CPUs and Gaming

[dazman]

I run CS:S at 193FPS on my rig, you put your 6700 against my 3700+ and tell me if you can actually spot a difference in gameplay. Forget what the FPS measaurements are, tell me if you can see a difference. I'll tell you that you can't, and therefore there is no need other than to say, look at my uber FPS. At that level there is no difference, considering your monitor doesn't refresh at anywhere near that rate, it is a complete waste of time to have such high FPS.

LOL@U, only trying to give some info, not say who has the biggest *cough*. Didn't even mention the AMD/Intel silliness. I just thought it quite interesting that a CPU would give that much of a difference. The point is that there IS a lot of headroom and that is important, not that it makes a difference in gamplay in game's that don't use it. Games like BF2 that stress graphics more would seem to scale to a higher FPS that would indeed be visible in gameplay. Can't say for sure as my BF2 install is borked now.

 

[sablabra]

Believe it, and get your credit card out

Naah, I'll stick to x2 3800+ for a while... Hopefully my new x2 3800+ will reach 3ghz (well now I'm dreaming a bit, but it is plausible )

Conroe is too expensive to me atm

 

[2bullish]

Naah, I'll stick to x2 3800+ for a while... Hopefully my new x2 3800+ will reach 3ghz (well now I'm dreaming a bit, but it is plausible )

Conroe is too expensive to me atm

Wont get 3 on that without some serious cooling, maybe not even then if your unlucky.

Agree with your second sentence though, Im gonna wait awhile for prices to drop and go Conroe later in the year.

 

[dazman]

Yes, I agree also, unless you have a game where you are FPS or quality limited or any other application that runs too slow, there is absolutely no reason to upgrade. I have't upgraded since the my socket 479 P4 2.8 running @3.2 with AGP 6800GT and everything was getting pretty frustrating so it made sense for me. It did cost £585 with new MB, mem, cooler, Graphics card and 19" LCD which isn't trivial but I am very happy with the rig! Maybe you'll get lucky and have a powersurge and HAVE to replace LOL.

 

[sablabra]

Wont get 3 on that without some serious cooling, maybe not even then if your unlucky.

Agree with your second sentence though, Im gonna wait awhile for prices to drop and go Conroe later in the year.

I know a guy who reached 3ghz stable on AIR. I have water cooling, but you have to be really lucky to get such a cpu! But as I said, it's plausible

 

[Soul Rider]

LOL@U, only trying to give some info, not say who has the biggest *cough*. Didn't even mention the AMD/Intel silliness. I just thought it quite interesting that a CPU would give that much of a difference. The point is that there IS a lot of headroom and that is important, not that it makes a difference in gamplay in game's that don't use it. Games like BF2 that stress graphics more would seem to scale to a higher FPS that would indeed be visible in gameplay. Can't say for sure as my BF2 install is borked now.

I didn't mention AMD/Intel silliness either.

All i'm saying is there is no game out there at the moment that eats as much CPU power as people have to spare at the moment. The best advice for people at the moment is really to get the graphics upto scratch, then in a years time we may need to use next-gen processors, but even the x2's on 939 are not being utilised fully yet.

Processing power is far outstripping the software that's being written for it. Hell I use windows 64, and yet most apps are still only 32-bit, wasting most of my processing power anyway.

 

[raitasar]

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.

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.

We just tried running oblivion using the highest settings we could find, with the highest AF too (no AA from nvidia while the HDR was on) as neither of us has BF2, and swapping out the GX2 between the systems. (E6600 - i returned it to stock - and a 4400X2) Totally unscientific test, but I figure, everyone has seen the benchmarks, and they just wanted a feel of what happened.

There was a noticeable difference in fps. The X2 dropped to a stutter when lots of enemies were around. The Conroe astonishingly barely stuttered at all, but did visibly dip a fair bit under 60fps. In this really extreme case, I can see the point of the conroe, but as dropping the settings some brought them both back in line as far as not seeing much of a difference, I dunno. Depends how much cash you have, and whether you want to spend it on a CPU.
There was a difference, but if you want to drop the highest possible settings a bit, it goes again. Having said that, i'm really happy with mine and glad I sprung the cash on it. it's an astounding chip so far.

edit: I just thought that I'd mention, before someone starts posting FPS benchmarks from reviews, this test was run in 20 minutes of spare time, and could be affected by a whole different lot of stuff, such as windows services running on one machine and not the other blahblah. We didn't check, we were just curious.

