F1 2010 Does F1 use 4 cores or 2?

[Roman5]

Debating on whether to change from an overclocked phenom ll 550 @ 3.8ghz to a quadcore phenom ll x4 955, 3.2Ghz, which I will also overclock.

47fps in silverstone benchmark on ultra @ 1920 x1080. 48fps on high. Was 41/42 fps at stock 3.1Ghz. This is with a new sapphire 5850 extreme GFX. Some people tell me quad won't make much if any difference, depending on the game. Am I likely to see an fps increase in F1 if I buy a 955? Can't unlock mine unfortunately. I want to be getting into the late 50's if not 60's fps at high settings and high res. Is this achievable?

 

[Paul Lock]

Roman, you would be better spending your money on a second graphics card if you want a noteable FPS boost.
F1 (and most recent games) arent designed/optimised to run on 4 cores as they are ported from consoles.

Take a look at the information and benchmarking I did on a recent i5 build here - http://www.racedepartment.com/f1-20...i5-gaming-rig-info-benchmarks.html#post804619

In a nutshell, regardless whether the i5 was running stock 3.3 or pumped up to 5.0 - the FPS increase was marginal. Chuck a 2nd graphics card in the mix and things nearly double.

My advice, spend the £100 that a AMD 955 would cost you on another 5850.

 

[Nick Brooke]

Although not everyone can run in sli or crossfire mode. I still have flicker in crossfire for some reason. i have 12 cores but i see nothing to say it helps Roman.

 

[Uff]

F1 uses 2, 4 or 6 cores depending on your CPU, even if AMD 6 core gave some problems (there's a fix for it on the official F1 2010 forum, but it doesn't seem to always works).
I have a desktop PC (Core 2 Duo E8400, GTX 285) and a laptop (i7 2630 and nVidia GT 540) and in full hd I get similar results, meaning that a 4 core is definitely better than a dual core, even if I'm (obviously) limited by GT 540.
Adding a new card might be the proper solution for you, I would wait until you'll be able to change your CPU with an Intel Sandy Bridge like a 2600K.

 

[Paul Lock]

I would wait until you'll be able to change your CPU with an Intel Sandy Bridge like a 2600K.

Of course F1 uses the cores, but it doesnt benefit from them.

2600K isnt necessary for gaming. Games dont utilise hyperthreading, so if its purely a gaming upgrade, again the extra £100 you pay for a i7 2600K over a i5 2500K is a waste, and better spent on graphics cards.
You would only want HT if you were using it for general multitasking use, video encoding, rendering and other demanding applications.

 

[Roman5]

Thanks a lot guys. Paul, very interesting info and benchmarks! Hmm, this might be a reason to buy a new motherboard because I don't have another pci-e slot to do crossfire. I can just see what's going to happen, I'll end up with a new motherboard, a second graphics card, a new quad core, and new DDR3 ram, lol.

So by the look of your benchmarks, what you're saying is a second 5850 might add anything from 20 to 30fps more. Btw, you got 56fps on a single 6950 with DX11. So, my 47fps on ultra with a single 5850 (or 41 without overclocking) is about right then? Although, I loaded msi afterburner last night and it's showing it as DX9, so I don't even know if that 41/47fps was with DX11? Score would presumably be higher without DX11 and lower with DX11. Also, when I had my 4870 1GB before it died, it gave me the same benchmark scores, which seems a bit odd.

 

[glight]

My advice, spend the £100 that a AMD 955 would cost you on another 5850.

Wouldn't an extra 5950 be bottlenecked by a phenom II 550? My fps more than doubled when I upgraded from my old Q6600 3GHz/ 6950 to a 2500k 4.4GHz/ 2x6950. A second graphics card can't scale more than 100% so I know that the 2500k was responsible for that performance boost as well.

I don't think you're wrong; if Roman5 had to pick one component to upgrade with £100 he would get the most fps boost from a 2nd 5850. I am just saying that if he is going to do that he would be better off upgrading from his x2 550 as well so that he doesn't bottleneck his 2 gpu's

 

[Paul Lock]

Yeah but glight, you are talking about going from a Q6600 to an i5 sandy bridge - entirely new architecture, there is gonna be huge gains in this alone. What Roman5 is talking about going from a phenom ll 550 to a quadcore phenom ll x4 955 - which in my book isnt a comparable upgrade to yours, and given the fact F1 is a console port, there is no point simply throwing more cores at it, especially AMD cores
Im 99% sure the 550 isnt bottlenecking his graphics (if at all) to the point a 2nd graphics card wouldnt return good FPS gains in the bang for buck stakes - my tests proved that F1 is all about the raw graphical power over the CPU.

Two choices really -
1. Stay put with your 550 and get an AM3 board with another PCI-e slot, and chuck another 5850 in there.
2. If you are set on upgrading CPU, try and push for a 970 to at least make it worthwhile.

Personally I would get mobo and graphics card, and that should then see you through to when Intel hit with the Ivybridge stuff.

One more thing!
You mentioned upgrading from a 4800 series to the 5800? - have a look in 'hardware_settings_info' and make sure it says the right series card <graphics_card name="ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series. Also in this info XML file, make sure DX11 is set to 'true'.
In the 'hardware_settings_config' XML file, make sure DX9 = 'false'.

Files located: My Documents > My Games > Formula One > hardwaresettings (backup before you fiddle!)
Edit the XML in wordpad and save.

EDIT - of course, you might need a new power supply for a second card - I dont know what you have now, but its another cost to consider.

 

[Roman5]

Yep paul, it does say <graphics_card name="ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series. I'm still not sure why my 4870 gave the same result as this card. Anyway, I've edited both XML files. DX11 now says true, and I've made the config <directx forcedx9="false"/> I'll run a bench.

Btw, after some research today, I've pretty much decided to get an i5 2500 (or 2500K, not sure if there's much difference, I just see HD 2000 integrated graphics or HD 3000 on the 2500K), a new motherboard (I've been recommended to wait for the Z58 boards due out soon instead of buying a P67 as I was considering the asus sabretooth P67)) but it'll support both quad crossfire and quad sli, and I guess I'll have to replace my DDR2 ram, and of course a second 5850 or maybe higher series 5xxx. I'm also told to wait for the AMD bulldozers to come out before deciding. But there's a rumour that the 8 core FX 8100 only just catches up to the i7 2600, and I know the i5 isn't far off the i7 in benchmarks. And no doubt, the new bulldozers will be far more expensive than the i5, or maybe not.

 

[Roman5]

Well, I couldn't see any visual difference with DX11 benchmark, and got 5fps lower than on dx9. So I've re-edited the xml's and put it back to dx9.

 

[Uff]

Games dont utilise hyperthreading.

Correct, but they uses those 2 MB of cache that the 2600K has more than the 2500K. 2 MB of cache is a lot.
Some useful benchmarks: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-core-i7-2600k-core-i5-2500k,2833-19.html
2500K seems to be more than enough for F1 2010, indeed.

@Roman5: go for 2500K. It has unlocked multiplier and this lead to great overclock, should you need it one day.