The CPU discussion - a technical view

[Curlyriff]

I can't really talk about specific APIs or platforms (NDAs prevent me from going into any deails) - but I will say that Vulkan and DirectX12 are very similar in how they operate, so porting from one to the other is significantly easier than the initial port from DX11. To clarify, I mean the Vulkan isn't likely to be a focus for us going forward with our technology - it's primary advantage is a slightly wider Windows market, and Linux / Steam OS (which we don't have any plans to support in future titles). It's all about picking the best APIs for the platforms we develop on (as a company, not just Planet Coaster), and as much as we'd like it to be so (it'd make our lives a hell of a lot easier!) Vulkan isn't it right now.

Cheers

Andy

As said interesting. I know you develop for Windows and Xbox which will be pushing DX12 and that is fair enough but to suggest that only a slightly wider windows market seems rather off considering that W10 only makes 25% of market. That shows a lot more than a slightly wider market is left. Though mind I guess if you are talking about the future and a few years from now to move to DX12 then it would be different in that hopefully the market share would move forward of course.

No problem and understand your views as a company it just seems very different and almost the opposite stance to the other devs I talk too which just makes it interesting and wish could know more (❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎ NDA).

 

[DanFirewolfThorpe]

Im looking at upgrading to either a I7 or a Xeon from an I5 -My GPU is a GTX 1070 - 16GB RAM
Obviously the main target is rendering i would dare say for the bigger parks.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[tyczj]

DX11 does not only work single core at all. AndyC explained the reason it favours a single core for certain reasons, that is not the same.

It has been shown by a huge number of benches that have updated that the Ryzen CPU at 3.9GHz and 3600Mhz is as good as the 5GHz i7 7700k in 95% of games if not better with only a few number of games favouring Intel.

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/...ia-gpus-will-deliver-mantle-like-capabilities

https://m.hardocp.com/article/2016/04/19/dx11_vs_dx12_intel_cpu_scaling_gaming_framerate/1

So these links, one quoting from Microsoft is incorrect?

 

[VACkillers]

As said interesting. I know you develop for Windows and Xbox which will be pushing DX12 and that is fair enough but to suggest that only a slightly wider windows market seems rather off considering that W10 only makes 25% of market. That shows a lot more than a slightly wider market is left. Though mind I guess if you are talking about the future and a few years from now to move to DX12 then it would be different in that hopefully the market share would move forward of course.

No problem and understand your views as a company it just seems very different and almost the opposite stance to the other devs I talk too which just makes it interesting and wish could know more (❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎ NDA).

Thought the NDA comment was a bit weird to me, the games out, so ummm... whats there to be an NDA about? personally don't see any harm in talking about an engine specifications? oh well, just thought it was a lil odd...

 

[Curlyriff]

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/...ia-gpus-will-deliver-mantle-like-capabilities

https://m.hardocp.com/article/2016/04/19/dx11_vs_dx12_intel_cpu_scaling_gaming_framerate/1

So these links, one quoting from Microsoft is incorrect?

That is not stating that it only works single thread otherwise people wouldn't be seeing gains going from an i5 to i7. DX11. What it does show and was explained is that it is single thread dependant with limited ability to work with other threads direct out the box. That again isn't clear cut though as games and reviews for years have shown plenty of times where devs are able to load up all cores to spread load and thus use more than 1 core.

I am sorry but you have miss-understood what is being shown and what DX12 does to DX11. It isn't that it wasn't possible (at least not all of it, as said Andy explained a lot above on the single thread part). It is that DX12/Vulkan makes things much simpler to work multi-thread with the ability to manipulate how the engine runs off the CPU in base terms.

 

[Curlyriff]

Thought the NDA comment was a bit weird to me, the games out, so ummm... whats there to be an NDA about? personally don't see any harm in talking about an engine specifications? oh well, just thought it was a lil odd...

They will have other games that use specific API's and certain platforms they are working on in the background be it for this game or others and at the moment they may not be ready to announce PC to xbox port but is likely in the works for Project Scorpio from what I am reading tbh (being speculative).

 

[AaronTuckwell]

That would explain why, especially on larger parks my 7700K is out performing the 6700K's then... and even some of the top-end 8 cores too... Throw as many cores at it as you like and the game will be faster in the short to intermediate term, but on larger parks it's not about the number of cores, but about the speed of one single one due to the submission loads