Really? I think just the opposite of you.
Technology should keep evolving and requiring better hardware for assisting games. The Streaming SIMD Extentions were meant to aid developers and speed up common algorithms.
Please don't insist of going back to archaic x87 instructions. Besides you can get a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 and Radeon HD cards that support SSE3 and SM4.1 really cheap now.
Ok ya I see what you are saying... games shouldn't REQUIRE SSEx even if they do use it to optimize some of their code. I agree people on older hardware should still be able to play the game since SSEx instructions are just broken into x87 FPU micro-ops anyway right? I haven't looked at game binaries because really I don't know how to... hell I don't even know what most of the SSEx instructions really do. If indeed developers aren't making the most out of the new instructions but still requiring a certain set that is lame. Really AMD has a reason for developers to require certain instructions sets though: to get more money out of the consumers on buying their newer products. I don't see AMD rewarding developers going back to older methods.
I've seen a lot of people saying that the Intel's SSSE3/SSE4.1 instructions really help in multimedia and games... is this true?
Hey avk,
How do you look at an applications binary to tell if it is using SSEx optimized code? Does the application have to be open source?
After reading through this I wonder what the actual performance boost is when using SSEx optimized code.
Consider hardware upgrades as part of the cost of gaming. Sometimes you have to pay for advancements, but your enjoyment level will be much greater.
Yes,
This seems a little off and I agree with you 100% avk. Older chips shouldn't out pace/out play a newer/more powerful chip.
Seems a bit off to me.
I agree that hardware upgrades should be considered part of the cost of gaming, but I easily forget that fact when I have to actually pull out money for that cost
I also agree that someone with a lesser processor shouldn't be able to outperform someone with a better one...
Ah, well, I guess life isn't fair here either *snicker
To be a gamer you need to keep upgrading. Older systems are not going to play the newer games. That is just the nature of the beast,
Originally posted by: mehaul
To be a gamer you need to keep upgrading.
Originally posted by: mehaul
Older systems are not going to play the newer games.
LOL i love this thread .Ohh come on folks,i am running my be'loved mobile AMD XP M 2600 with a Zalman 9500 and can oc up to 2,73GHz and can play the latest games without painful quality loss or FPS problems.Gimme a break,actually 64bit processors can surely handle more task stuff at the same time but ain't necessarily faster.Compare Corel software releases 7 and 14 or later.To may libs loaded with tons of nice colored icons and animations which aren't needed..result...long loaading times and dense speed!'course you need a more powerful CPU to handle that.
No thanks,will stay with the best AMD processor and can live with old software which runs fine and stable.
@avk: please check your post box
best regards
I think mehaul is right here, it is the nature of the beast. Technology marches on, it always has and always will. If we're lucky we keep up with it, otherwise we just do our best with what we've got.
It just doesnt make economicaly sense to leave those athlon XP cpu's out.Most of the good programs still don't have such limitation and more people around the world can and do buy them because they work on older systems.For example ID software releases all their games compatible to the outer limits and they work fine.If people want the max graphics the develpers can easily accomplish that by hardware checks and different algorythms.That doesnt cost a bunch and more customers are in reach.
Lets make it clear on a very simple example.We are soon using USB 3.0.If Microsoft stops supporting USB 3.0 on WinXP,only implementing it in Vista and Windows 7,they leave around 67% windows user aside.Since 67% of Windows user still stuck to their loved WinXP,it would be plain idiotic only to support the newer systems.
Also,why do some people say:"Man,your system is far to old,buy a new one" because of a couple of Streaming extensions who have been around in Intel since the first Pentiums showed up but when no one really care'd before?!?!
Its good we have new cpu's but its not good software gets to much dependent on it.
Question: I know someone who plays and loves Doom and Quake and plays Doom3 and Quake4 at 800x600 resolution.Thats two games ID sold and one big ID fan made happy.Isnt that all what counts in the end?!
thanks
Sorry for repeating myself, but you, guys, should definitely need to improve the Catalyst driver. Your graphics engineers are capable to create a state-of-the-art GPUs, but your graphics programmers, alas, cannot handle with driver for them .
From one version of Catalyst to another its quality is changing from good to bad and vice versa. It is inadmissible. Yes, I know that it is extremely hard to maintain the quality and speed of the graphics driver on a good level, but it is imperative!
Do what you want or what you can, hire another programmers, change the schedule of Catalyst releases from every month to every two months or every three months, but, please, do something. Because bad drivers make good graphics card sells bad.
As I mentioned earlier, please, pay attention to the old games. Please, test them too. Look, for example, at the Thief 1&2. These games were made in 1998 and 2000, but even now their fanbase is still growing. Alas, these games are hard-coded to run in 16-bit screen modes via DirectX 6, and by now their visuals is worst than it was their start. Do you know why? Because all the modern graphics cards (DX10-compatible) have some graphics issue when they are working in 16-bit screen mode. Could you, guys, fix such an issue in your graphics driver? I daresay, yes, you could, if you want. But you don't want . BTW, just because of this, one enthusiast have wrote special software patch named DDFix. In most cases it works, but many users constantly have a lot of problem installing and/or using it.
The aforementioned problem is just a one from thousands of similar. Yes, the burden of compatibilty is a really hard one, but you, guys, have no choice.