Quad Core and Galciv II TA

Will it have an advantage?

from GalCiv2 Forums
I was wondering if a Quad Core will have its advantage vs a Dual Core in terms of AI performance or any other performance.
For the game a Dual Core is all you need, but with CPU options all to the max, will it have any advantage, or is a Dual core already giving the game everything that it needs or requires to play at there max?
5,068 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Just even less slowdown I'd presume, as the PC would be able to handle 4 processes at once rather than the Dual Cores 2 processes or the single cores 1 process. Also means you can have more background programs running without everything eating the CPU.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
No matter how many cores or GHz you have, programs running in the background take memory.
Running out of cpu cycles is not a show stopper, but running out of memory certainly is.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You don't even need dual. But the more, the better on Galciv2.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
How is "running out of cpu cycles" not a showstopper? Of course it would be. Load your system to 100% cpu usage and see how responsive it is.

Before I got my Q6600 I asked this same question and never got an answer from the devs, so I don't know whether or not GalCiv will take full advantage of 4 cores. If it doesn't, you still might see a small performance increase over a dual core of the same speed because the quad will have twice the cache.

Although, since the game ran on my Athlon XP 2500+ without noticeable slowdown on Huge maps, I can't see it being cpu limited even on Immense with a decent dual core system.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Maxing out the cpu will slow things down, but it generally won't crash the game or the system.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Running out of memory (as opposed to a memory error in the app itself) won't crash the system either, it'll just grind to a halt as it starts swapping to the hard drive.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I thought that I remembered reading quite a while ago that Brad was looking at making provision within the game for it to be able to make use of multi-core CPU's in the AI's decision making..? Unless that as gone as far as...

Force AI to use max CPU

..as a setting within the games menu...?
Is that being developed any further...?
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
thought that I remembered reading quite a while ago that Brad was looking at making provision within the game for it to be able to make use of multi-core CPU's in the AI's decision making..?
End of quote


when Brad got his own quad core, he reflected about how multi-core processors will allow him to do amazing things in the future. as it stands now, the "force max CPU usage" option really only matters for folks with a single-core processor; if you've got a multi-core, it's automatically on. i'm sure he could use multi-cores now to do more than he has, but you gotta remember, not everyone has a multi-core.

as far as 2x or 4x core, i think the only noticable boost will be offloading system apps from the secondary processor. in other words, the main GC2 app can only use 1 processor. the AI functions can use a second processor. it doesn't do this constantly, and i've never seen my second processor go to max load while running GC2.

i don't think a quad core would have a major advantage over a dual core, unless you've got a really sloppy computer that runs lots of stuff in the background.