12900KS - What configuration is better for gaming short and long term??

[Wolverine2349]

Have all 8 P cores enabled with hyper threading also enabled, but e cores disabled??

Have all 8 P cores and all 8 e cores enabled but hyper threading disabled??

I know most games at least not yet do not scale much beyond 8 threads and real cores, but that is changing, though games it seems highly unlikely are ever in the next 5 years will scale beyond 16 threads and real cores if even that much, but more than 8 is quite probable.

So is a physical core always better than logical core for gaming? I mean with 16 real cores, is HT even necessary? I know 8 of the cores are e cores, but they are still solid like Skylake IPC. And the main gamer threads will run on P cores and wouldn't the e cores be great for extra threads especially in WIN11 which knows how to use them? Or is that not the case and an 8/16 config with e cores off would be better for games that scale beyond 8 threads??

 

Part of the reason I got such a high core CPU is it feels good to have lots of dedicated cores with ability to turn off SMT/HT and still have lots of threads. And aren't e cores even if it were main thread for gaming (which it will not be I know) still decent with Skylake IPC and Skylake CPUs like 6600K and 6700K is still fine today for gaming?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id leave it as default. The kernel is generally pretty good at using cpu resources as needed. The system will alreaady run the gmes on the P cores for you, no need to disable the e cores.

[Bombastinator]

Just now, Wolverine2349 said:

Have all 8 P cores enabled with hyper threading also enabled, but e cores disabled??

Have all 8 P cores and all 8 e cores enabled but hyper threading disabled??

I know most games at least not yet do not scale much beyond 8 threads and real cores, but that is changing, though games it seems highly unlikely are ever in the next 5 years will scale beyond 16 threads and real cores if even that much, but more than 8 is quite probable.

So is a physical core always better than logical core for gaming? I mean with 16 real cores, is HT even necessary? I know 8 of the cores are e cores, but they are still solid like Skylake IPC. And the main gamer threads will run on P cores and wouldn't the e cores be great for extra threads especially in WIN11 which knows how to use them? Or is that not the case and an 8/16 config with e cores of would be better for games that scale beyond 8 threads??

The future is famously hard to predict, so The Short term is really all I can even attempt to treat and that assumes the short term is basicall “now”.

my understanding is the second option won’t work well for gaming  short term, as the eCores have problems running games. It’s effectively 8/8. 8/8 is enough for games designed to run on PS4.  Not so sure about games that need PS5 though.  It might work in the future, but it also might not.  If it does work it will use less power for an equivelant overclock.  Probably depends on how a particular game is coded.

[Wolverine2349]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

The future is famously hard to predict, so The Short term is really all I can even attempt to treat and that assumes the short term is basicall “now”.

my understanding is the second option won’t work well for gaming  short term, as the eCores have problems running games. It’s effectively 8/8. 8/8 is enough for games designed to run on PS4.  Not so sure about games that need PS5 though.  It might work in the future, but it also might not.  If it does work it will use less power for an equivelant overclock.  Probably depends on how a particular game is coded.

Of course 2nd option would not work as well for gaming short term on WIN10 at least not optimally? But what about Windows 11?

 

Do the e cores have problems running many games even on WIN11 which knows how to use them? And isn't the IPC of e cores like Skylake IPC and Skylake CPUs are still fine for gaming even today it seems. And even if main game thread ran on it it would be worse performance but still adequate?

 

But of course main thread or threads would not run on e cores. But with WIN11 and HT/SMT disabled, wouldn't the lighter secondary threads be switched and run great on e cores as WIN11 knows how to use all 16 cores in hybrid architecture? Or does it not work that way??

 

And would same apply to a 16 core CPU like Ryzen 5950X that has same architecture of all 16 cores with HT/SMT off?? 

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Wolverine2349 said:

Of course 2nd option would not work as well for gaming short term on WIN10 at least not optimally? But what about Windows 11?

 

Do the e cores have problems running many games even on WIN11 which knows how to use them? And isn't the IPC of e cores like Skylake IPC and Skylake CPUs are still fine for gaming even today it seems. And even if main game thread ran on it it would be worse performance but still adequate?

