Camelot Grab Bag Q&A

In this week’s Grab Bag Q&A for Dark Age of Camelot, EA Mythic’s Sanya Thomas answers questions about archer templates, quickbar additions, and more.

Q: How differently does DAoC perform when using a duo-core processor vs. a single core CPU? I.e. does DAoC take advantage of multithreading or is it stuck with a single-thread architecture? The reason why I’m asking is because I’m considering upgrading my main game PC and DAoC is an important feature for me.

A: DAoC does not make significant use of multithreading. However, Windows does, so a person will realize some gain from using a multi-core processor, since Windows will be able to do work using the other core. For those who run two instances of Camelot at the same time on the same machine, there will be some performance increase over a single-core processor. Given the multitude of factors that affect performance, I cannot give an estimate of the performance gain in these cases.

As an end tidbit of information, most games are “partially” multi-threaded like DAoC is. There are less then 5 fully multi-threaded games out there. Most people see an immediate benefit when using a dual-core CPU simply due to the fact that their OS is able to run at full speed on one core while the game is running on the other.