Quad Core................

Just wanna ask you guys anybody running fm on a quad core chip and if so how many leagues you got going and how smooth is it.Thanks alot peeps............Fritz

yep..CPU Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 Quad-Core 2.93GHz OC @ 3.2GHz

ALL leagues, evrything maxed out...no issues.

what about mine? i have amd athlon 4200+ 2.60 GHZ rated at 6.30GHZ and i have 2GB RAM

Originally posted by cdcool:

yep..CPU Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 Quad-Core 2.93GHz OC @ 3.2GHz

ALL leagues, evrything maxed out...no issues.

Hoewever, if you check your actual cpu usage, you will find it never uses more than one core.

Originally posted by gubbs:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by cdcool:

yep..CPU Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 Quad-Core 2.93GHz OC @ 3.2GHz

ALL leagues, evrything maxed out...no issues.

Hoewever, if you check your actual cpu usage, you will find it never uses more than one core.

</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I see activity on Core2 as well.

Originally posted by fmfan08:

what about mine? i have amd athlon 4200+ 2.60 GHZ rated at 6.30GHZ and i have 2GB RAM

If you already have that computer, you are probably the one who should try it and tell the rest of us

a quad core chip

does FM take the Quad core into account? does it use them all? can anyone from SI tell us this please? thanks

I thought FM, like most games only uses two cores.

thats what i thought but i would upgrade my CPU if they used the 4 cores.

I use a quad core and it works extremely quickly, running about 40 leauges.

FM does use all the cores, playing on a Q6600 as I type, in a moment of madness I decided to run all matches at full detail (currently have all European & S.American leagues plus Mexico & USA) & the CPU is peaking at 100% on match days.

Reminder to self: tone down the detail leval.

QX9650 here, only notice usage on 2 cores, needs optimizing for next version, need an option for 2 or 4 threads.

I have a Q6600 running @ 2.7GHz, and notice it uses all 4 cores, though total cpu usage peaks at about 50-55%, and for normal processing is around 30%.

Luck Quad Core gits.....

That should have been LUCKY quad core gits, my profound apologies.

I'm just about to purchase the Q6600. How much ram should I get, 2 or 4gb? How much ram do you guys have? Would it make much difference 2 or 4gb ram or is the speed of the game mainly down to the processor?

2BG is fine for FM.

Yeah i asked the question as i am about to dip into my pocket for a new base unit and as FM is my main pc game i want to run all leagues.so a quad core it is.Thanks very much for all your feedback dudes.....

Originally posted by cdcool:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by gubbs:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by cdcool:

yep..CPU Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 Quad-Core 2.93GHz OC @ 3.2GHz

ALL leagues, evrything maxed out...no issues.

Hoewever, if you check your actual cpu usage, you will find it never uses more than one core.

</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I see activity on Core2 as well. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Uhm, it doesn't. I have tested it extensively on an AMD X2 6400+.

The activity on other cores is almost certainly background (non FM) processes.

This app does not thread properly on any system I have tested it on ..

It uses 100% of one core e.g. it does not utilize more than one thread.

Originally posted by Miles Jacobson:

We only have one quad core machine in the office, and it plays the game very quickly indeed.

We haven't actually tested "core usage" at all to see how many it's using, and it hasn't been specifically optimised for quad core PC's. Some of the work on the 360 version will use mutliple cores, and that might translate into multi-core use on a PC aswell as some of that code will have been transferred over.

So whilst we've got no specific benchmarks, or specific optimisations done on purpose, multi-core machines do seem to play the game faster. We set up a game with all leagues running very quickly (I won a bet against Kev over the time it would take to set up ).

That said, if you don't notice a difference, don't blame me, as we've done no specific tests - it's just from personal experience.

Of course it runs quickly - its a very quick processor. Even on one core it is faster than any uniprocessor die I can think of.

What it doesn't do, is scale to use the maximum available resources.

Originally posted by gubbs:

Uhm, it doesn't. I have tested it extensively on an AMD X2 6400+.

