CPU Survey

[Tenzo]

My post makes sense. And please stop this.

Both of you don't make any sense.

And Dam is right, an upgrade is absolutely necessary. Old Pc is old.

 

[hleV]

And Dam is right, an upgrade is absolutely necessary. Old Pc is old.

I don't agree with you. Upgrading is only necessary for me if I want to play ESF. And I don't want to upgrade it only for ESF.

 

[Grega]

Your processor is over 9 years old. I have no idea how you expecto to run ANYTHING decently thats comming out these days.

Again PC hardware is old after half a year. If you want to stay remotely upgraded enough to normally play you need an upgrade every 4 or so years. But 9 is to much if you want to use it for gaming.

Not using SSE2 would mean only 1 thing in the end. Performance issues. SSE is in all ways inferior to SSE2 as SSE2 is capable of doing stuff faster. IN the end even if you got your SSE option it would result in nothing more than an unplayable FPS.

Though im not sure if this would be a good time or not to mention youll require a GFX card with atleast 128 MB VRAM for ESF. Atleast with the way it currently looks.

 

[Greenberet]

Even if you're happy with what you have now? Only for ESF?

You shouldn't try to convince people without SSE2 to get it so you could use it for ESF (or you'll use it anyway, dunno).
Isn't there a possibility for SSE and SSE2 setting in options? Like if you have no SSE2 - remove some stuff that required it from the game but still leave person with the ability to play.

SSE/2/3 are compiler options. Which means we would have to provide different dlls for every option and the player would have to decide which he wants to use( could maybe done with the installer). The problem with that is that we could only do that with the server dlls. The client dll must be everywhere the same so we can only provide SSE or SSE2 dlls. So the whole different dlls for the server thing is obsolete.

Not to mention that SSE2 is a real FPS boost. Personly i would even say that we should switch to SSE3( introduced in 2004 together with prescott revision of Pentium 4 ).

 

[hleV]

OK, I understand.

And by "I'm happy with what I have now" I mean that I'm happy with what I can play.

 

[Raven]

OK, I understand.

And by "I'm happy with what I have now" I mean that I'm happy with what I can play.

does that exclude ESF final, because that you are not able to play. So you will not be happy I guess ?

 

[Tenzo]

OK, I understand.

And by "I'm happy with what I have now" I mean that I'm happy with what I can play.

What games do you play?

 

[kam!]

Minesweeper, pong...

 

[Tenzo]

Minesweeper, pong...

I can play HL2 on my 7 year old machine you know. But that's as far as it goes.
And no i'm not happy with it.

 

[Spunky]

Your processor is over 9 years old. I have no idea how you expecto to run ANYTHING decently thats comming out these days.

No, his processor is six years old, so is mine. AMD only added SSE2 support for their processors using Socket 754 at the time, not Socket A.

SSE/2/3 are compiler options. Which means we would have to provide different dlls for every option and the player would have to decide which he wants to use( could maybe done with the installer).

You could probably script it directly into the installer to detect the CPU's instruction support. Or at least script it to run a program you've written to do it.

 

[Tenzo]

@ Spunky: Then what about this?

Not using SSE2 would mean only 1 thing in the end. Performance issues. SSE is in all ways inferior to SSE2 as SSE2 is capable of doing stuff faster. IN the end even if you got your SSE option it would result in nothing more than an unplayable FPS.

I know, it's a HL1 mod but that doesn't seem to cut it atm.

 

[Spunky]

I would say that sounds like poor game design in the end, if you NEED SSE2 just to make the game playable. If that's the case, it can't be very playable to begin with, and certain people on the inside have told me this many times.

 

[Tenzo]

Well, there's no optimization done yet.

 

[hleV]

What games do you play?

CS,
CSS,
DODS,
HL2DM,
TF2,
ESF (1.2.3),
HLDM,
Zombie Panic! Source,
Age of Chivalry (HL2 mod),
GTASA (multiplayer),
RF Online,
UT3.

These are the main games which I still play from time to time.

So, well, it's pretty sad that I won't be able to play a Half-Life 1 mod. It would have been better if team decided to move on Source engine since that wouldn't have required this much.

does that exclude ESF final, because that you are not able to play. So you will not be happy I guess ?

I won't be happy when I won't be able to play ESF: Final. That's exactly what I've been telling: I'm happy with what I can play and I'm not going to upgrade my CPU only for ESF. Noone would in my case.

 

[Cypeq]

-------------------------
CPU-Z version 1.49
-------------------------

Processors Map
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Number of processors 1
Number of threads 1

Processor 0
-- Core 0
-- Thread 0


Processors Information
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Processor 1 (ID = 0)
Number of cores 1 (max 1)
Number of threads 1 (max 1)
Name Intel Pentium 4
Codename Willamette
Specification Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.50GHz
Package Socket 423 mPGA (platform ID = 0h)
CPUID F.1.2
Extended CPUID F.1
Brand ID 8
Core Stepping D0
Technology 0.18 um
Core Speed 1680.3 MHz (15.0 x 112.0 MHz)
Rated Bus speed 448.1 MHz
Stock frequency 1500 MHz
Instructions sets MMX, SSE, SSE2
L1 Data cache 8 KBytes, 4-way set associative, 64-byte line size
Trace cache 12 Kuops, 8-way set associative
L2 cache 256 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
FID/VID Control no
Features



Chipset
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Northbridge Intel i845 rev. A3
Southbridge Intel 82801BA (ICH2) rev. 12
Graphic Interface AGP
AGP Revision 2.0
AGP Transfer Rate 4x
AGP SBA supported, enabled
Memory Type SDRAM
Memory Size 768 MBytes
Memory Frequency 149.4 MHz (3:4)
CAS# 3.0
RAS# to CAS# 3
RAS# Precharge 3
Cycle Time (tRAS) 6

