expect. Now as this thread has turned into a complete an other personal attack on my persona, please close it mods and I will just write this of as a 'Jay Bashing' competition. Once you have a machine of the same specs, same amount of money dropped into it, come talk to me, not when you have machines that are not even in the same league.I am telling you right now though that if I have somewhat higher FPS in the future than any of the nay-sayers on here, I will surely keep my mouth shut to avoid the Spanish Inquisition being brought back to life again.PS This of course excludes the people that did not make references to my 'untrustworthiness' of course :) :)

[David Roch 1,984]

OK guys, I am locking this thread before it goes south.