The activity on other cores is almost certainly background (non FM) processes.

This app does not thread properly on any system I have tested it on ..

It uses 100% of one core e.g. it does not utilize more than one thread.

As I see use of all 4 cores on my Q6600 & others have mentioned all cores being utilised on Intel chipsets have you considered there is an issue with the AMD architecture in respect to effective threading on FM.

Just a thought.

e6850 OC'ed on air (£150) will run all leagues quicker than any quad-core processor.

How do I know? Ive got a QX6850 running in my Crysis box and the game runs at the same speed. Even Crysis unpatched doesnt use anymore than 2 cores.

Only useful and worth the money for futureproofing and for running high-spec apps in the background, so unless your wadded save yourselves the cash.

Or OC a e6550 (£100) to e6850 speeds on air.

Mine definitely uses 2 for the game, but that's all.

Not that I'm complaining because it's quick as s*** off a shovel.

Originally posted by Barside:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by gubbs:

Uhm, it doesn't. I have tested it extensively on an AMD X2 6400+.

The activity on other cores is almost certainly background (non FM) processes.

This app does not thread properly on any system I have tested it on ..

It uses 100% of one core e.g. it does not utilize more than one thread.

As I see use of all 4 cores on my Q6600 & others have mentioned all cores being utilised on Intel chipsets have you considered there is an issue with the AMD architecture in respect to effective threading on FM.

Just a thought. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

No, thats a perfectly valid argument.

You could be right ..

I haven't tested it with Intel.

Well I've got the Intel QX6700 oc'ed to 3.4Ghz running fine on all 4 cores upto 100%, but only if theres been lots of fixtures to process, which is fine as its very quick compared to when I had just a single core Athlon 64 @ 1.4Ghz. The QX6700 spreads the CPU usage equally over the 4 cores so with 4 cores x 3.4Ghz its a 13.6Ghz CPU. I get 4,600 CPU marks in 3dMark06.

I only run 8 leagues on huge database & run other league matches on Later Stages settings in full detail. Since I never get near 2012, I've set them like this on purpose hoping to get through the seasons much faster.

The Q6600 is the best CPU for performance/price at the moment & is very easy to overclock to 3.4Ghz, but not with a stock cooler. Dual core CPUs are the best at getting the highest clocks because they generate less heat than the quad core where 2 dual cores are stuck together, so you can push them further.

it runs fast on my quad core. i only tend to have about 14 leagues running though. certainly when i first bought it i noticved the speed difference.

Got a Quad Core the other week.

Needless to say it's faster than my laptop which struggled to run just the premiership with small DB

No idea if it's using all the cores or not, not sure how to tell.

I may have missed something here, but what happened to Francis Cole's SI logo under his name?

I'm wondering - now that I have 8Gb of PC2-6400 RAM - would it run faster running ALL leagues or does it not using this much RAM to running so many leagues?

Speaking technically...

I'm thinking if its just processing time that takes so long to process the game, so the only other way I can think to run all leagues at reasonable speeds is to raise my Front Speed Bus (FSB) and increase my RAM speed for more processing power. To test this & for others to see comparison, I ran Everest Home Edition v2.20 then did the two benchmarks test. Firstly, the Memory Read on my OCZ DDR2 827Mhz RAM + 3.2Ghz CPU (1280Mhz FSB) just read at 8230MB/s - which should help the processing. The Memory Write benchmark was much lower at 2080MB/s, which looks normal to me.

In my opinion, having DDR3 is much better for FM2008 processing if you can afford it & make sure you get at least 1333Mhz, ideally 1,600Mhz to match newer FSBs on Intels newer chips. I've seen the Memory Write speeds on 1,600Mhz DDR3 to be just over 5,060Mb/s. I would love to see any other DDR3 memory benchmarks for comparison to DDR2 for anyone else to see if it is worth the extra cost, mainly for running FM2008, then in 2 years when most gamers have DDR3, we can all run most of the leagues

Atleast Windwos Vista's performance monitor seems to think that FM loads all 4 cores on my Q6600. Sometimes all cores are even 100% at the same time, without any other programs running.