 

[Indigo]

This is mine:

CPU-Z TXT Report
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Binaries
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

CPU-Z version 1.53.1

Processors
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Number of processors 1
Number of threads 1

APICs
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Processor 0
-- Core 0
-- Thread 0 0

Processors Information
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Processor 1 ID = 0
Number of cores 1 (max 1)
Number of threads 1 (max 1)
Name AMD Athlon XP
Codename Barton
Specification AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2800+
Package Socket A (462)
CPUID 6.A.0
Extended CPUID 7.A
Core Stepping
Technology 0.13 um
Core Speed 2079.7 MHz
Multiplier x FSB 12.5 x 166.4 MHz
Rated Bus speed 332.7 MHz
Instructions sets MMX (+), 3DNow! (+), SSE
L1 Data cache 64 KBytes, 2-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L1 Instruction cache 64 KBytes, 2-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L2 cache 512 KBytes, 16-way set associative, 64-byte line size
FID/VID Control no

K7 Thermal sensor yes

 

[Sicron]

CS,
CSS,
DODS,
HL2DM,
TF2,
ESF (1.2.3),
HLDM,
Zombie Panic! Source,
Age of Chivalry (HL2 mod),
GTASA (multiplayer),
RF Online,
UT3.

These are the main games which I still play from time to time.

So, well, it's pretty sad that I won't be able to play a Half-Life 1 mod. It would have been better if team decided to move on Source engine since that wouldn't have required this much.


I won't be happy when I won't be able to play ESF: Final. That's exactly what I've been telling: I'm happy with what I can play and I'm not going to upgrade my CPU only for ESF. Noone would in my case.

Seriously, as a development team, they have to make certain choices. Performance over eyecandy, eyecandy over performance. In that process they had to make the decision SSE or SSE2. Following Valve's hardware survey, they noticed that 98,8% of all Steam users have at least SSE2. What's the most logical choice then? Develop with SSE2 in mind. If that final 1,2% of all Steam users can't be arsed to get a new CPU (Like Spunky said, both your CPU's are 6(!!) years old), that will be their problem. Not the Developers problem.

That's like...calling Microsoft:
You: "Hey guys, I just tried installing Windows Media Center, but it doesn't work!"
MS: "What OS are you using?"
You: "Uhm...Windows 95?"
MS: "WHAT THE ****?! ARE YOU INSANE, Why haven't you upgraded?!"
You: "Well, it has an older version of Word...and it has mine sweeper. I'm happy with those, I just want WMC."
MS: "Good sir, go **** yourself."

To make a long story even longer. At a certain moment in time, you have to drop support for outdated systems (in this case SSE), you can't forever design for the old systems. When designing websites, I can't be arsed to design for IE6 anymore. If I do, I just face far to many compatibility issues, screw up stuff for newer browsers and it takes way too much time. If my users won't upgrade to a newer browser, it's their problem. Not mine.

 

[GATE Elemental]

Seriously, as a development team, they have to make certain choices. Performance over eyecandy, eyecandy over performance. In that process they had to make the decision SSE or SSE2. Following Valve's hardware survey, they noticed that 98,8% of all Steam users have at least SSE2. What's the most logical choice then? Develop with SSE2 in mind. If that final 1,2% of all Steam users can't be arsed to get a new CPU (Like Spunky said, both your CPU's are 6(!!) years old), that will be their problem. Not the Developers problem.

That's like...calling Microsoft:
You: "Hey guys, I just tried installing Windows Media Center, but it doesn't work!"
MS: "What OS are you using?"
You: "Uhm...Windows 95?"
MS: "WHAT THE ****?! ARE YOU INSANE, Why haven't you upgraded?!"
You: "Well, it has an older version of Word...and it has mine sweeper. I'm happy with those, I just want WMC."
MS: "Good sir, go **** yourself."

To make a long story even longer. At a certain moment in time, you have to drop support for outdated systems (in this case SSE), you can't forever design for the old systems. When designing websites, I can't be arsed to design for IE6 anymore. If I do, I just face far to many compatibility issues, screw up stuff for newer browsers and it takes way too much time. If my users won't upgrade to a newer browser, it's their problem. Not mine.

I just ****ted myself with that comparation!

 

[Spunky]

Seriously, as a development team, they have to make certain choices. Performance over eyecandy, eyecandy over performance. In that process they had to make the decision SSE or SSE2. Following Valve's hardware survey, they noticed that 98,8% of all Steam users have at least SSE2. What's the most logical choice then? Develop with SSE2 in mind. If that final 1,2% of all Steam users can't be arsed to get a new CPU (Like Spunky said, both your CPU's are 6(!!) years old), that will be their problem. Not the Developers problem.

Being a programmer myself, I do understand that. I've already told you many times why you're wrong about that though. When you write software of ANY kind, you write it to be compatible with as many systems as you possibly can. How many applications out there do you know of that require SSE2 to function? I don't know of any. Just because it's available and technically better doesn't always mean developers should use it. Compatibility comes long before performance.

I've also stated why the Steam hardware survey can't be trusted. It's like when websites use their statistical data to try to "prove" that one browser is superior over another based on how many unique hits they get from people using that browser. Does their website account for the entire internet? No. Therefore, is that browser truly used by the majority of internet-goers? Probably not.

 

[Grega]

Another thing is STEAM though. We are designing ESF to work with STEAM and STEAM alone. And the survey is from people that use STEAM. Ones that dont are ignorable factors.

And the STEAM survey clearly shows that the majority has SSE2.