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Lowest CPU for a 8800 GTX?

SideWinder

SideWinder

SideWinder

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Random question really..but all this talk about bottle-necking the 8800 GTX...what is the 'lowest' that would suffice? I'd imagine an E6600 would be just okay to run it?
 
E6600 would be absolutely fine unless you are playing at very low resolutions (which would kinda defeat the object of buying a 8800gtx....)

If you look here and click through the pages you can see benchmarks from a 8800ultra using a few different cpus: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/intel_core_2_extreme_qx6850/page5.asp

As you can see, at 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF, even with an Ultra you are GPU limited on pretty much any modern cpu. A £100 cpu will perform within a couple of percent of a £600 one in games at those kind of settings or above.
 
Opposite actually, there is no CPU today that can limit a 8800 GTX or Ultra, its been that way for last few Gens.

Not all games are CPU/GPU bound, most are GPU bound like FEAR, this "CPU limited" seems to be the in term these days.

Not so long ago they had 2 Evesham rigs with 1 with a FX60 or such and the other with Intels top CPU (at that time), the rigs were limited by the CPU's in both cases with 1x 7800GTX 256 never mind both in SLI (there was no 7800GTX 512 at time).

Ok new CPU's have came on a bit since that review but so has newer cards with (7800GTX 512), then 7900GTX (512) and now 8800GTX/Ultra (768)
 
SideWinder said:
Random question really..but all this talk about bottle-necking the 8800 GTX...what is the 'lowest' that would suffice? I'd imagine an E6600 would be just okay to run it?
Click to expand...
It would be totally different from one game to the next..Same with res...
Then there's what one person would call playable while the next person would say it's unplayable...
(Like some people here think anything under 60fps is unplayable...were i think 45fps is easily playable)
 
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Having owned a radeon9600LE for a long time I got to the point where I find anything over 10fps playable :D

On topic however...I'd say unless you will be mostly playing Supreme Commander, then whatever cpu you get it won't really matter. If you will be playing SupCom, then you're best off getting the most powerful cpu you can afford as it will happily gobble up any extra processing power you can throw at it.
 
helmutcheese said:
Not all games are CPU/GPU bound, most are GPU bound like FEAR, this "CPU limited" seems to be the in term these days.

Not so long ago they had 2 Evesham rigs with 1 with a FX60 or such and the other with Intels top CPU (at that time), the rigs were limited by the CPU's in both cases with 1x 7800GTX 256 never mind both in SLI (there was no 7800GTX 512 at time).

Ok new CPU's have came on a bit since that review but so has newer cards with (7800GTX 512), then 7900GTX (512) and now 8800GTX/Ultra (768)
Click to expand...

While it's true that there are a few games which are cpu limited (SupCom, DiRT and to some extent, Source), by and large when playing at high resolution most modern games are limited by the graphics card, with the possible exception of high end SLI/xfire setups.

Here's another article specifically looking at cpu scaling on the 8800 range: http://firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_8800_gtx_gts_core_2_performance/page3.asp
As you can see, a E4300 paired with a GTX absolutely destroys a X6800/GTS combination. OK so in 1280x1024 there is a slight benefit from faster cpus with a GTX, but nobody* buys a $600+ video card to play in that kinda res.
 
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AFAIK and by reading and I aint seen any actual reviews to show otherwise, no CPU can do more than top GPU's, so CPU is always the bottleneck eventually, the GPU will keep giving more.

I'm open to any links but at 1am and long day I will read tomorrow.
 
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I have never tested an 8800 gtx/ultra but 1950xtx and 8800gts in crossfire/sli are held back by a core duo at anything less than 3ghz at lower resolution benchmarks.

My Gut feeling would be that it would be a bit unbalanced running a 8800GTX with much less than a 2.8ghz dual core system
 
I'm back, didint get early night.

@ JAKUS, thats correct, CPU is the bottleneck, but guy above seems to think the most powerfull CPU's today are themselfs held back by the top GPU's, IMO thats totally back to front, and has been like that AFAIK from the 7800GTX era, possible before but I never heard much talk on topic then.
 
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well my GTX with a x2 4400 was algging seriously in games with lots of AI ( dirt with lots of cars, oblivion in towns) Bought an e6320 and clocked to 3 ghz and hey presto the lag is gone.

So make of that what you will.
 
Jono8 said:
well my GTX with a x2 4400 was algging seriously in games with lots of AI ( dirt with lots of cars, oblivion in towns) Bought an e6320 and clocked to 3 ghz and hey presto the lag is gone.
Click to expand...

Same for me in source, from a 3000+ to a 3700+ @2.9 my fps pretty much doubled
 
juno_first said:
My 8800GTX 3dmk06 scores:

AMD dualcore @ 2.64 = 9900
Intel Quad @ 3.55 = 13500

nuff said...
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Thats cool but the CPU score means nothing in real use so we cant compare them as the diff in score was all about your CPU, 3D Mark 2005 will fairly test GPU not CPU/GPU.

The guy above is saying he got actual FPS increase in gaming which is what we want to hear as the CPU was holding back the GPU as is always the case somewhere down the road.
 
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3dmark06 is highly CPU limited, I find that 3 out of the 4 games tests don't respond to GPU overclocking much at all with a C2D at stock.

Jokester
 
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