How do you use a huge database?

I don't have that option on mine?

Originally posted by policy:

How do you use a huge database?

I don't have that option on mine?

It says Large database, not huge. We just say that because it loads everything for those selected leagues & performance dips alot.

Originally posted by policy:

How do you use a huge database?

I don't have that option on mine?

There is a way of unlocking the "Huge database" function.

http://community.sigames.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7171989...432092253#6432092253

I am looking to buy a new computer soon what system would anyone reccommend for FM to run fast?

windows xp

Originally posted by adamjordan:

windows xp

Whit?

Anyway, Any answers by those who have something to offer other than twaddle please do. Thanks.

Originally posted by Miles Jacobson:

We only have one quad core machine in the office, and it plays the game very quickly indeed.

We haven't actually tested "core usage" at all to see how many it's using, and it hasn't been specifically optimised for quad core PC's. Some of the work on the 360 version will use mutliple cores, and that might translate into multi-core use on a PC aswell as some of that code will have been transferred over.

So whilst we've got no specific benchmarks, or specific optimisations done on purpose, multi-core machines do seem to play the game faster. We set up a game with all leagues running very quickly (I won a bet against Kev over the time it would take to set up ).

That said, if you don't notice a difference, don't blame me, as we've done no specific tests - it's just from personal experience.

Out of interest, if you're running all leagues with a large db, roughly what percentage of the db will be loaded in-game? Presumably it would have to be all players staff and teams, right? Otherwise there must be people and teams that aren't loaded under any conditions.

Frankie-

I would recommend SATA hard drives run in a RAID 0 configuration, a quad core hard drive, and at LEAST 2 gigs of DDR 800 RAM.

Originally posted by FMTopFan:

Firstly, the Memory Read on my OCZ DDR2 827Mhz RAM + 3.2Ghz CPU (1280Mhz FSB) just read at 8230MB/s - which should help the processing. The Memory Write benchmark was much lower at 2080MB/s, which looks normal to me.

In my opinion, having DDR3 is much better for FM2008 processing if you can afford it & make sure you get at least 1333Mhz, ideally 1,600Mhz to match newer FSBs on Intels newer chips. I've seen the Memory Write speeds on 1,600Mhz DDR3 to be just over 5,060Mb/s. I would love to see any other DDR3 memory benchmarks for comparison to DDR2 for anyone else to see if it is worth the extra cost, mainly for running FM2008, then in 2 years when most gamers have DDR3, we can all run most of the leagues

There must be something up with your memory timings - I get write speeds of 5270mb/s with 2x1gb DDR2-833 memory (Q6600@3ghz,1333mhz bus). It certainly isn't worth the price from where I'm standing.

I haven't seen FM use more than two cores on my system, but there is certainly a lack of pause when pressing "Continue" when compared to my dual-core system, and the game interface just feels "snappier".

outremer: on DDR3, that was from a benchmark I came across on the net; mines just DDR2 from OCZ. Runs great with timings of 4-4-4-12-2T, latency of just 58ns!

Frankie 7: I would recommend these components as part of your setup:

<UL TYPE=SQUARE> Quad Core 6600 GO (energy effient & massive overclocking potential to 3Ghz+)

2x1Gb PC2 6400 800Mhz (get low memory timings of 4-4-4-15)

2x Seagate SATAII Barracude 500Gb (very cheap & fast harddrives. set these two up in RAID0)

I have £400 to spend on a new hard drive - can this buy me a quad core system?

I am not the best when it comes to computers - so any advice will be great.

I currently have

2.8 ghz intel pentium 4

2gig ram

60gb hard drive

Originally posted by frogface:

I have £400 to spend on a new hard drive - can this buy me a quad core system?

I am not the best when it comes to computers - so any advice will be great.

