Symmetry (someone.delete@this.somewhere.com) on November 2, 2015 6:56 am wrote:
> juanrga (nospam.delete@this.juanrga.com) on November 1, 2015 8:16 am wrote:
> > Games? Most people don't game on octo-cores, and many enthusiasts will prefer octo-core
> > Skylake. You also seems to omit the DX12 benchmark given to you. Even assuming that Zen
> > is 50--60% faster than Piledriver, octo-core Zen was behind quad-core Skylake on the game.
>
> I'd just like to point out that, baring causal gaming, most people play on an XBox or Playstation so actually
> do play games on octo-cores. Most modern AAA games are written for an octo-core system with PC support
> frequently tacked on as an afterthought and now that graphics drivers are moving to multi-threading I think
> that 8 cores or 4 SMTed cores will probably be the best gaming configuration going forward.

I don't follow consoles anymore, but the last time I checked only six cores were available to games, and Microsoft had just freed up part of the seven core to game devs under certain condition (Kinect and other stuff disabled).

Moreover it is good to differentiate cores from threads. Jaguar cores are single-thread.

Last core-load diagrams I saw months ago showed recent games loading six-core (six thread) Piledriver >90%, octo-core Piledriver >80%, and six-core (twelve threads) IvyBridge loading dropped to >60%.

I am convinced that most of PC gaming in next years will not be made on octo-cores (16 threads), but on quad and dual-cores.