 

But of course main thread or threads would not run on e cores. But with WIN11 and HT/SMT disabled, wouldn't the lighter secondary threads be switched and run great on e cores as WIN11 knows how to use all 16 cores in hybrid architecture? Or does it not work that way??

 

And would same apply to a 16 core CPU like Ryzen 5950X that has same architecture of all 16 cores with HT/SMT off?? 

Ipc is fine but there is also a minimum thread count for some games and it’s sometimes more than 8 threads so they have to be doubled up with multiprocessing which makes overhead and the total result is they can run unacceptably slowly.  I know little about win11 other than it is supposed to have even more datamining and less maintainance accessibility than 10, which already had a problem with those two things to the point that ameliorated10 got made.  The general opinion seems to be that 11 is worse than 10 so I have avoided it.  I’ve thought about putting it in a VM so I could get more familiar with it in a situation where it couldn’t take down the whole machine but I haven’t gotten around to looking into that.

[Wolverine2349]

24 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Ipc is fine but there is also a minimum thread count for some games and it’s sometimes more than 8 threads so they have to be doubled up with multiprocessing which makes overhead and the total result is they can run unacceptably slowly.  I know little about win11 other than it is supposed to have even more datamining and less maintainance accessibility than 10, which already had a problem with those two things to the point that ameliorated10 got made.  The general opinion seems to be that 11 is worse than 10 so I have avoided it.  I’ve thought about putting it in a VM so I could get more familiar with it in a situation where it couldn’t take down the whole machine but I haven’t gotten around to looking into that.

 

What do you mean by minimum thread count? I mean if the game has a minimum of more than 8 threads say 12 for instance, aren't physical threads backed by a physical core better than logical ones?? Like wouldn't a 5950X with SMT off be better than with it on for a game using 16 threads or less since it has 16 real CPU cores. And same with 12900KS since it has 16 real cores? Or do the e cores screw that up somehow??

 

And doesn't SMT/HT add overhead as a logical thread is not able to fully utilize one core as it competes with the other thread of the same CPU core?? Or is it not that simple?? Or does HT benefit on both cases even with lots of real cores even if not hybrid architecture like on Ryzen 5950X??

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Wolverine2349 said:

 

What do you mean by minimum thread count? I mean if the game has a minimum of more than 8 threads say 12 for instance, aren't physical threads backed by a physical core better than logical ones?? Like wouldn't a 5950X with SMT off be better than with it on for a game using 16 threads or less since it has 16 real CPU cores. And same with 12900KS since it has 16 real cores? Or do the e cores screw that up somehow??

 

And doesn't SMT/HT add overhead as a logical thread is not able to fully utilize one core as it competes with the other thread of the same CPU core?? Or is it not that simple?? Or does HT benefit on both cases even with lots of real cores even if not hybrid architecture like on Ryzen 5950X??

By minimum thread count I mean that if given less than X cores app Y has to start multitasking.  And while multithreading does have a bit of overhead it’s not nearly as much as multitasking. Someone said to me that multitasking was a lot better about the multitasking thing and multithread has just become a dumb way to program partially because multitasked apps don’t thread crash..  at all.
 

as for virtual cores vs regular cores They are, but they’re not a ton better.  Sometimes the difference is a lot sometimes it isn’t much at all.  It depends on what the app is doing from microsecond to microsecond. If a program is multitasked rather than multithreaded virtual cores do nearly nothing. There’s very little software like that anymore.  Microsoft’s fault mostly.  They refused to release a decent multitasker for a long time and then after multiple years relented and released a crap one. So multi threading (which ignored windows) was a lot faster and multitasking was no longer taught and basically vanished.  This guy claims it’s fast again because Microsoft fixed its multitasker, but there aren’t any programmers left to do it so programming a game takes years instead of months because of thread crashing

Edited May 24, 2022 by Bombastinator

[Mark Kaine]

definitely leave it at default,  the cores are there for a reason,  messing with it will only make performance worse...

