Quake 4 v1.2.1 - SMP A Reality?

by Marco Chiappetta — Sunday, April 30, 2006, 01:35 PM EDT

The crew at Phoronix is investigating the benefits of using SMP with the latest v1.2.1 patch for Quake 4 under Linux. They didn't have much luck though. Our experience in a Windows environment was much more positive, however. In CPU-bound situations, enabling SMP with Q4 under Windows resulted in some significant performance gains.

"Released earlier today was the Quake 4 v1.2.1 point release patch. The major feature to come down the pipeline in Quake 4 v1.2.1 is Hyper-Threading Technology and dual-core support for the Linux binaries. With Quake 4 now supporting Hyper-Threading and dual-core processors, players should expect to find significant performance gains when gaming. Two of the numbers that id Software have stated is a 25% performance jump compared to non Intel Hyper-Threaded CPUs and dual core processors should experience somewhere in the ballpark of a 87% performance boost. At Phoronix, we have examined these performance situations using an Intel Pentium D and Intel Pentium 4 HT CPUs to get a better idea as to what can be expected from upcoming multi-threaded games."

Tags: Quake, real, EA, reality, K

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com