Four Threads or Go Home

When Intel's new Pentiums bowed over a year ago, many budget gaming enthusiasts were excited. A cheap, overclockable pair of Haswell cores that fit on 1150-socket motherboards, offering a great upgrade path? It seemed as if Intel had a serious player in the value-CPU segment (previously dominated by AMD).

Fast forward in time, and the new Pentiums - and when I say Pentiums, my point of reference is the Pentium G3258 - are not looking so rosy after all. Their performance is beyond question. Intel has been smacking AMD around in CPU benchmarks for a few years now. The problem with the Pentiums does not come from any performance shortfalls. The problem comes from the number of processing threads the CPU has: two. Two cores, no hyper-threading. Two.

There have been a lot of recommendations on websites all over the internet (such as here, here, here, and many more) that the Pentium is the best bargain CPU on the market for performance-to-cost ratio. Not only does it have better performance per CPU core than many AMD CPUs (even the FX-series), the purchaser would have the option to upgrade the CPU to and i3, i5 or i7 in the future without swapping out the motherboard. One user even recommended the Pentium G3258 over an FX-6300.

Here's the issue.
More and more games are utilizing multiple CPU threads. How does this affect the Pentiums? Because more and more games are requiring multiple CPU threads - like, four. Which immediately hampers the Pentium. Want to play Dragon Age Inquisition on a Pentium G3258? You can't. Need four CPU threads, bro. What about Watch Dogs or Grand Theft Auto V? Still need four threads. Far Cry 4? Four threads.

This discussion is frequently couched in an Intel vs. AMD dichotomy, but that is really beside the point. People build computers to do jobs. If someone is building a budget gaming computer, its job is TO PLAY GAMES. Maybe at a reduced resolution and low graphical settings, but that is still the point of the build. And everyone who built a budget system with a Pentium thinking they would be able to play the latest games are either upgrading sooner than they expected or are stuck playing "old" games (not knocking old games, I love them).

The situation is not as bad as depicted in this article from PCWorld.com: "Far Cry 4 woes with dual-core processors point to a bleak future for budget PC gamers." The author seems to associate budget gaming exclusively with Intel and the Pentium CPUs, which is misguided and narrow-minded to say the least. He even refers to the Far Cry 4 situation as shouting "game over" at budget gamers (first line of section 3, entitled "The Beginning of the End?"). Seriously? No budget gaming without Intel's Pentiums?

What bothers me is that many people are still recommending the Pentium CPUs, despite the fact that more and more games are requiring multiple cores (some flaming in this thread - you have been warned).

Here's the deal:
AMD has currently won the budget gaming war with the Athlon 860k. It is reasonably fast, overclockable, and is PCI-e 3.0 compatible. And most importantly, it has four CPU threads / cores for the same cost as a Pentium G3258 (the prices fluctuate).

Want to build a budget Intel gaming rig for the sake of the upgrade path (performance is roughly comparable with the Athlon 860k)? Get a Core i3, which has hyperthreading and 4 CPU threads. Currently an Intel Core i3 is about $40 than an Athlon 860k. That's a value judgment that the builder / buyer would have to make. Either CPU will let the purchaser play the latest games. As I said earlier, it's not about AMD vs. Intel. It's about building the right computer for the specified job within the specified budget. If the Core i3 fits within that budget, great. If the Athlon 860k is the most a buyer can afford, that's fine too. They're both capable. Paired with the right graphics card, either one can handle The Witcher 2 or Assassin's Creed IV on medium settings @1080p without bottle-necking. Either one can be the solid beating heart of a computer that a budget gamer needs.

But let's stop pretending the Intel Pentiums are a budget gamer's dream, okay? Jeez.

12 Screenshots - Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Trailer Analysis

So the secret is out by now: the new game coming from Square Enix and Eidos Montreal is the new Deus Ex game, entitled Mankind Divided. The new game is a direct sequel to Human Revolution, which leads to some questions about how the ending of the previous game will be handled. I have heard that there will NOT be an option to import saves; if so, then one of the choices at the end of Human Revolution has been made canon... unless all three choices are somehow made valid? Hard to imagine a solution successfully doing that.

The Cinematic Trailer launched today. There is a large emphasis on action - just as in Human Revolution's Cinematic Trailer. With Human Revolution, action / killing was only one way to play the game. Since Deus Ex is a stealth franchise, I ignored most of the action as hype hubris. 

