Anyone notice that only one core is utilized in Dead Space 2?

Anyone notice that only one core is utilized in Dead Space 2?
How annoying is that?! I hate it when games don't use more than 1 core. Has anyone found a way to get usage outta the rest? Messed with affinity settings etc...?


Edit: It looks like when you use D3DOverrider for v-sync you not only get capped at 60 FPS as opposed to 30 FPS in-game, but the usage is spread more evenly between the CPU cores, as well. I don't know what the connection is but before hand, I was at >95% usage on core0 and the rest weren't participating at all.

 

Yup, i got the game yesterday, played about 4-5 hours and after i exited, saw on my rainmeter that only core 1 is fully used, rest was about at 10-20%.....

 

well, that's not a bad thing, isn't it? Less cores in use means less energy drawn, what makes the game use less electricity and makes your power bill lower

I played the first one on my TV PC, with only 1 core and a 2900 XT, and it ran smooth as silk. So im glad to hear that his one follows the same usage ^^

 

Of course it's a bad thing. If one core is saturated and the other cores aren't utilized at all, that's obviously a bad thing. Instead of having low usage on all of the cores, which allows lots of headroom and efficient use of the processor, you're left with a single core stressed to the max.
Saying it's better because it saves electricity is just silly. The primary objective is to be able to completely utilize your hardware.
Turning off your computer completely would save you even more. Pfffff
*sighs and doesn't understand the logic some people have...*

 

Probably the game was ported without multithreading?

deltatux

 

Wouldn't it make sense to have multithreading support on the consoles what with the low GFlops...?

 

Yeah but on consoles the threading is much, much different.

I mean I guess it would be more efficient and better to have multicore support, but the game runs fine even on my friends AMD 4xxx+ thingy, it's hardly a issue here.

 

Doesn't bother me. Look at my rig, I play it maxed out and hasn't dipped below 60FPS once and looks awesome.

 

The game is probably easy on the CPU and any old one would work so they were lazy and didn't bother multithreading the game when porting.

 

Besides the fact that in graphically instense scenes I notice a slight decrease in performance that would be totally avoided if more than one core were being utilized, there is a second aspect that really annoys me:


With such advanced hardware, powerful GPUs, multithreaded CPUs, etc., it pisses me off that they're not used in the most modern and anticipated games!

You know what? As good as the game looks and as awesome as the game-play is, if all of this can be achieved with one core and very low GPU usage, imagine how amazing it would look if it was more demanding? Yes, more demanding. Not due to it being poorly coded but due to it really utilizing the hardware that most people on this forum have. For god's sake, it's even dx9c.
We pay tons of money for powerful components and tons of money for games but game developers try to aim low to widen their consumer base (and save money) and produce a game in 2011 (albeit, a great game IMO so far) that runs on a single core, among other graphic shortcomings.
PC gamers are all enthusiasts at one level or another, otherwise, we'd all get consoles. I want my hardware to be maxed out when I max out every possible setting in the LATEST game out.
It sucks that only every couple of YEARS, a game developer decides to really give our computers tough meat to chew on. The rest of the time our computers spend slurping down soft baby food through razor sharp teeth.

 

Yeah and what happened to that once every couple year game? (Crysis) They barely made money on it.

Deadspace is a great looking game, it runs and looks good on consoles/PC's. Maybe it could have been multi-threaded out of the box, but I don't think any of us are in the position of determining whether or not that would have substantial and worthwhile performance improvements.

 

Was thinking about this game?? but maybe not if its not optimised yet

 

Enthusiast, your system is better than mine, and I run it on 60FPS maxed out. Never dips. YOu'd be fine.

Also,

It's about gameplay, plot, and sound design, not graphics.

I enjoyed Singularity a ton and it had very out-dated graphics for a 2010 game.

 

Multiple Cores...

Frankly, if only one core is what it takes to move the game along with no performance hits, I don't see why any developer under a time constraint to finish a project would hack in extra - and honestly, unneeded - complexity, just to allow multithreading the game on the PC if it already runs well. I don't see much being benefit to Dead Space's engine anyone to being multithreaded. It's a beautiful, well crafted and well thought out game to be sure, but there isn't much in the way of overhead.

Just because the rig has the ability or headroom to push something vastly more demanding doesn't mean the idle resources arbitrarily need to be consumed.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

You really believe PC gamers are all enthusiasts in some way?

It's not the case at all, the majority of those who buy computers, even if it is to play video games on it, don't know anything about computers. You assume too much over the level of knowledge most end-users have about it.

 

Most of the time, code is created during development of the game in parallel to the console versions. Then they just port the game content over.

deltatux

 

Games are about gameplay, plot, sound design AND graphics!! It's unconscionable to say that a game isn't about graphics (as well).
If an out-dated (graphics wise) game is great, great graphics would obviously make it better.

And my point is that game developers should produce games in which the graphic quality at the highest ingame setting should challenge today's powerful rigs. Lower settings can be applied for mainstream users.
In DS2, mainstream users can run it smoothly at practically the highest settings. Yes, that's a bad thing.

Graphics wise, Crysis should have served as an example for future games but instead it remained until this day one of only a few graphics intense games.

Most games today aren't dx11, let alone dx10. Why?

A recent game shouldn't be able to be played on highest settings with an average rig. Average rig should be average settings and playable framerates.

Do you think games will look the same in 5 years? Or perhaps in 5 years games will be at the level of today's powerful rigs...

 

Both Dead space crash my stable GPU OC (no vsync). They're all on the GPU baby. And they both run good as hell.

 

Intelligently phrased ^. Seriously.
But I don't call for more complexity for the sake of complexity. Imagine the graphics of a game in a few years. Then imagine this great game (DS2) looking like that today. It could...
Texture wise, for instance, it could look much better.

 

I honestly don't get the complaint.

If the game was dropping down to 30 frames due even when coupled with a high end GPU due to cripplingly bad cpu optimisation, then I would be livid...

But both dead space and dead space 2 have better visuals/performance ratio than just about any other game out.

With vsync off my min frame rate is about 180.......my avg is about 230-250.
It never goes below 60 frames EVER. But it does seem stuttery at time. Not a lot and not for a section of gaming, but it just seems like a little frame skip ever now and then. Could be a driver issue though. Dirt 2 stuttered every now and then even with 60 frames min but the latest driver made it perfectly smooth.

It might not make that good use of 4 cores, but at least it is using 4 cores, it would be worse if it was 99% usage on 2 cores only and the other 2 just for background tasks.

IMO dead space 2 looks every bit as good as Mass Effect 2 and it does so using half the vram and has less aliasing with the in game AA only than ME2 does with 32CSAA set to override as ME2 has a lot of transparent textures.