I noticed that a quad core is recommended in the sys reqs and I'm wondering if this game is truly multithreaded. I've got a Q9550@3.6 so I think I should be OK in the CPU department, but I was curious if the recommendation for quad was just that they tend to have higher frequencies or if it was actually using all cores simultaneously.

Also, I have an 8800GT...what's the cheapest graphics card I should upgrade to in order to be able to run this game pretty much on max settings?

Thanks for any info.

I was reading a bit about the tech5 engine, and yes it is a multithreaded engine that will utilize mutliple cores.

It's funny how some of the PC people believe they had hardware that was 10 times as powerful as the console. At the time the PS3 cameout, it's cell processor was very geared to multi-threaded gaming applications, which just did not exist at the time. It's cpu had way more potential/power than what was being consumed by the single threaded PC games of the time.

When people say that, they usually refer to the video card or the amounts of RAM they have installed. Eg. a cpu like the i5 2500k is at best only 2x as fast as a console CPU if even that.

To the the topic creator, the majority of games will automatically open a bunch of threads, often 30+, that the operating system distributes between the CPU cores. That doesn't necessarily mean the game will see any significant increase in performance with more than 4 cores, but yes the game will definately put those cores to use.

Actually it's funny how with all those cell cores two aren't even used for data processing, and even 7 are way more than needed considering the GPU limitations. Cell also really could have benefited from a decent amount of cache, which it lacks, not to mention the fact that the GPU does 90% of the work in any gaming system. The lack of cache has been one of the things that make the PS3 so hard to write graphically advanced games for without frame rate drops, and it's also due to the bottleneck. The GPU just can't keep up with that many CPU cores, so devs can't really fully make use of all of them, not even all of the ones used for data processing.

The concept of the Cell CPU would have made a LOT more sense had they given it sufficient cache and made the GPU robust enough to keep up with it, but even then, most devs aren't skilled enough or ambitious enough to take the time to write in more than quad thread support in a game. Thus much of the PS3 design was eccentric egotism at work.

They spent far too much time and money on the CPU. With a simpler quad CPU design that would have taken half the time to design, they could have sold it for a lot less, and it would have been a much more balanced, practical system. As is, you only see select exclusives written specifically for the PS3 taking full advantage of it's capability. A lot of multi platform games actually look worse on it than the 360.

There's nothing future ready about the PS3 really, other than it functions as a Blu-ray player as well. When the next Wii comes out it will stomp the PS3 and 360 on graphics power, a good 2-3 years before their intended product cycle is up, and the Wii U will merely have a Radeon 4000 series GPU. There's a LOT of catching up to do for the PS3 and 360 concerning how they compare to even mediocre PC systems.

Since when are console gamers hardware tech experts?

Makes me wonder what kind of hardware the next consoles with have. Who knows? It might just be a minor RAM upgrade.

gem of derp.

upcoming xbox 720 and ps4 will likely be very nice gaming rigs --- for 300 bucks --- verses what, say 3k buck high end gamiing pc's

you get what you pay for...

http://www.arma3.com/surveilance/imagery/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Sd--YYBNFx0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bwzrTJlKOYE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=WlLBsa78C7I

I thought 3k was an entry level price for a high end rig if you knew all the DIY tricks and had more knowledge than an average user has by a longshot.

Rage uses nearly 100% of all of my four cores. So yes it does use quad cores very nicely.

Yeah guys, just popping in here to remind everyone that platform bashing/warring gets dealt with rather harshly here.

As for Rage, it is definitely a multi-threaded game. Anyone that has and ATI card can probably tell you that. A driver error killed performance on dual core systems, while Quad cores where unaffected.

Also, for the original poster, I'd point out that quad cores have lower frequency than dual cores of the same generation.

3000 $? That's an insane price, are you (sorry can't resist) one of those noobs that think Alienware is the 'go to' company for buying gaming PC's?

Also there's NO technical way they can take something as powerful like a GTX 580 GPU and make it emit much less heat and use so little power (Watts) that it can fit it in a console within 5 years from now, AND scale down the price.

I guess they could get the price partially down, if they buy in bunches though. But the console would still end up being the size of a small/medium sized PC and the power draw would be immense - unacceptable for a console.
And 300 bucks? Ha, that's what the console price is at now after several years. What was the PS3 launch price, again? 600 USD!

Best video card prices: $500-750
Best processors: $250-1000

What crack are you smoking? Those are the highest end components. You can play games on a rig with prices ranging very high-max for $900-1500 future proofed for half a decade.

The next consoles will be 400-500 and obselete day 1.

yes, with a boat load of games to choose from, unlike some platforms.

ok back off the ps3 talk... how many cores can this game use? 4 is nice but will it use all 8 of mine?...

Well Apple choose Intel's over Sony's Cell. Their official reason was that the Cell is not as powerful.

The cell is the ps3 was crap and even if they do another one in the ps4 its still going to be crap as with all console and by the way ur a tard to really think a intel sb is really only close to 2X the power of current consoles. a intel Q6600 wiped its ass on ps3 or xbox360.

