CPUs and Gaming

[Fr0dders]

When Core 2 was released, there was a lot of arguments about how much difference the CPU could make to games. Some said they were limited by the graphics card, others (including myself) were very much of the oppinion this was not the case, and had benchmarks to back it up

but then the doubters had benchmarks of their own

has any more proof arisen since then

im really after seeing if Core2 Duo will make my games any faster, as all i do is listen to MP3s, webbrowse and play games. And my current A64 does the first 2 flawlessly.

 

[Fr0dders]

this seems to be a bit of a stupid thread tbh, you system will clearly benefit from a better cpu, in pretty much everything. and conroe is better at the min so you gonna get better performance with it, DUH!!!

thankyou for the intellectual reply to my thread

maybe if you had bothered to do some background reading, you could have made a more positive contribution to this thread

Have a read of this :

We have proven here that the flurry of canned benchmarks based on timedemos showing huge gains with Core 2 processors are virtually worthless in rating the true gaming performance of these processors today. The fact of the matter is that real-world gaming performance today greatly lies at the feet of your video card. Almost none of today’s games are performance limited by your CPU.

Taken from this [H]ard OCP article here

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTEwOCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Its discussed in this thread here

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17600312&highlight=conroe+ocp

Hard OCP very much came to the conclusion that for gaming conroe is pointless and provides no boost in FPS worthy of a £300 upgrade.

Anandtech on the other hand, had quite the contrary conclusion :

The Core 2 Extreme X6800 now attains a 19% performance lead over the FX-62, and the E6600 manages a 10.9% advantage itself

*snip*

Half Life 2: Episode 1 provided us with numbers closer to what we saw with Quake 4, the performance advantage here is just over 12% for the X6800 over the FX-62. With a couple of speed bumps, AMD could equal Intel's gaming performance here. But the real issue for AMD is the fact that the E6600 priced at $316, is able to outperform the FX-62 at over twice the price.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795&p=14

Anandtech are very much of the oppinion that Core 2 thrashes the Athlon and that who needs to buy a FX62, when you can get the same performance from the entry level Core 2 Chip

question is, whose right ?

 

[Fr0dders]

So the arguent is still, is it worth it at the moment, I would contend it is not, as not only would it cost several hundred pounds (in the case of the extreme conroes, yikes even more) to get this increase, if all the user does it play games and surf?

just having a read of the Anandtech Core 2 Duo overclocking article

the reason im considering an upgrade to Core, is that ive only got an old Winchester Athlon 64 3200. I cant get a stable frame rate in 1680 x 1050 in BF2 with 4 x AA and 16x AF

But the benchmarks done by others with faster processors but the same GPU clearly show a stable frame rate. So im guessing its my CPU thats holding me back

but have a look at this :

this clearly shows the CPU limitation that every1 is talking about with games. the top 3 processors are all within 2/3 fps of each other. obviously reaching the threshold of the CPUs limitations

the 2.0ghz Winchester isnt tested here, but look what is, a 3800+ 2.0ghz. And thats a full 40 fps behind an overclocked 6300.

Now surely its gotta be worth an upgrade for 40 fps ?

 

[Fr0dders]

My 6600, even clocked up to just over 3400Mhz shows very little NOTICEABLE difference to a mates 4400 X2 with the same graphics card in it. If you have something that high end from AMD, I haven't seen the point so far, in upgrading if you only game. Obviously I haven't played every game there is, and there are always anomalies you don't notice until they're staring you in the face. In general though, I personally wouldn't. I jumped to Conroe because my old system was a joke, and i'm currently enjoying converting mini dv files to divx in the background while gaming, and not seeing any sort of stuttering.

Those benches MrLOL was showing up above pretty much prove it. They tell me there's a difference of around 30fps, over and above the 100 frames that the AMD system could manage. While there are loads of arguments about the "magic 60 fps" and whether humans could potentially tell the difference between 70 and 100... my friend and I couldn't. So he's not bothered that he's gaming on an X2 and i'm not.

nice argument

if it wasnt the fact that you wont get 80fps at 1680 x 1050 with 4 X AA and 8x AF on all maps with a 3200 winchester and a Radeon X1900 XT.

its one thing benchmarking on say, kharkland, thats not very graphically demanding, and another benchmarking on sharqui which is very demanding

the benchies above dont say what map was used, but my problem is that i have to turn of all the settings on certain maps because the system cant handle it. Therefore an upgrade to conroe so i dont have to do this would be pointfull.

 

[Fr0dders]

thats what i thought

but some people (possibly AMD fanboys) were stating that the upgrade would yield no fps improvement whatsoever as games are GPU limited not CPU limited

for as many benchmarks showing big gains in 3Dgaming, there are just many illustrating the point above

anybody got a conroe and care to proove who's right ?