WereKitten said:
@Selnor
Sorry, but your post once again trails into speculation and faulty technicalities. As for the latter it would be useless to go in detail over compilation and branch prediction on the SPEs, their DMA access and local memory, why 3 cores with 2x SMT is not the same as 6 cores and so on. Let me focus on the former:
"Now dont tell me you read at face value what a developer states from their own creation. Promoting ones product springs to mind?"
You're basically accusing the UE3 developers of lying about how they split the workload into threads? Seriously?
That's not really smart because 1) the way the threading of the engine works is not a black-box secret, it is documented to any developer who licenses and uses the engine 2) any user could simply run a thread inspector on a PC running the UE3 engine and see by themselves the structure of the processes and threads.
Maybe you should read again what you wrote there and admit that it applies to Remedy's still unreleased code more than to UE3, that has been around for a while now.
Your wishful thinking seems to be that Gears and other UE3-based games "only used 1 thread, but there's 6 of them so the vast majority of the potential is still untapped". Well, sorry to burst your bubble but it isn't so. There's 3 cores, each with 2x SMT, and I am no 360 developer but I would not be surprised if one of those hardware threads was reserved for OS background services (messages, chat, OS interface, background music).
In those 3 cores you want to run three heavy threads separately to avoid L1 cache contention (and same with the FPU maybe) and they will probably be game main loop/rendering/physics. Another helper thread could likely be used to stream data from the disc and decompress it, and I very much hope that Alan Wake's engine does a better job at that than UE3, that is plagued with texture pop-ins.
The way UE3 did it was to have 2 heavy threads (gameplay / rendering) and several smaller threads (physics / shadows / animations / data streaming / ...). Alan Wake's engine might put more stress on the physics/data streaming, but once again it's a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one.
Your line of reasoning seems to be: UE3 runs well on single core PCs. Remedy stated that Alan Wake will have multiple core requirements, and it will come to 360 thus it means that it will sweep the floor with Gears. You made a number of leaps of faith there, including the fact that requiring multiple cores - instead of being able to scale down - translates into incredibly better results, and the fact that the 360 version will be up to par with the PC version.
There will be games on the 360 that will technically surpass the likes of Gears for sure, but it's not like there's a magic "multithreading" labeled switch that developers have left off and that will unleash untold powers when turned on. They had an easier time on the 360 rather than on the PS3 into implementing multithreading in a PC-like manner, but further evolutionary improvements will require smart optimizations and fine tuning of solutions that are very well known and have been in use in the industry for years now. This not at all alike to the situation on the PS3 where the 7 available SPEs have to be coded for in a radically different manner than your usual x86/PowerPC CPU.
The "multithreading revolution" you're waiting for happened yet, probably back in 2006 between the first and second generation of 360 games. It's now time for evolution, and I'm sure it will bear great fruits.
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It's not specualtion. I even mention that if UE3 is fully designed for multithreading then the developers are not optimizing for this at all. I bought my PC in 2006. It was not the highest spec of it's time by any means. I'm running a Pentium 4 3.2 ghz CPU, 1.5gb ram and an 8800gtx as I said. Now I know for a fact my PC is nowhere near the capabilities of the 360. Yet I can run Gears of War just as good as the 360 version fine.
It's simple workload mathematics. Your confusing an issue that doesnt need confusing. By all means they may be running Gears on multithreads on the 360 compared to my single thread PC. But that does not mean in any way that they are anywhere near maximising that potential. This is my point. Considering what your saying about Alan Wake, I have no reason to think different. All games that have run on PC and 360 have all looked basically the same to me. Albeit the PC does a higher res on a monitor. Run a game like Assasins Creed, Gears Of war on PC through a 42" HDTV with 1080p and you will see more flaws in the PC version than on a fogiving 20" monitor. I appreciate PC's are the best game machine, and purpose built games that stretch the full capabilities of SLI tech as well are amazing ( looks at Crysis ). Gears 2 is impressive on 360 dont get me wrong, but visually what Ive seen from Lost Planet 2 for instance blows it away. The 360 is gonna surprise everyone in graphics this E3, we will without a doubt see Alan Wake, Forza 3, Splinter Cell and Ive a funny feeling Perfect Dark 2 ( considering that Perfect Dark is getting ready for a XBLA release ).
You have still not provided any reason for me to think Gears of War for instance is designed and optimized for multithread. If it was I would not be able to run it on a PC with less gaming power than the 360. I guess we will see at E3.
The new AVP screens look stunning. I believe that is designed for multithread especially. Have a look at the thread. Wow.
