By: Jukka Larja (roskakori2006.delete@this.gmail.com), May 23, 2022 12:59 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
zzyzx (zzyzx.delete@this.zzyzx.sh) on May 22, 2022 4:06 pm wrote:
> The main CPU I've had in mind is the Pentium G6600 (2C4T 4.2 GHz Comet Lake), the fastest non-AVX CPU Intel
> has made since Westmere. Coincidentally, I was stuck with an i3-6100 the other week, which isn't that different
> (supports AVX2, but short 500 MHz). Gaming on 2C (total perf) was surprisingly OK for mid-weight games,
> but the 4T (contention) part was terrible on pretty much anything DX11 even with an AMD GPU (much less CPU
> time used in the driver than Nvidia). That's understandable, I'd hate to try to map everything going on
> in a typical modern game onto 4T. If it's a heavier game with threading that you know isn't going to map
> sanely onto 4T anyway, I don't think there'd be much harm in excluding that class of CPU.
PC games have rather large scale in CPU needs these days. Some people will want to game on their 160 Hz (or even more) monitor, while recommended system should likely run at 60 and minimum around 30 FPS. If you start by presuming 30 FPS is OK and someone who just wants to run the game regardless of minimum specs will be happy with 20-25 FPS, dropping from four cores to two isn't all that crazy anymore.
A typical target for modern game would be PS4, which is about 6 Jaguar cores at 1.6 Ghz. That's not many when translated to 4.2 GHz Comet Lake cores. A typical gamer may want to have a browser, some chat programs, maybe some VoIP running. Low-end gamer knows to close down everything but the game.
> AES-NI could narrow down the CPUs in use a bit more:
>
> 1.31% are pre-Nehalem, pre-Silvermont, or pre-Bulldozer (no SSE4.2)
> 2.75% are either Nehalem or pre-Skylake Pentiums/Celerons (SSE4.2 but no AES-NI)
> 1.13% are either Westmere, Silvermont+ Atoms, or Skylake+ Pentiums/Celerons (AES-NI but no AVX)
Thanks, that's interesting. I haven't really thought about looking at the data that way.
> I've also been keeping notes on hwsurvey numbers back to May 2019, and the
> portion not supporting AVX has dropped from 11.17% to 5.19% in that time.
I'm mostly keeping an eye on Windows 7 market share. Sometimes I'll take a look at something else, like POPCNT a while ago. For AVX usage, we would first need to come up with a reason to use it on PS4 and Xbox One. Only then could we start thinking, "should we enable this on PC too".
-JLarja
> The main CPU I've had in mind is the Pentium G6600 (2C4T 4.2 GHz Comet Lake), the fastest non-AVX CPU Intel
> has made since Westmere. Coincidentally, I was stuck with an i3-6100 the other week, which isn't that different
> (supports AVX2, but short 500 MHz). Gaming on 2C (total perf) was surprisingly OK for mid-weight games,
> but the 4T (contention) part was terrible on pretty much anything DX11 even with an AMD GPU (much less CPU
> time used in the driver than Nvidia). That's understandable, I'd hate to try to map everything going on
> in a typical modern game onto 4T. If it's a heavier game with threading that you know isn't going to map
> sanely onto 4T anyway, I don't think there'd be much harm in excluding that class of CPU.
PC games have rather large scale in CPU needs these days. Some people will want to game on their 160 Hz (or even more) monitor, while recommended system should likely run at 60 and minimum around 30 FPS. If you start by presuming 30 FPS is OK and someone who just wants to run the game regardless of minimum specs will be happy with 20-25 FPS, dropping from four cores to two isn't all that crazy anymore.
A typical target for modern game would be PS4, which is about 6 Jaguar cores at 1.6 Ghz. That's not many when translated to 4.2 GHz Comet Lake cores. A typical gamer may want to have a browser, some chat programs, maybe some VoIP running. Low-end gamer knows to close down everything but the game.
> AES-NI could narrow down the CPUs in use a bit more:
>
> 1.31% are pre-Nehalem, pre-Silvermont, or pre-Bulldozer (no SSE4.2)
> 2.75% are either Nehalem or pre-Skylake Pentiums/Celerons (SSE4.2 but no AES-NI)
> 1.13% are either Westmere, Silvermont+ Atoms, or Skylake+ Pentiums/Celerons (AES-NI but no AVX)
Thanks, that's interesting. I haven't really thought about looking at the data that way.
> I've also been keeping notes on hwsurvey numbers back to May 2019, and the
> portion not supporting AVX has dropped from 11.17% to 5.19% in that time.
I'm mostly keeping an eye on Windows 7 market share. Sometimes I'll take a look at something else, like POPCNT a while ago. For AVX usage, we would first need to come up with a reason to use it on PS4 and Xbox One. Only then could we start thinking, "should we enable this on PC too".
-JLarja
