12900KS - Which setup suits gaming more in the short or long run?
12900KS - Which setup suits gaming more in the short or long run?
Do all eight physical cores plus hyperthreading features come with the setup, while the extra logical cores are turned off? Are there configurations where both physical and logical cores are active but hyperthreading is disabled? Most games currently don’t require more than eight threads and real cores, though future titles may push beyond that. It’s unlikely games will exceed sixteen threads and cores in the next five years, so enabling hyperthreading might not be essential. With sixteen cores, having dedicated physical cores still offers benefits, especially for performance-intensive tasks. The main gaming threads typically run on physical cores, making extra logical cores useful—particularly on Windows 11 which optimizes them. E-cores remain solid for everyday use and can handle modern workloads well.
The future is notoriously difficult to foresee, so the immediate period is what I feel most capable of addressing—assuming it means right now. My thought is that the alternative scenario isn’t ideal for short-term gaming, since the eCores struggle with running titles. It’s essentially a solid 8/8. That rating suffices for PS4 games. I’m less confident about PS5 titles, though they could be viable in the future or not at all. If it does function, it should consume less power compared to overclocking. The outcome likely depends on how each game is programmed.
Certainly the second choice wouldn't perform as well for short-term gaming on WIN10, at least not in an optimal way. What about Windows 11? Do the extra cores encounter issues when running many games even on WIN11 that understands them? And aren't the performance numbers of e-cores similar to Skylake CPUs and Skylake CPUs still acceptable today? Even if the main thread could run, it would likely be slower but still sufficient. However, the main or threading would not utilize those cores. Would this also hold true for a 16-core processor like Ryzen 5950X with HT/SMT turned off?
Ipc works well but some games require a minimum thread count, often exceeding eight threads. To handle this, they use multiprocessing which increases overhead and slows performance significantly. I’m not very familiar with Windows 11 beyond its supposed improvements in data handling and reduced maintenance needs compared to Windows 10—issues that were already resolved in earlier versions. Most people think version 11 is inferior to 10, so I’ve decided against it. I’ve considered running it in a virtual machine to better understand it without risking system stability, but I haven’t explored that option yet.
You're asking about how thread count affects performance. Minimum thread count refers to the baseline number of logical threads a processor can support. Having more physical threads (like 16 or more) doesn't automatically mean better performance because each thread still needs a dedicated core. SMT helps by allowing multiple threads to share a core, but it doesn't eliminate the need for real cores. A CPU with many cores but few physical threads won't benefit as much as one with fewer but stronger ones. HT (Hyper-Threading) can improve efficiency in some cases, especially when cores are shared, but it's not a universal fix. It depends on the game and how it utilizes threads.
Focusing on the minimum thread count means that when fewer than X cores are available, Y must switch to multitasking. Although multithreading adds some overhead, it’s still significantly less than full multitasking. Someone mentioned that multitasking performed much better in practice, while multithreaded code often crashes without threads. Virtual cores versus regular cores exist, but the improvement is minimal—sometimes noticeable, other times not so much. It really depends on how quickly each app processes tasks. If a program runs smoothly under multitasking, virtual cores do almost nothing. There’s little software like this anymore. Much of the blame goes to Microsoft, which delayed releasing a solid multitasker for years before finally dropping a subpar version. As a result, multithreading was largely abandoned, and now it’s mostly ignored. This person says it’s fast again because Microsoft improved its multitasking tool, but there aren’t many developers left who can implement it, so game development now takes years instead of months due to frequent thread crashes. Edited May 24, 2022 by Bombastinator
No, it isn't considered multi-threading when HT is disabled and each core runs just one thread. True multi-tasking requires more than one thread per core, which Windows has handled effectively since its early days. If a program uses only 12 threads on 12 cores, SMT/HT still aids performance but mainly smooths background processes rather than enabling true concurrent execution.
There are several discussions, so that’s fine. Handling multiple tasks works regardless of threading, though it’s not perfect. I’m not sure when the update happened, but your schedule could fit if you consider the details I have. I recall Microsoft initially said it wasn’t truly multitasking, and the later “real” version might not have been. My recollection is that Windows 11 still runs on NT, which has been improved a lot. While having 12 threads doesn’t directly help a single program, the OS keeps running so you’d need more than just SMP cores. My understanding is that Intel’s smaller cores (LITTLE cores) are fewer in number compared to their size, so there would be a shortage.