I currently have

2.8 ghz intel pentium 4

2gig ram

60gb hard drive

or if my system is ok for now then I can keep saving if £400 is not enough to buy a quad core

I'm just about to purchase the Q6600. How much ram should I get, 2 or 4gb?

I think that would really depend on what version of windows you are using. If its the 32 bit version of windows vista then you wont be able to use much more that about 3.5 gb so unless its the 64bit version you have then 4gb would be pretty pointless.

I have £400 to spend on a new hard drive - can this buy me a quad core system?

I very much doubt it. I looked at various sites and the cheapest quad core system I could see was for £600.

You might be able to get a quad core processor for your current maching assuming the motherboard can take it. Looking on the manufacturers website should answer this for you.

Originally posted by trekman:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">I have £400 to spend on a new hard drive - can this buy me a quad core system?

I very much doubt it. I looked at various sites and the cheapest quad core system I could see was for £600.

thanks for that trekman

I have noticed some q6600 systems on ebay for around the £400 mark but I dont know if to trust buying something off ebay for that much money

You might be able to get a quad core processor for your current maching assuming the motherboard can take it. Looking on the manufacturers website should answer this for you. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Originally posted by frogface:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by trekman:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">I have £400 to spend on a new hard drive - can this buy me a quad core system?

I very much doubt it. I looked at various sites and the cheapest quad core system I could see was for £600.

here is the link to the one on ebay - can someone tell me if the system is a good one

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/QUAD-CORE-2-Q6600-2GB-DDR2-320-GB...QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

cheers

thanks for that trekman

I have noticed some q6600 systems on ebay for around the £400 mark but I dont know if to trust buying something off ebay for that much money

You might be able to get a quad core processor for your current maching assuming the motherboard can take it. Looking on the manufacturers website should answer this for you. </div></BLOCKQUOTE> </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Originally posted by PaulC:

The real benefit of threading in FM comes when you run leagues with matches in full detail....are any of you Quad core users doing that?

Didn't think of that, thanks PaulC At least you can change the levels during the game. Something to get the use of my QX6700!

Just checked my game Detail Level. I'm not running all leagues in full detail but here's the info:

<UL TYPE=SQUARE>*Worldwide Club: (Later Stages).

*Europe (Later Stages): Champions League (Main Stages); UEFA Cup (Later Stages); Inter-Toto Cup (Later Stages); Super Cup (Later Stages).

*England (Mixed: Premiership (All); FA Cup (Main Stages); others are all on None.

*Italy (Mixed): Serie A: (All); others are all on None.

*Spain (Later Stages): La Liga (All); Copa del Rey (Main Stages); Supercopa (Later Stages); Federation Cup (Later Stages); Under 19s (None).

*World Cup (Mixed): Fifw World Cup (All); Fifa World Cup Quals. EUR (Main Stages); others are all on None.

*International(Mixed): African Cup of Nations (Later Stages); Asian Cup (Later Stages); European Championship (Later Stages); Euro Championship Quals (Main Stages); OCE Nations Cup (Later Stages); Copa America (Later Stages); Confederations Cup (Later Stages); U20 World Cup (Later Stages); UEFA U21 Championship (Later Stages); others are all on None.

Originally posted by frogface:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by frogface:

I have £400 to spend on a new hard drive - can this buy me a quad core system?

I am not the best when it comes to computers - so any advice will be great.

I currently have

2.8 ghz intel pentium 4

2gig ram

60gb hard drive

or if my system is ok for now then I can keep saving if £400 is not enough to buy a quad core </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

It depends.

If you're running just a small to medium database and a few leagues - your system will probably cope enough.

If you're looking to run everything - you should upgrade or just buy a new computer. The problem with upgrading is that you may need to change your motherboard, memory etc - then what is the point in doing all that and keeping it in an old case, so maybe you should pay that little bit extra and go the whole hog.

If you're already playing a game, maybe you should just keep saving your money untill FM'09 comes out, and then you can start off with a new computer.

It's really your call.