 

 

[Wolverine2349]

25 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

By minimum thread count I mean that if given less than X cores app Y has to start multitasking.  And while multithreading does have a bit of overhead it’s not nearly as much as multitasking. Someone said to me that multitasking was a lot better about the multitasking thing and multithread has just become a dumb way to program partially because multitasked apps don’t thread crash..  at all.
 

as for virtual cores vs regular cores They are, but they’re not a ton better.  Sometimes the difference is a lot sometimes it isn’t much at all.  It depends on what the app is doing from microsecond to microsecond. If a program is multitasked rather than multithreaded virtual cores do nearly nothing. There’s very little software like that anymore.  Microsoft’s fault mostly.  They refused to release a decent multitasker for a long time and then after multiple years relented and released a crap one. So multi threading (which ignored windows) was a lot faster and multitasking was no longer taught and basically vanished.  This guy claims it’s fast again because Microsoft fixed its multitasker, but there aren’t any programmers left to do it so programming a game takes years instead of months because of thread crashing

IS it considered multi threading if HT is disabled and there is 1 thread per core? And multi tasking obviously means 1 core has to do more than 1 thing at a time. That's what Windows can do and has done well since original Windows NT right? It was DOS based Windows like WIN9X which were very poor and did not really have true multi tasking right?

 

If a program has only 12 threads and you have 12 cores, does SMT/HT help at all other than make multi tasking smoother of other things running in background?

[Bombastinator]

11 minutes ago, Wolverine2349 said:

IS it considered multi threading if HT is disabled and there is 1 thread per core? And multi tasking obviously means 1 core has to do more than 1 thing at a time. That's what Windows can do and has done well since original Windows NT right? It was DOS based Windows like WIN9X which were very poor and did not really have true multi tasking right?

 

If a program has only 12 threads and you have 12 cores, does SMT/HT help at all other than make multi tasking smoother of other things running in background?

There’s more than one thread, so yes. Multitasking is thread independent. Sort of.  I don’t know when the change came, though your timeline is not impossible given what little info I have. I do remember the first version of what Microsoft claimed was multitasking wasn’t actually multitasking.  I don’t know if the next version which was “true multitasking” was gimped or not.  My memory is win11 is Still based on NT though.  It’s just been polished a lot. 
 

if a program has 12 threads SMP wouldn’t help with that specific program, but the OS is always running so there are effectively more than 12 cores needed.  My memory is that Pcores (intel’s LITTLE cores) have more missing than just SMP though.  They’re 1/8th the size so there would pretty much have to be.

[Wolverine2349]

27 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

There’s more than one thread, so yes. Multitasking is thread independent. Sort of.  I don’t know when the change came, though your timeline is not impossible given what little info I have. I do remember the first version of what Microsoft claimed was multitasking wasn’t actually multitasking.  I don’t know if the next version which was “true multitasking” was gimped or not.  My memory is win11 is Still based on NT though.  It’s just been polished a lot. 
 

if a program has 12 threads SMP wouldn’t help with that specific program, but the OS is always running so there are effectively more than 12 cores needed.  

Yes I am 100% sure every version of Windows since XP has been based on NT.

 

It was Windows 1.0 through ME that were based on DOS and did not have real multi tasking. But Windows NT always did which evolved to the Windows 11 we have today.

 

Windows 9X died with last release being Windows ME.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT

 

It mentions working state is current with latest release being the WIN11 variant

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_9x

 

It mentions produced from 1995 to 2000 with last release being Windows ME.

 

Does having 2 threads per core though improve multi tasking though? Cause 2 logical cores is never going to have near the power of a physical core. Just like I remember reading back in Pentium 4 days how despite your Task Manager showing 2 CPUs, it was no where near the power of a dual Xeon?? I remember hearing the reason when Core 2 was released they ditched SMT/HT is because we had more than 1 real core so it was unneeded. Then it came back with Bloomfield/Lynnfield/Nehalem Core i7 and higher only. Though with so many core counts, how is it needed now unless you are really heavily multi tasking.