IO Interactive partners with Intel to enhance Hitman 3 for CPUs with 8+ cores

nanoguy

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In brief: With Hitman 3, IO Interactive has done a lot of work under the hood with the Glacier Engine to optimize it for better performance on a wide range of system configurations. The publisher says it is working with Intel to increase the level of detail in the game's environment for people who happen to have a CPU with eight or more cores.

Hitman 3 developer and publisher IO Interactive is currently working to bring the game to PC (via the Epic Game Store), consoles (PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One), and cloud gaming services like Google Stadia on January 20, 2021. And you'll be able to use it as a central hub where you can import locations from the two previous games and enjoy the same improvements in terms of rendering, animations, and AI found in Hitman 3

Thanks to the Epic Store listing, we know the game will have fair system requirements, as you'll be able to run it on an Intel Core i5-2500K CPU (or an AMD Phenom II X4 940 CPU) paired with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 graphics card (or an AMD Radeon HD 7870), as long as you also have 8 GB of RAM and 80 GB of free storage space.

The recommended configuration includes an Intel Core i7 4790 CPU paired with either an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 or an AMD Radeon Vega 56, as well as 16 GB of RAM.

Today, IO Interactive announced it is also working with Intel on "enhancing" Hitman 3 for those of you out there who own 8+ core CPUs, which means you'll be able to experience more densely-populated maps (up to 300 NPCs in a single location) and more complex destructible objects.

The developer is additionally working on enabling variable rate shading, a DirectX 12 feature that was introduced in 2019 to squeeze some extra performance from graphics cards, especially at higher resolutions such as 1440p and 4K. Unfortunately, ray tracing won't be supported at launch but IOI says it is coming "later in 2021."

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Why do I get a very bad feeling when reading „working with Intel to optimize...“ ?

Haven't you heard? Intel is diversifying in an attempt to keep its processors relevant into things like TEC cooling solutions, and paying for software optimizations. ;)

Yeah they haven't really any straws left to be able to claim superiority at anything and rocket lake isn't looking too good outside of laptop space, but they still have the money to pay for software optimizations that benefit their highest margin chips ... and of course to engineer better proprietary cooling solutions for use with those same chips ... so I guess that's what they're doing ... milk, milk, milk.
 
I think that making Hitman 3 more thread-aware will bring more benefits to users of AMD processors than to users of Intel processors. However, since Intel has also moved away from 4-core chips to processors with at least 6 cores, it makes sense that thread awareness is needed even for best performance on Intel chips.

And if a news item like this might make it seem to some people who haven't really been paying attention to AMD and Ryzen that it was Intel (rather than AMD) that moved the computer world to 8-core chips, why, that's just gravy.

So I don't think we have to go digging any deeper than that for any hidden motive in this.
 
So Intel is going to make this game run better on AMD's CPU's?
You can be sure it won't or just barely vs. Intel CPU. Want to bet that a 10C Intel CPU will profit much more than a 16C 5950x?

Edit: Another possibility would be that the game engine gets updated to distribute tasks between performance and efficiency cores that Alder Lake will have. This way they could say that performance is improved for >8C CPU, but if the CPU in question only has performance cores...well, though luck.

The added bonus would be that this could make Alder Lake shine vs. Ryzen and Comet Lake S while not reducing performance on the latter two.
 
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I don’t think this is about beating AMD at all, I think Intel sees all the people on old intel cpus getting adequate performance (like me with a 4790k) and wants to give them a reason to upgrade. The recommended spec is a 4790, that’s a 6 year old cpu being recommended!

Intel knows that games making use of more cores means millions of people might finally have a reason to buy a new CPU, many of them will buy Intel because they know Intel from the glory days and that means sales regardless of AMD!
 
I remember a long time ago when Intel was showing early demos of Alan Wake as an example of optimizing games for multi-core and multi-thread capable CPUs (at the time the Extreme Edition was a quad-core).
 
Does Intel even have amy products with 8+ cores? Yet alone any worth buying. 🤣

The Core i9 10850K is worth buying in my opinion. Same price as Ryzen 7 5800X. It does need overclock to match AMD but its in stock and it comes with 2 extra cores : -)
 
I don’t think this is about beating AMD at all, I think Intel sees all the people on old intel cpus getting adequate performance (like me with a 4790k) and wants to give them a reason to upgrade. The recommended spec is a 4790, that’s a 6 year old cpu being recommended!

Intel knows that games making use of more cores means millions of people might finally have a reason to buy a new CPU, many of them will buy Intel because they know Intel from the glory days and that means sales regardless of AMD!



I've come to believe this is what intel does in its software programming. Someone posted it on a review site.
 
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I hope so too
My guess would be that is perhaps a shady little “bonus”, not the main benefit.

But that sort of rubbish should not sit well with game studios who know by now that more and more of their audience is running ryzen.

I hope so too. Problem is, intel's money can sway the strongest of wills.
Intel doesn't want competition. But what if Intel bought AMD? Then programmers won't have to go through the trouble of optimising for more than one system. Intel would focus and combine it's advanced hardware and software technology with AMD's. And then I hope the x86 based chip industry would greatly advance. I've heard it's working on intergrating neural networks into its systems. On the hand, what if AMD bought Intel?
 
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But what if Intel bought AMD? Then programmers won't have to go through the trouble of optimising for more than one system. Intel would focus and combine it's advanced hardware and software technology with AMD's. And then I hope the x86 based chip industry will greatly advance. I've heard it's working on intergrating neural networks into its systems. On the hand, what if AMD bought Intel?
Not a chance, competition regulators would block that in a heartbeat...I would hope!
 
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