Unreal Tournament 3 CPU & High End GPU Analysis: Next-Gen Gaming Explored
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 17, 2007 3:35 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Multi-Core Gaming is Upon Us
Epic's Unreal Engine 3 is well threaded, it must be in order to run on the multi-core Microsoft and Sony consoles, and thus us multi-core PC users benefit.
Intel has been waiting for a real reason to push quad-core gaming for a while now, will UT3 be that reason?
We don't often look at single-core performance given how cheap dual-core CPUs are today, but it's important to look at where we've come from over the past couple of years.
One to two cores gives us an impressive 60% increase in performance on average, if we look back at our first dual-core processor review none of our gaming tests showed any performance increase from one to two cores. From 0 - 60% in two years isn't bad at all.
The performance improvement from 2 to 4 cores isn't anywhere near as impressive, but still reasonable. In our first two tests we see a 9% increase and the third one gives us a 20% boost, for an average 13% jump in performance.
If 3D games follow the same trend that we've seen over the past two years, it'll be another two years from now before we really see significant performance increases from quad-core processors. If in 2009 we hardly bother with dual-core chips because quad-core is so prevalent, you'll not hear any complaining from us.
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Super Nade - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
Hi,A very interesting article. I was wondering if you could pit Intel and AMD chips having the same L2 cache against each other? You can clock up the lower specced Intel part if need be. Since the game is L2 bound, this experiment would provide a more balanced outlook in a GPU bound or a clock-for-clock situation.
Cheers,
S-N
OCForums
johnsonx - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
If this is a beta demo (the multiplayer server browser does scream BETA! doesn't it?), does anyone know if there will be an updated 'final' demo? Further, will there be any Onslaught maps in said demo?gramboh - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
Does AA work in the demo? I've downloaded it but due to Orange Box I haven't even bothered installing it.I'm mainly interested to know if the 8800GTS/GTX blow away the 2900XT or not once AA is enabled at 1920x1200 so that I feel better about my purchase of a 8800GTS 640 :)
NullSubroutine - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
I dont think the purpose of reviews is to make you feel better about what you already bought. But hey, to each his own.jamori - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
I appreciated the inclusion of some of the previous-gen cards here. Some of the recent graphics card reviews completely left them out, which essentially leaves me guessing as to how much improvement I might see by upgrading my graphics card.30 fps at 1920x1200 on my 7900GTX isn't great, but it's still at the lower threshold of playable, which is nice to know.
p30n - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
What does this show us? At least for UT3 quad (vs dual) is rather a waste. If it shows so small and increase when its not gpu limited (ie low res 1024 tests) one wonders what will happen at higher res where the gpu is actually pressured.And even more so when your already crossing 100fps does it even matter?
Now if quad helped us go from say 20 fps to 30fps I would say hell yeah its actually making a difference, but as is 155 fps to 186 fps...omg now I have to get a quad!
Of course there were no tests at high res to compare core effect too.
RamarC - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
You have to remember that these were flybys with no activity. UT3 is making little of use of the extra cores now, but I'll bet that a quad core will flex its muscle once you add players, vehicles, explosions, and all the mayhem that goes along with a good UT match.jebo - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
I thought the CPU tests were interesting, but largely useless! It reminds me of the UT2K3 flyby vs botmatch days. Why didn't Derek and Anand use Fraps to run a few botmatches. Sure the results aren't 100% repeatable, but if you run a couple botmatches on each setup and average the fps you'd get a fairly accurate result.Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
I actually played with this, the frame rates weren't actually much different at all. You also have to keep in mind that in real world usage there won't be any bots, just other human opponents.Take care,
Anand
DerekWilson - Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - link
just to underline this, running through a level with fraps yielded very similar framerates to the flyby tests.but the problem here is that even our run throughs were not very taxing. We can't add 9 thousands bots to a game and test anything, as they will cause problems with the run through adding variability and removing the possibility of repeatability.
we don't have a doezen people we can start up a multiplayer game with and choreograph a scene that we can run every time we need another number.
the real solution to the issue is the demo record and playback functionality. until we get that, flyby testing is the best we can offer and just isn't any better than a fraps run.