That's because you don't know how to buy PCs

I got my custom machine for under about 1000 € -- i upgraded it in the next 3 years with addons such as new HDD , , new sata DVD drive , replaced ram with better ones and more ram, audio card , 2x new GPUs , new mouse, new keyboard, monitor stayed the same all the time as well as motherboard, CPU , power supply and i spent like another 500€ on these updates ... which is fairly spread out on these 3 years - plus if you consider that i always sold OLD hardware to buy new so i got half or sometimes more than half of the price of the new item back from the sale of the old one


You're looking on overpriced assembled/branded OEM PCs that are on sale from HP, Dell , Alienware ... the work is what you pay for, if you assemble your PC manually by purchasing parts separately it costs you more than half less. You also need to know much skill on what to buy, reviews and forums help a lot, and for the LEVEL of hardware - you NEVER BUY the most expensive CPU, because it gives you only 10% better result , i bought Intel Q9300 (the first 45nm quads) and it cost 230 € , it's 2.5 GHZ .... the same chip that the QX version with unlocked multiplier ... so basically you spent 750 € on the unlocked multiplier which if you even know what it means, it's a term for overclocking, it means that you're not bound by the motherboard FSB frequency to overclock a processor - which is a very important thing for hardcoe overclocking - but it's totally not needed for any gaming at all (crysis:p) - practically not but overclocking is now more fun for it self todays, than it was in the old days when CPUs were the main bottleneck.

So you have to know in-depth PC hardware and how it works too to successfuly cheaply buy a PC machine that is as good as the "super workstations" DELL sells for premium - this tells you how much console people have no idea about PCs while praising their (RROD) "rigs" ... mostly 14 old kids imo.


And it's "versus"

consoles are not "very nice gaming rigs" - the current generation has had suffered from heavy hardware stability issues except Wii



You have to get a clue what high-end is ... it's not what they write on stickers and advertisments. I have a high end rig and it doesn't have the most expensive CPU , it doesn't have the most expensive GPU , that's because it doesn't need it - and it runs maybe like 20% less than the it's generation superior version.


DELL puts on their "high end machine" the most expensive models of the series or generation - it's a stupid thing for CPUs , the extra price is basically a "guarantee it's going to work on that frequency" while the CHIP has very much identical features maybe some stuff is locked off like less cache and hyperthreading in today's intel chips , but im talking about the cheapest in the sub-series, if one core or 2 cores are locked off it's already in the lower tier and the model number should indicate that.

Hyperthreading is also not that important, those extra cores are virtual and are not equivalently powerful than the physical cores so this feature is not a deal breaker if you don't have it.


THe GPUs are bit more complex because ... they can lock off more stuff and also GPUs are cards and not chips , and they rely on the card and what's on it - so lower you buy the wider is the performance drop as compared to CPUs - it's a bit trickier and you need extra and pretty much goes down to what kind of games you play and also comes all the other things since for gaming today GPUs are the main bottleneck that you need to carefully purchase.

The motherboards are different as well - but you are ALWAYS better of buying a better motherborad that has some "overclocking" features - it's not because you need that. but because the build quality is better , you don't want the main component to be cheap that makes problems for the whole PC, so you need a quality mobo for future upgrades, it's bad that you would need to replace the mobo to upgrade something that came after 6 months from the PC purchase ... stability is key and you need to have reserve - also a better mobo obviously makes PC last longer and less chance for something to break down. You might want to upgrade something or use something but you find out that your mobo doesn't support some cookie little feature ... all kinds of that little stuff that makes difference for if your PC will last long or not. And in practicse ... the better mobos don't cost that much , you just throw away money buying a 90$ mediocre mobo when a 140$ mobo is high end with all the quality. It's a small price for the benefits you get.

The next thing is also price grabbing - you need to have overview of the market - what's comming , and all local retailers you can find around or the global retailers, which one has the cheapest price, so what you do is search, you don't suppose to buy stuff from the most popular retailer - it's not always the cheapest, but im not familiar with amazon or this american stuff i never bought anything from any global retailer , i have to use local importers and private dealers. It is true that hardware is also cheaper in USA.

It's been a numer of times i grabbed the items just the right moment at the right place - all of the country had Radeon 5850 for like 150 € and i found one that sold it for 114€ and it was a Vapor-X edition The funny thing was ... the price was increased by 25€ the next day , monday , i made my order on 23 PM sunday the previous day

That's how you buy PCs. 1500€ at most for my rig that runs everything except photoediting because i would need more RAM ... that's ~1500$ given that USA hardware is cheaper(conversion difference nulified).

Not the cheapest option that your PC i bought my in 2008 for 620-650 euro and I dont have to upgrade it to this day and still i play games at 1080p which is since i bought for my old monitor which resolution was 1280x1024 max . But adding a cost of keyboard mouse isnt much of argument since it is the same situation of buying another gamepad, docking station etc.
In my country the general opinion about buying guys that buy something like Alienware etc. is usually put in 4 words "They are F!@#!@#! IDIOTS!!".

There is no such thing as "extra performance" or speed up that you would notice if you are not comparing in realtime

It's pretty neligible ... in practical dayly operation , all 4 cores ulitilized will just minimize the effect of

CPUs are strong today enough and any "cpu speed up" isn't going it speed up your PC in any practical amount if you don't have any problems.


Because my friends, it's about the slowest component of the computer that is the actual culprit, the hard drive.

Unless some script bug happens in the game and the application freezes because the CPU has to calculate that , only then this helps you because if you

You guys contextualize this wrong , it's not any extra performance or boost , because it's not boosting anything all the time , the CPU is not being used 100% all the time, it's a wrong description people have. When something requires it - you just have more computing power available, that's it. ... We're speaking about core ulitization and not the real-time frequency.




CPU speed / core ulitization is important for programmers and workstations and test machines , as well as overclocking or benchmarking , they require those operations to compile the software much faster and compiling is what cuts programmers time, they really can't do much in that time but to wait (and you obviously want to develop a game efficiently without waiting in the middle of the day)