Games and Dual/Quad Core Support

[Asus]

Dual core CPUs are becoming pretty popular and Quad core CPUs probably will too. They help improve performance in a different way instead of increasing the speed of a CPU. But how do you know what games will take advantage of those fancy CPUs? Below is a list of games that can take advantage of them.

Frame rate improvements or added effects will vary a lot depending on the game and video settings used. The games listed are multi-threaded in some way or are SMP compatible. (SMP -Symmetric Multi-Processing- allows programs to run on multiple CPU simultaneously)

Just for some clarification here is some tech info.
A software program can use multiple threads if it is programmed to split tasks. A CPU with more than one core (or a PC with more than one CPU) can process multiple threads at once. The OS scheduler handles the balancing of tasks among the cores so there is no need for you to manage it or worry how it all happens.


Games that take advantage of Dual Core:

ATI 3D drivers
Nvidia 3D drivers

Age of Empires 3
Battlefield 2
Battlefield 2: Special Forces
Bionicle
Black & White 2
Call of Duty 2 (v 1.01)
City of Heroes
City of Villains
Colin McRae Rally 4
Command And Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Doom 3
FEAR
Galactic Civilizations
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
Gothic 3
GTR 2
Guild Wars
Jedi Knight II (Mac version confirmed)
King Kong
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (Mac version confirmed)
Need for Speed: Carbon
Oblivion
Perimeter
Quake 3 Arena
Quake 4
RoboBlitz
Serious Sam 2
Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force (Mac version confirmed)
Team Fortress 2
The Movies
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland
World of Warcraft (Burning Crusade)

Games that take advantage of Quad Core:

Alan Wake
Bioshock
Company of Heroes
Crysis
Far Cry 2
Half-life 2: Episode 2
Hellgate: London
Lost Planet
Microsft Flight Sim X
Portal
Rainbow Six Vegas
Source Engine
Splinter Cell Double Agent
STALKER
Stranglehold
Supreme Commander
Unreal Engine 3
Unreal Tournament 3

Games that are supposedly multi-threaded:
(Still confirming. Once I get a link then I'll move the game up or off the list)

Falcon 4
IL-2 Sturmovik
Medal of Honor: Airborne
Prey
Rainbow Six 3: Athena Sword
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Starsiege
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway
Civilization 4
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
Fury
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
The Witcher
Tabula Rasa
Warhammer MMORPG
World in Conflict


This list I gathered from a lot of websites. Any game not listed that should be on this list, please post. Same with any game on here that should not be or any other updates.

 

[Adabiviak]

I didn't know Quake III supported dual core. Nice too, which games actually support 'multiple' threads, that will actually take advantage of all four cylinders in a quad. Also, by "Source Engine: soon", will this be included in just the release of Episode 2, releases after that, or for any game on Steam that uses the source engine?

 

[Asus]

Pretty sure it will translate to previous games (HL2). FPS improvement anyway. Not sure about the particle system or improved physics which they have going in EP2.

And I think you have to modify the game file to enable support with Q3 and JK2.

 

[The Brick]

What? Quake 3 isn't dual core optimized. It uses both cores about 50%, if that's what you mean by 'using two threads'. STALKER just uses 1 core 100%. At least with the 1.0003 patch, haven't tried 1.0004 yet.

 

[Nemesis6]

Star Trek Elite Force? I don't think so.

 

[phantomdesign]

Jedi Knight II? That game is so old, why bother updating it to support multi-core?

Not trying to criticize, but this list seems inaccurate to me. Sources? I'd try to get more confirmation on some of these games.

 

[Asus]

I just posted games that have SMP support. Some games may not improve in FPS much, that's why the disclaimer. Like FEAR shows no real improvement with multi core but it claims to be optimized for dual core. What improvements they made over single cores I do not know.

A number of the games I took from "SMP lists" other sties had so there may be some games that they had wrong. Like, I have not confirmed the Startrek game at all besides it being on multiple forum lists. One list mentioned UT2003 yet I saw other sources saying the opposite (NO SMP/multithreading support). That's the kind of things I've been looking for when doing searches.

If you really suspect a game not being SMP say so. I'll try to look it up then. Don't just name a game because it's old.

What? Quake 3 isn't dual core optimized. It uses both cores about 50%, if that's what you mean by 'using two threads'. STALKER just uses 1 core 100%. At least with the 1.0003 patch, haven't tried 1.0004 yet.

r_smp 1
Still looking for regular quake 3 but it's mentioned a lot via forums.
JK2 uses the Q3 engine as well. Do a search for SMP. Again, not sure what improvements they claim. Just if they support SMP.
I'll check Stalker again but I'm pretty sure I had found a source for it. Maybe I'll start linking the source from the game list above.

Patch 1.004 - 1. Calculating detailed objects was moved to the second CPU stream.

