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Single 5870 cpu scaling Review
- Thread starter Final8y
- Start date
What a useless review.
Obviously Anno is very cpu intensive and so is WOW. In all the other games there is very little to choose from them.
And why have a q6600 at stock compared to a i7 920 at 3.5Ghz? It would have being more useful to show stock speeds and then overclocked speeds like having the q6600 at 3.5Ghz.
And as for AMD Phenom, again not fair to not overclock it and compare to a i7 920.
All I can gain from that review is that WOW and ANNO like multi core processors and gains can be made from overclocking the cpu.
As for all the other games, all I can read into that is that a q6600 at 3.5Ghz will run them all as fast as an i7 920 at 3.5Ghz.
Obviously Anno is very cpu intensive and so is WOW. In all the other games there is very little to choose from them.
And why have a q6600 at stock compared to a i7 920 at 3.5Ghz? It would have being more useful to show stock speeds and then overclocked speeds like having the q6600 at 3.5Ghz.
And as for AMD Phenom, again not fair to not overclock it and compare to a i7 920.
All I can gain from that review is that WOW and ANNO like multi core processors and gains can be made from overclocking the cpu.
As for all the other games, all I can read into that is that a q6600 at 3.5Ghz will run them all as fast as an i7 920 at 3.5Ghz.
Well it still got comfortably beat by a 733Mhz slower i5 750.
The review is not intended to be a CPU comparison, it's to show CPU scaling of 5870 on various model/speed CPU's.
It does show though that i5/i7 are in a league of their own when it comes to CPU heavy games.
Yet again, still a limited selection. Where was the q9xxx running at 3.5Ghz? I would have liked to have seen the difference between that and a i7 920.
Also, does it keep scaling or hit a limit? Is there anything to be gained going past 3.5Ghz on an i7 or even would a 4GHz+ q9xxx give the same framerates as the 3.5Ghz i7?
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
Not really, it shows in two specific games its got a lead, in all but Anno and WoW, its equal or better than the i5 750, you'll probably notice that in a couple of the games the Phenom is actually marginally faster at 1920x1200, in those same games the jump from a 2.66Ghz i5 750, to a i7 920, overclocked to 3.5Ghz, gave you no noticeable performance increase.
The thing of it is, 99% of games follow the patterns shown with Crysis and the other games that Intel can't beat out AMD in cpu performance, because you simply don't need that much cpu. The difference being that you can generally get a cheaper mobo, a cheaper chip for the same end result.
In something like Anno, you simply don't need more than the phenom offers, its a RTS, its slow as crap, anything over 20fps would be pretty damn smooth. C&C locked itself in to 30fps , because it doesn't require anything more at all for complete smoothness, a feat the Phenom achieves in Anno.
You don't buy a 5870 to play at 1280x1024, unless somethings wrong with you in the head, at 1920x1200, theres just nothing between the chips, at all, except in now much you buy the computer for.
Considering AMD can make a profit on a 965, while Intel mostly priced the i5 750 where it did just to pee off AMD, cut into its sales regardless of profit for Intel, it shows that AMD have a decent, if budget chip that might not be the lastest greatest fastest chip for running encoding all day long.
Then again, considering the phenom 720, which is significantly cheaper than all the Intel CPU's there, matches the i7 920 at 3.5Ghz, in 3 of the 5 benchies, still offers more than playable framerates in both the other games, while being less than 50% of the cost of the i7 920, which is also overclocked, I'd probably go ahead and say anything over £90 is totally unnecessary for a top gaming rig to get the best out of a 5870.
THe only issue is the only dual core they used was released, what, 4 years ago now, maybe 5, it was over £100, you can get a better Intel and amd cpu for half that cost now but we don't know how they perform. They also didn't use AMD's budget quad core at what, £70, which would have given very similar results to the 965, at a cost Intel can't come close to matching.
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Soldato
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 6,672
I'm a big advocate of not overspending on the CPU when it comes to gaming, and those graphs show why - they are almost all flat once you go beyond Core2 E6600 (2.4Ghz), especially when at 1920x1200.
However, a quick skim read of the article seems they have come to the opposite conclusion and suggest people need Core i5/i7 to get the most out of the cards??
OK, I admit that better CPU = better framerates, but look at the cost of these things vs. the performance improvements you get!
There is no way I'm upgrading from an E7300 (granted it's at 4Ghz) to get a measly 5% or so better framerates for what, about £400? (Since I need to upgrade the CPU, motherboard and memory). I suggest others don't bother either.
On the other hand, the Overclocker inside me wants every last bleeding Mhz and benchmark point
However, a quick skim read of the article seems they have come to the opposite conclusion and suggest people need Core i5/i7 to get the most out of the cards??
OK, I admit that better CPU = better framerates, but look at the cost of these things vs. the performance improvements you get!
There is no way I'm upgrading from an E7300 (granted it's at 4Ghz) to get a measly 5% or so better framerates for what, about £400? (Since I need to upgrade the CPU, motherboard and memory). I suggest others don't bother either.
On the other hand, the Overclocker inside me wants every last bleeding Mhz and benchmark point
Sauce? And is that compared to an overclocked q9xxx? I would love to know how much GTA4 or NFS would gain going from a 4.6Ghz q9650 to a 4.2Ghz i7.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
horribly poorly done port = not a reliable test of the need for cpu power.
As anyone with half a brain can see, that chart shows only the E6600 giving lower than expected results at the resolution you buy the graphics card for. even then a E6600 does 3Ghz + with ease, I would imagine overclocked to even 3Ghz, let alone a possible 3.6Ghz it might do, it would give very similar results to the rest.
Fact is, the 720 phenom, well I wouldn't be surprised to see a X4 beat it in several games that love more cores, but not by a huge amount.
Frankly with a quad core available at £70=80, anything else is going to be overkill, a £50 dual/trip core from EITHER company bought today would not be cpu limited in most games, and overclocked to even mid range overclocks on stock volts, would likely give almost identical results to basically any higher cost CPU.
Gaming, save £50 for a cpu, buy the best gpu you can afford, anything left over add on to your cpu and upgrade a little.
As anyone with half a brain can see, that chart shows only the E6600 giving lower than expected results at the resolution you buy the graphics card for. even then a E6600 does 3Ghz + with ease, I would imagine overclocked to even 3Ghz, let alone a possible 3.6Ghz it might do, it would give very similar results to the rest.
Fact is, the 720 phenom, well I wouldn't be surprised to see a X4 beat it in several games that love more cores, but not by a huge amount.
Frankly with a quad core available at £70=80, anything else is going to be overkill, a £50 dual/trip core from EITHER company bought today would not be cpu limited in most games, and overclocked to even mid range overclocks on stock volts, would likely give almost identical results to basically any higher cost CPU.
Gaming, save £50 for a cpu, buy the best gpu you can afford, anything left over add on to your cpu and upgrade a little.
If there was no scaling the average frame-rates would be the same all across the board, in 4 out of 5 of the tests 5870 shows better performance when used in conjunction with an i5/i7, albeit at low res when the GPU is not causing bottleneck.
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