That does not mean there aren't cool things to learn from the trailer. Here are twelve screenshots from the trailer, and their possible implications.

Jensen in a floating Messiah pose... Or is it a play on Da Vinci's Vetruvian Man? This image resurfaces at the end of the trailer. Whether this actually happens in the game or whether it is just some cool metaphoric imagery meant to book-end the trailer (like the Icarus imagery from the Human Revolution trailer) is anyone's guess. I think the latter. 

Things are burning. The suggestion is that the insanity begun at the end of Human Revolution was just the beginning. As is said twice in the trailer, "The golden age [of augmentations, I assume] is over." Does this mean that Mankind Divided won't have the yellow (golden) filter over everything?

This is pure window dressing. It looks awesome, and it would be even better if this were actually an open city to explore. But right now it is just a visual prop. No indication where it is, either.

The fight between augmented and non-augmented people is the primary conflict, as indicated by the voice-over. This bot is scanning the crowd, looking for people who are augmented. 

If an "aug" is found, they are arrested. 

This yellow-hooded augmented man features prominently throughout the trailer. He is seen kissing the fist of the antagonist, slipping across a street, and being slammed to the ground by police (here). Almost certainly an in-game character whose relationship with Jensen will be complicated: are they friends, enemies, or both?

For me the most striking shot from the trailer. The lights behind Jensen are clearly meant to simulate wings - whether of Icarus or an avenging Archangel is not clear. Jensen was already the messiah of augmented people in Human Revolution (if you've played the game, you know what I mean), so it would make sense to continue the theme. 

We see Jensen fighting terrorists in this trailer, but we also see him fighting police (not Belltower operatives, but actual police), though, so his loyalties are sharply divided. Are messiahs allowed to be conflicted?

This is a clear reference to Michelangelo's painting, the Creation of Adam. So...yeah, lots of thoughts on this one. Has Jensen transcended messiah status to god-status? If it is a direct correlation, he is not saving (the function of a messiah), he is creating (the function of a god). And, given that his full name is Adam Jensen...and this is a nod to "the creation of Adam"...is this game going to, in some way, mark his ascension to something greater than what he is? (i.e., the most bad-ass yet moral ass-kicker on earth) So who is Adam saving? Who is he creating? Who is creating him?

This image could be of a new augmentation of some kind of super-armor, but I think it is just a fun way to transition to the game's title card (super armor would be awesome, though). Which reminds me that we see some new augmentations in the trailer. Where is Jensen getting these augmentations from, and who is he working for now? The most probable is David Sarif, but when you consider the collapse of the augmentation market that the devs have hinted at for this game, the fact that Sarif + Darrow + Taggart suffered various forms of disgrace (depending on the ending that is canonized), why would Jensen want to work for any of them? 

How do we know he is working for anyone? Because unless the devs are resorting to Deus Ex: The Fall levels of design (here's a store you can access from anywhere to purchase upgrades!), there will be some kind of corporate or technological backing that provides Jensen with these new abilities. I expect this entity, whether Sarif, Darrow, Taggart (not Taggart, please, that would make zero sense), or someone / something new, to also provide a major means of progression for Jensen's journey in Mankind Divided. 

Why a screenshot of a gun blast? Look closely. That is not simply fire from a muzzle-blast. Those little balls closely resemble the shrapnel rounds from the Typhoon in Human Revolution. Except this was fired from a (large) hand-held gun. More important than whether we see this weapon and ammunition in-game, this could be an indication that Sarif Industries has indeed collapsed, and its research and weapon systems have proliferated on the black market - allowing an augmented terrorist to make and modify them for his own purposes.

Though this game promises to be a continuation of Human Revolution, there is nothing to indicate Megan Reed's status. The one shot of her in the trailer is a flashback. 

While this character is being hyped as a "boss," don't get too excited yet. He fills the same role in this trailer that Barrett and Yelena Fedorova filled in the Human Revolution cinematic trailer. I don't doubt he IS a boss, but Square Enix would never feature the final boss in their first trailer.

So there you have it. I am really looking forward to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. If Eidos and Square Enix are still on their game (bad pun, sorry!), it promises to be fun to play, and the story promises to be socially relevant. Both of those ingredients go a long way towards making a game great.


Update on 4/9/2015: Jensen does indeed have a new employer, and it is Interpol: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/04/09/meet-the-power-players-of-deus-ex-mankind-divided.aspx