As anyone who's into the scene knows, GPUs are a LOT faster than CPUs. I think this is an awesome, and very exciting development.

http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=ODIyLDc=

Somehow I don't think it's that simple. CPU's are faster for what they are designed to do. GPUs are faster for what they are designed to do.

If you can back that up, then I'd be willing to accept it. As is, from HardOCP and ATi's assertions, people who know a helluvalot more than you and I, they think it's possible and that it'd make processors MUCH better than the current ones. Not to mention, hear of nVidia cards being used for sound processing and being MUCH better than other sound processors?

I'm failing to understand how bogging a GPU down with all the stuff that is traditionally handled by the CPU won't just turn the GPU into a bogged-down CPU.

It's sort of a way to get a dual processor system without actually going dual-core or dual-cpu. Except when you're doing graphics, you get left with only one CPU.

Oh, yeah? I guess that makes sense.. Only problem is that it will take a while to get applications that take advantage of dual cpus.

I really think that it's going to be less than a year before every app that's intensive released sees dual CPU support, or there's something that makes dual CPUs act as one. And yeah, it's basically like another (more powerful) CPU to do processing for you, and what's really cool is it's very feasible given the PCI-E structure.

mmmk. but what the heck is folding?

[/offtopic]

http://folding.stanford.edu/

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]As is, from HardOCP and ATi's assertions, people who know a helluvalot more than you and I, they think it's possible and that it'd make processors MUCH better than the current ones.[/QUOTE]Well, here are a few reasons:

1.) The major processor IP designers nowadays are Intel, IBM, ARM and AMD. All 4 of those companies produce general processors that support some degree of vector processing.

2.) A GPU is not a general-purpose processor. Almost all of the processing power is tied up in highly specialized tasks, like the fixed-function transformation pipeline.

3.) CPUs are designed for out-of-order execution - long jumps within system memory, and a great deal of transistors are dedicated to branch prediction and caching. GPUs have none of this.

4.) The only component you could realistically use for general-purpose mathematical computation is the pixel shading unit which still isn't that fast at floating point math.

5.) Every research paper I've read on techniques for using video cards to perform general processing indicates that, while the video card can perform the computations adequately, reading from the frame buffer is prohibitively expensive.

6.) Parallel execution is possible in a GPU because it consists of a whole bunch of simple, identical units that perform the same task but don't need to communicate with each other. A CPU is like a railgun, while a GPU is like about 40 or 50 ballistas bolted together. The array of ballistas can fire off a whole hell of a lot of bolts, but it's not remotely as useful as a big railgun.

Hope that helps.

So what you're saying is the CPU can tell the GPU what to process, and the GPU can process it faster? Or am I getting that wrong.

He's saying the GPU is better suited for graphics processing than a CPU, and a CPU is better suited for general processing than a GPU.



Umm Windows, Linux, Apple OS, etc have supported multiprocessing since forever. Apps don't need to support it. If an OS supports it it will schedule the processes/threads to run on each CPU.

[QUOTE=The Mega-ZZTer]He's saying the GPU is better suited for graphics processing than a CPU, and a CPU is better suited for general processing than a GPU.



Umm Windows, Linux, Apple OS, etc have supported multiprocessing since forever. Apps don't need to support it. If an OS supports it it will schedule the processes/threads to run on each CPU.[/QUOTE]
But then you end up with BG on one and a game on the other. CPU usage? 5%, and 100%.

Dual core's biggest advantage is desktop and workstation use, not gaming. I'm sure Jon`C can tell you all about why multi-core solutions don't offer much to gaming at all.

Funny story.

My older brother had to disable one of the "processors" on his dual core to play San Andreas. (You can tell Windows to run certain programs with only one processor, Also in this menu there are tick boxes for 31 processors....)

If he didn't, the game ran TWICE as fast, making it totally unplayable.. but hilarious to watch.

Cars on the highway went so fast you couldn't see them untill they hit something, but they piled up HELLA FAST if you caused an accident.

The pistol was a machine gun, walking was faster than riding a bike at normal appication speed.

It was awesome!

My Pentium D doesn't do it though. Just his AMD I forget what.