Even DX11 has the ability to use more than 4 cores / 8 threads for rendering, i.e. Example, say I run GTA 5, Prey or Rise of the Tomb Raider in a CPU intensive area (DX11) 120 FPS in 2D, everything maxed, at 2560×1440 with 2080 Ti and 8700k 5.1 GHz no problem, but 3D performance is, it’s like 1/3rd, an abysmal 40 FPS, or 80 FPS 2D. If this were the case of a thread responsible for rendering frames being saturated and needing to offload some of it’s workload onto another thread then we would see this problem running the game in 2D at 120 FPS but this isn’t the case with 3D Vision. The numbers will differ in a real world example and vary from game to game, but I hope you get the idea.

The ‘culprit’ is the added stereo workload on the render thread, as simple as that. No mysterious ‘3 core bug’ anywhere, everything working as expected. Result: instead of 100% CPU usage mono you get 75% CPU usage with stereo. The first thread (rendering) would still fully utilize its core, but the second thread (physics) now would only have to utilize 50% of its core since only half the frames need physics calculated compared to before. Now, again for the sake of simplicity, let’s say stereo rendering doubles the CPU workload of the render thread, causing the framerate to drop to half purely due to the higher CPU workload. In mono both threads each fully utilize ‘their’ core, overall CPU usage 100%. I have no reason to defend nVidia, but imagine the following simplified scenario: a CPU with two cores and a game using two threads, one for rendering, one for physics. Luckily in this case the only harm done was causing confusion among a stereo 3D community. Considering the author of that post all I’ll say is that half-baked superficial knowledge combined with strong opinions and the drive to share one’s ‘wisdom’ with the world is probably the most dangerous thing developed by mankind besides maybe the hydrogen bomb. Guess I don’t have to wonder anymore how that myth arised.

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