Report: Despite Claims, Most PC Games Are Still Unable To Take Advantage Of More Than 4 CPU Cores

DSOGaming writes: "Well, you gotta love developers. This past year, we’ve been hearing from a lot of teams that their games were taking advantage of more than four CPU cores. And you know what? We decided to put a lot of CPU-bound games to the test. The results are a bit disappointing, proving that most PC games are unable to properly take advantage of multiple CPUs."

[NYC_Gamer]

Intel won't push for 8 cores on the mainstream level until it's really needed..

[Bodge]

We have consoles to thank for that.

[Volkama]

And we will have the new consoles to thank when almost every game starts pushing 6-8 cores within the next year or two...

That's one of the few good things the new gen consoles bring to the "lowest common denomitor" table.

[rdgneoz3]

And from a company that has an investment in consoles, DX12 is bringing "console like" API to PCs.

[djplonker]

4 is fine for me I cant imagine why you would need double!

[yewles1]

"We have consoles to thank for that."

Yeah, it's definitely the 360, Wii and Wii U that's the cause... What--

[Reaper29r]

He is saying that the limited hardware of consoles last gen is what was holding back technical advances as most developers jumped ship last gen. Don't take it as a personal insult to you or consoles, he is just stating the truth. The PC is a constantly evolving platform. I own all last gen and current gen systems as well as a good gaming PC and I agree with him. We will see how this gen goes as a lot of companies are starting to show the PC love again and a lot of gamers jumped to PC. Limits used to be pushed based of w/e hardware was available at the time, then it was ported for consoles as much as they could handle. That transitioned into just developing for fixed old hardware. Which between that, crap optimization for PC and shady business practices is what really pissed off PC gamers. I think it's going to get substantially better for the next 2-3 years specially for PS4 and PC, and if they keep pushing the limits instead of forcing everyone to be like the lowest denominator. I love all my systems, but it's simple numbers. To deny that is just blind fanboyism. Coding to the metal is not magical awesome sauce. It all comes back down to numbers, with a little bit of tricking your eyes.

[hot4play]

"We have consoles to thank for that."

Get out of here! Watch Dogs runs smoother on PS4 than on PC, fact. I have both versions and many reviews have stated it.

Btw, you also have consoles to thank for when developers have mastered programming for 8-cores and GPGPUs.

Quad-core PC gamers are holding back consoles.

8 cores, unified GDDR5 memory, and hUMA technolgy is the future. Don't worry, in about 2 years most PCs will catch up.

[JBSleek]

Well most people don't have more then four cores so why would they?

Especially Intel who is just getting eight cores to the mainstream with Haswell later this year. My PC has i7-3930K which only six cores.

[uth11]

I'm not surprised by this

[ElementX]

I've heard that the i7s really aren't needed for gaming so I bought an i5 when I built my pc.

[F4sterTh4nFTL]

Ubisoft thinks otherwise.

[Volkama]

This has been true for as long as the i range of processors have been around (which is beginning to feel like too long).

But because the consoles have 8 (6 usable?) slow cores, game engines must be adapted to take better advantage of that kind of archetecture.

At that point the hyper-threading on the i7s should open up a bit of a gap over i5. But your i5 still has enough grunt to stomp on the tablet CPUs the consoles use, so it shouldn't cause you any great problem.

[LightofDarkness]

i7s have some advantages but you won't see them in gaming so much. You're going to be GPU limited in just about every game before your CPU becomes the real bottleneck if you've bought anything relatively high end since the Bloomfield range (i7 920 and on). Hyper-threading is the largest single advantage to be found with the i7 series, and games barely make use of 2 cores, so hyper-threading isn't going to help you at all. Faster clocks and faster cache are nice but you won't be making the most of that unless you're CPU bound.

You made the right choice with the i5.

[Volkama]

Crossfire R9 290s, I'm very much CPU bound. But yes, the difference between an i5 and i7 is negligable right now.

Still, if I was building a PC today I would definitely go i7. Games will be built to thread across at least 6 cores just as soon as the PS4 and One are lead platforms, which is inevitable.

[ktorc]

I have old 2 Quad Core Q6600 with no problem

[Volkama]

I had that CPU for so long, it was a real champ.

If you get a mid-high end GPU on the market today though that CPU will restrict it a bit. Get 2 cards and that bit becomes rather large.

[andrewer]

There are lots of things way "heavier" than games. It'll take some good time to games use more cores...

[XiSasukeUchiha]

Figures:)

[ElmoCooksGlass]

Is this y pc games look barely better then pc4 games that is pretty sad when many peoples Gpu cost more then a ps4

[ElmoCooksGlass]

That just sucks that the ps4 looks the same as a pc