Playing games with their settings pushed to the maximum reveals the intentions of the developer. This can result in fuller, more realistic experiences and finer levels of detail. But it’s impossible to press a button and “turn on” settings like draw distance, cloth simulation, and destruction physics. Each of them evolves according to the quality of your material.The Question what is the role and impact of Processors on the gaming experience is quite common.
But how, exactly, does a high-end processor enable a richer gaming experience? We spoke with technical directors of Total War: THREE KINGDOMS and HITMAN 2, two games that demonstrate how powerful processors affect your gaming experience.What does a processor do for gaming?
Total War: THREE KINGDOMS
In a real-time strategy game like Total War: THREE KINGDOMS, epic combat involves armies of epic proportions, too. However, depicting each soldier in the field can be incredibly heavy on your computer.
“Total War battles are unique because of their scale,” said Charlie Dell, Technical Director of THREE KINGDOMS.
We model thousands of soldiers with a high level of detail applied to each one in the term of animations, interaction, pathfinding the Decision, etc”.
Also, the processor often juggles many tasks simultaneously depending on what’s on the screen.
Let’s take a spot where two huge fronts with thousands of soldiers are crashing into each other, and you’ve zoomed in very close,” Dell explains. “In this position, the CPU is mostly split between entity agent-based combat, collision mechanics, and building die stacks to draw all of the entities. In other words, the CPU must simultaneously manage the presence and interactions of thousands of NPCs.
Parallelization handles these situations best. This process involves delegating processing tasks to different cores of a multi-core processor. Thus, the performance of THREE KINGDOMS varies depending on the number of cores available. “The more cores available, more soldiers we can show at any given time,” Dell explains “The new dynasty mode in Total War: THREE KINGDOMS best illustrates in this situation. It increases the number of units by 500%. The more cores your CPU has, the higher the frame rate you get. »
However, having multiple cores is not the only important point. “Some aspects of our simulation are less easily parallelized, such as AI processing,” Dell explains.“When so many instructions are executed on only one core, a huge clock rate is desirable to secure smooth operation. »
The processor plays several roles in power games “Straight-line performance and the many cores to spread the workload over are all desirable processor qualities for Total War gamers,” Dell concludes.
HITMAN 2:
From the bustling streets of Mumbai to a colorful circuit in Miami, HITMAN 2’s detailed environments gain palpable benefits when running a processor with more cores. “HITMAN 2 on PC is able to improve its quality by using the additional power provided by more cores” explains Maurizio De Pascale, technical director of HITMAN 2.
HITMAN 2 even organizes its game settings into three levels of “CPU simulation”: “base” is the default for quad-core machines, and “better” is the default for quad-core machines. six cores and “best” is the default for all machines with more than eight cores.
So how does the CPU affect performance when you choose to play at the best settings? “It will affect settings like audio, mob, cloth simulation, NPC animation, and destruction, to name the main ones,” says De Pascale. “The crowd will be denser and at the same time offer greater visual variety through custom animations and behaviors. For example, at the Miami level, you will see a large number of characters waving fabric-like flags. »
Although the largest level of HITMAN 2 contains up to 300 NPCs, only a small portion of the NPCs receive a full update from each frame. In other words, you may see a lower frame rate in the animations of some NPCs compared to others, depending on the number displayed on the screen. “This can cause remote NPCs to update at a lower rate and cause visible glitches to appear in their animations,” De Pascale explains. The higher number of cores increases the number of NPCs receiving a full update per frame, the “base” level by refreshing 40, the “better” level by 80, and the “best” level by refreshing 120 NPCs.
Crowd density isn’t the only important thing affected by CPU power. When using the “best” settings, destructible objects may produce more particles and debris. Even audio effects benefit directly from having entrance to more cores. “On processors with huge core counts, we use a heavier algorithm for the convolution reverb, which results in more realistic and immersive audio event, more like the real thing than a game,” we said De Pascale.
For example, if you use the “best” settings, the sound of a gun coming from an adjoining room will match the reverberation of the room Agent 47 is in, reflecting how you would actually hear’ my firearm. However, if you use lower settings, the gun sound may get the reverberation of the room it came from, resulting in a less realistic experience.
Realism and immersion are at the heart of what makes HITMAN 2 such an awesome experience when played with a high-end processor. Although De Pascale said that players using the “base” and “best” settings enjoy an identical gaming experience, he reported that playing on better settings increases the overall quality of the experience. “In a sense, this multi-core experience on your gaming PC is closer to what our designers originally intended for gaming,” De Pascale explains.I try to explain to you what is the role and impact of Processors on the gaming experience.
Play with a lynx eye
In summary, the processors handle a multitude of elements making the game experience more realistic and the world-building more complete. By knowing exactly how processors affect the gaming experience, you become a more knowledgeable PC owner and a more conscientious gamer.
Now what is the role and impact of Processors on the gaming experience is not difficult for you.
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