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The comment about games only using 2 cores is extremely incorrect. Even a game as simple as minecraft can and does utilize all 4 cores to 50+ level. In fact it load balances to keep cores from overheating.
The core usage is simultaneous with load balancing to not over load one of the cores.
I have some other games that also use all four of my cores at once.
Intel kept with the 4 cores for so long (8 with hyper threading) because as you grow in total on die cores you actually start to slow down unless multi-threaded usage is above a certain point... aka you need enough threads from a single program to be able to spread out the load rationally. We first ran into this with 3d rendering software when a more simple calculative task was spanned over too many threads it actually slowed down. I am still waiting for them to update light bounce and transmission calculations in all the packages to multi-thread. It is ironic that radiosity is still calculated single thread for nearly every advanced pro level package.
As for games, they are becoming more and more multi-threaded but there is an upward limit where most games are actually extremely simple on the processor front, most of the load is on the GPUs. In general, games have not gotten significantly more processor complex (intensive) in some time with more and more being handed off to the GPU, including physics processing. The CPU just runs basic tasks and acts as the director of the circus while the GPUs do some seriously heavy lifting.
Which is why poorly coded games like BF4 don't use all the cores of a high core system. One the game is poorly coded for multi-threading, the other fact is that there is no complex AI code to be run. The game is very "simple" on the CPU in comparison to what it does on the GPUs. There likely isn't enough demand to efficiently populate all 4 cores. I.E. Minecraft is more CPU intensive running lots of AI driven, piped, and logic controlled mods than BF4 is. Why? All those non-gpu related calculations, logic, and AI code puts the load all on the CPU.
The core usage is simultaneous with load balancing to not over load one of the cores.
I have some other games that also use all four of my cores at once.
Intel kept with the 4 cores for so long (8 with hyper threading) because as you grow in total on die cores you actually start to slow down unless multi-threaded usage is above a certain point... aka you need enough threads from a single program to be able to spread out the load rationally. We first ran into this with 3d rendering software when a more simple calculative task was spanned over too many threads it actually slowed down. I am still waiting for them to update light bounce and transmission calculations in all the packages to multi-thread. It is ironic that radiosity is still calculated single thread for nearly every advanced pro level package.
As for games, they are becoming more and more multi-threaded but there is an upward limit where most games are actually extremely simple on the processor front, most of the load is on the GPUs. In general, games have not gotten significantly more processor complex (intensive) in some time with more and more being handed off to the GPU, including physics processing. The CPU just runs basic tasks and acts as the director of the circus while the GPUs do some seriously heavy lifting.
Which is why poorly coded games like BF4 don't use all the cores of a high core system. One the game is poorly coded for multi-threading, the other fact is that there is no complex AI code to be run. The game is very "simple" on the CPU in comparison to what it does on the GPUs. There likely isn't enough demand to efficiently populate all 4 cores. I.E. Minecraft is more CPU intensive running lots of AI driven, piped, and logic controlled mods than BF4 is. Why? All those non-gpu related calculations, logic, and AI code puts the load all on the CPU.
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