 

[juno_first]

I think it's just a case of whether a new CPU will improve your games enough to warrant the need to buy an uber CPU.

I reckon another graphics card or a better one will improve games more than a CPU which is a bit quicker, 3dmk06 CPU scores prove Conroe is quicker, though not by a great deal in games.

Obviously if you had the money you'd get all the best, though most don't have that luxury and with this in mind I'd say upgrade graphics if your current dualcore CPU is fast enough. E.g my old AMD @ 2.75 whips a Conroe 3.6Ghz with a 1900xtx in 3dmk06, only because I've got 2 old 7800's.

 

[ives]

I'm wondering what kinda difference you'll see aswell, I've been using a 2500 at 3200 since they came out, I've played all the latest games that have come out during that period and have upgraded my graphics card once (from a 9600 pro to a 6600GT)
games run at lower FPS now but tbh I've not had any real issues playing ANY game, even Oblivion.

hehehe

I'm in exactly the same boat as you, hardware speaking. And I've found the same thing too.

 

[V F]

I didn't mention AMD/Intel silliness either.

All i'm saying is there is no game out there at the moment that eats as much CPU power as people have to spare at the moment.

I thought Doom3 and Quake4 was very taxing? Can anyone run it native on big displays say 1920x1200 High or Ultra settings with 4xAA 8xAF or higher and still be smooth...?

 

[AWPC]

I thought Doom3 and Quake4 was very taxing? Can anyone run it native on big displays say 1920x1200 High or Ultra settings with 4xAA 8xAF or higher and still be smooth...?

Any recent game @1920x1200 with 4xAA + 8xAF is very taxing on the CPU. On my previous rig I only had a 3.8Ghz P4 (670J prescott) but that could still just about handle Quake4 & Doom3 @ that res with those settings. The X6800 does it a lot better as both games are a lot smoother for me & no micro pauses anymore for sound or disk caching.

 

[Warbie]

I thought Doom3 and Quake4 was very taxing? Can anyone run it native on big displays say 1920x1200 High or Ultra settings with 4xAA 8xAF or higher and still be smooth...?

My winchester at 2.7 gig was a considerably bottleneck in Quake 4. I'm upgrading for Quake Wars and think that a Conroe will be the best option for stutter free online action.

 

[Warbie]

double post

 

[V F]

On Quake4 im at 1680x1050 high quality 4xAA 8xAF on a 3yr old AthlonXP3200+ 1GB Corsair LL mem, only a few stutters in places but can be hit badly where there is lots of reflective pillars, heavy lights, shadow areas thats in one place.

BF2 almost everything is set to maximum appart from textures and runs smoothly at 1920x1200 4xAA 8xAF with high quality set in the drivers. Loading times can be long though with BF2. With NFS:MW, CS:S/HL2 + HDR Full and is real nice with 40 ish players, same settings applies.

The likes of D3/Q4 I can't run native yet.

Most of the time now I just mainly play racing games these days, so not too bothered with shootems.

I think I may hold off till Vista before I go 64Bit/PCI-E. I just don't fancy finding out spending a lot to find out I may have to upgrade again for new games and Vista as such... As I'm hearing Vista is a bit of a pig...

 

[Soul Rider]

I think the most important thing to note at the moment is that most systems are held up by hard drive access times, rather than CPU's and Graphics. We are really gonna hit a wall soon with regards to hardware unless a new storage technology is realeased to catch up with the advancements in other fields, and soon debates like this will become irrelevant.

 

[V F]

Hasn't that been somewhat solved with the Gigabyte i-Ram product? Load times seem to be snappy with everything.
Somebody posted somewhere showing their boot process and it was zip zip and loaded... like 10 - 15 seconds or so.

 

[juno_first]

When playing Quake4 in a window the CPU usage is only 25% on an AMD dualcore 2.6Ghz with 2x 7800, so how will imroving the CPU improve the game?
And before anyone sais how slow and dated the 7800's are, well 2 are faster than a x1950.