[omni]

There are plenty of games that actually use CPU: Microsoft Flight Simulator, Factorio, Stellaris, Total War, pretty much any city simulator game, etc. Sure, your average dumb AAA action game won't, but that doesn't mean a good CPU is worthless.

[GhettoComputers]

Factorio isn't stressing 8 core CPUs. Stellaris can be played on a laptop. You are confirming his conclusion that they don't need a strong CPU to play.

[riversflow]

lol! Stellaris can be played on a laptop, but try ramping the Galaxy size up to 1000 and/or increase the habitable planet multiplier. You get a couple hundred years in and the game just crawls even on nice hardware. Its not unplayable, its a strategy game, but the pace definitely slows down a lot, and space battles aren't as fun to watch.

By the same token you can play virtually any game on a cheap gaming rig. Just put all the graphics on low, run it at 720p and be happy with 20 fps.

[GhettoComputers]

Most games don't need the latest or greatest hardware to run well, there's a lack of good AAA games that make the value proposition of new hardware much less appealing versus the days of wanting to build a computer to play Crysis.

[dragontamer]

Endgame Factorio stresses CPUs because rocket-per-minute bases are a thing.

1 RPM is where a mega base starts. Stronger players can do 20 RPM (yes, a rocket every 3 seconds).

In those conditions, your CPU becomes the limit to the RPM as your game starts to slow down

[omni]

> Stellaris can be played on a laptop. You are confirming his conclusion that they don't need a strong CPU to play.

Movies can be watched on phones. Does that mean theater screens are pointless?

[GhettoComputers]

Just look at the attendance of movies or how often phones are used for videos.

[notTheAuth]

With different software pipelines they could run right on a GPU

It’s all state in a machine, and ML is showing us recursion + memory accomplish a lot; why all the generic structure in x86 if we can prove our substrate works just as well with better power efficiency if it’s structured specifically?

Chips aren’t concepts, they’re coupled to physics; simplify the real geometry. I think that’s what Apple is really proving with its chips, and why Intel is trying to become a foundry; they realize their culture can only extend x86 and x86 comes from another era of manufacturing.

I got into tech designing telecom hardware for mass production in the late-90 and early-00s. I just code now but still follow manufacturing, and have friends that work in fabs all over; this is just sort of a summary of the trends we see shrug emoji

[GhettoComputers]

Is that a realistic goal to run all on GPU? Nvidia wants ARM to make GPU/CPUs together. The idea is as intriguing as making games that are OS independent and just run bare metal by making them with ISAs. I don’t think there’s games that do that.