But seriously, if you guys have any game corrections speak up. Links would help too, then I wouldn't have to search for all the game.
(I'm still searching)
There is no real list of multi-threaded games online. Some forums list older games others just list the newer stuff. Wiki doesn't have any lists (yet they have a 'List of games with DX10 support').

 

[The Brick]

Woah never knew that q3 had dual core support! Not that I really need it, cause it's running at like 600fps avg. But it does indeed work, just tried it and got 100% cpu load.

And I wasn't sure if the cpu optimizations did indeed come with 1.0004 cause I remember reading something that it wouldn't.

 

[Asus]

I'm updating the main post with links. Also I put unconfirmed games below.

 

[The Brick]

Lost Planet does dual core at least, don't know about 4 cores. The demo ran with 100% cpu here.

 

[Asus]

Lost Planet does dual core at least, don't know about 4 cores. The demo ran with 100% cpu here.

Yeah, I know. Although I'm not moving it until I get a link,source,proof etc.
edit: added

 

[Ravioli]

Will quad-core supported games also make use of dual core processors? or is it specificly quad-core only?

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Regarding Quake 3, I seem to recall comments from Carmack at the time to the effect that he'd implemented SMP, but it was only worth about 5-10% in terms of speed increase and ultimately wasn't worth it.

 

[giant384]

Will quad-core supported games also make use of dual core processors? or is it specificly quad-core only?

quad core supported games will most likely have dual core support also......

 

[Asus]

Will quad-core supported games also make use of dual core processors? or is it specificly quad-core only?

Yeah, it seems most of the games that do/will take advantage of quad core CPUs just divide parts of what the game runs into multiple threads. So lets say a game has 3 threads running (Game, A.I. and physics) then a dual core can balance those and use near 100% on both cores. But of course it won't hit the performance increase that a quad core would by separating what cores those threads run on further.

Although I suppose developers could limit specific effects to quad core CPUs if dual core didn't cut it on performance for whatever feature.

Regarding Quake 3, I seem to recall comments from Carmack at the time to the effect that he'd implemented SMP, but it was only worth about 5-10% in terms of speed increase and ultimately wasn't worth it.

Yeah. I think I remember old comments saying it might have even been unstable. But it's there. /shrug
The link I used for Q3 above shows a 9% increase on a couple dual CPU systems (1.2GHz and 1800+ @ 1.5GHz) with r_smp 0 vs r_smp1.

Have not quantified the multi-thread support into performance per game yet. Just saying what games have it. For example, FEAR has support for dual core but shows basically no increase.

 

[Operational]

Nice list, Asus, one niggle - I thought that the update for the Source engine gave it scalable multi-core support?

Ah here we go

...it has the advantage of scaling well beyond four, eight or even sixteen cores - essential in the multi-core future we're going to find ourselves in very soon.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2006/11/02/Multi_core_in_the_Source_Engin/2

or is that what they are going to do not what they have done for the Orange Box?

 

[Asus]

Well I listed the Source engine up there. Not sure if it will spread to all the games or not.

 

[Operational]

Well I listed the Source engine up there.

Yea, I know. But you have it under Quad core support where as I think it should be under multi-threaded support.

 

[Asus]

Well I wasn't listing it by threads specifically but with which multi-core CPU they would get the most benefit using. And we don't have more than quad core for the desktop market. (That's why the header is labeled as quad core and not 4 threads or multi-threaded games) So the games in the list under dual core use at least 2 threads and games under quad core are known to use 3+ threads. Make sense? If you want to know exactly how the game takes advantage of multiple threads then the game link might say.

I guess I tried to make it simple so someone not in-the-know could look and decide if they wanted to just buy a dual core or go quad core. Don't want them getting confused with the different possibilities for multi-core optimizations.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

I guess I'm going Quad-Core then, (primarily for UT3 + Mods)

 

[Asus]

added TF2, EP2, Portal

 

[The Brick]

Negative, Portal and Ep2 don't support multicore any more than TF2 does (yet).

 

[Asus]

Graph
console commands

It doesn't? I don't have a quad core so I can't test and confirm. But those links seem to suggest it does.

 

[The Brick]

Oh I see. Well it doesn't natively, if you read the thread, it seems the engine can do it but it's still disabled by default. Probably for stability reasons.

 

[maryjohn]

ya that is fact the previous version of processors doesn't support to latest versioned game,
and one thing i wanna tell u that watever the games which are supportable in thatz verioned processor it'll be very flexible as well as enjoyed to play in latest version core/quard core processor..
i have my own experience, when i had my old processor that time i can't start Most Wanted Carbon,
but after get new Quard core processor it's going to very well without any problem,
i m happy to use this new version of processor

 

[Operational]

Man this thread is 2 years old! Feels like only yesterday multicore was the New Thing (tm).