AMD DualCore 2.4GHz vs Core2Duo at gaming with High Res and Max Detail?

[Lord Banshee]

Ok well i have been thinking about what i am willing to upgrade in my computer at the end of the year and i started to think about the age old question, GPUs are the number one bottleneck to games so why should i upgrade my CPU?

My current machine is in the sig basically a 2.4Ghz dual core Athlon64, 2GB, and a X1950XT.

So what i was wondering if there are "ANY" benchmark that are given with 1920x1200 res, max quality, and 4xAA, 8-16xAF that shows one CPU is better than the other? If so could you post the links?

The upgrading i was thinking on doing is getting a 9800GTX (or whatever they call it) and if it is available at the end of the year. And ff the CPU really does make a difference at these high settings than was planning to go all out on 8GB of RAM and Quad Core2Duo.

Before i get any arguments that games will not take advantage of 8GB of ram and 4 cores, i would like to state my machine is used for work too which involve many many different EE engineering and CAD applications and great amount of multitasking.

Thanks

 

[cmdrdredd]

A faster CPU will be able to feed the card a little better. However, if you have to get less ram, a slower video card, or a smaller/slower HDD to get a fast CPU then I would not do that.

That being said a C2D at 2.4Ghz against a X2 at 2.4Ghz will show a performance boost from the C2D.

I'm looking for links that show how a C2D improves gaming against a X2. The articles you would find will be from C2D release which are quite dated, but still valid to the argument. If I find something I'll give a link.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...owdoc.aspx?i=3038&p=15

This is pretty receint and shows the AMD parts vs the Intel parts. Now, they do not use AA/Af in the tests because they are testing the effects of CPU on the gaming performance. Adding AA and AF skews the results because they are heavily dependant on the video card and not the CPU.

Worthy of note that a E6600 at 2.4Ghz is faster in almost every test than an X2 6000+ at 3Ghz.

 

[Spikke]

This might help you.
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html

 

[lyssword]

http://www.hardocp.com/article...t=MTEwOCwzLCxobmV3cw== with 7900gtx no difference between fx62 (2.8ghz) and core2's
http://www.hardocp.com/article...wzLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA== with 8800gtx sli, however, you can start to see differences

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: lyssword
http://www.hardocp.com/article...t=MTEwOCwzLCxobmV3cw== with 7900gtx no difference between fx62 (2.8ghz) and core2's
http://www.hardocp.com/article...wzLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA== with 8800gtx sli, however, you can start to see differences

That's because they are not using CPU limited situations. If you run super high res, 8x AA and 16xAF you will definately not see a difference. All the load is placed on the video card.

For the OP's actual work with CAD etc... the C2D or C2Q will have a significant boost in performance.

 

[apoppin]

having a faster CPU will likely raises your minimum frame rates

and it "depends" how your current games are running whether to upgrade or not ... there are so many factors affecting Frame rates in the GPU-CPU interaction

Basically, my HD2900xt or GTS-640M were bottlenecked badly by my e4300 at stock 1.8Ghz ... oc'ing to 2.5Ghz eliminated most of the bottleneck ... after 3Ghz it is diminishing returns

if you use GTS sli or a GTX, i'd generally recommend a CPU upgrade

 

[NoSoup4You]

C2D is obviously faster, but there's no real reason to upgrade from your 2.4Ghz Opteron if gaming is your priority. A C2Q, P35 mobo, and 8 Gig's of DDR2 will cost you about $700. That will net you perhaps 2-3 fps at 1920x1200 with 4xAA/16AF. Even less if you go higher with AA (16xCSAA).

Having said that, it sounds like you have more needs outside of gaming, so C2Q might be still be worthwhile.

 

[lyssword]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: lyssword
http://www.hardocp.com/article...t=MTEwOCwzLCxobmV3cw== with 7900gtx no difference between fx62 (2.8ghz) and core2's
http://www.hardocp.com/article...wzLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA== with 8800gtx sli, however, you can start to see differences

That's because they are not using CPU limited situations. If you run super high res, 8x AA and 16xAF you will definately not see a difference. All the load is placed on the video card.

For the OP's actual work with CAD etc... the C2D or C2Q will have a significant boost in performance.

in the 2nd link, if you checked it, they run tests @ 2560x1600 2x/4x aa 16xAF. Of course some games get very little benefits from a faster cpu, than others.

 

[Deliximus]

we all know C2D/Q are faster that K8s. But what HardOCP demonstrates is what we users really do with our setup. benchmarking a gaming at 800x600 nowadays doesn't do too much with a current rig. What I want to know is which item to upgrade to make things run at high res either w/ or w/o AA/AF.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Deliximus
we all know C2D/Q are faster that K8s. But what HardOCP demonstrates is what we users really do with our setup. benchmarking a gaming at 800x600 nowadays doesn't do too much with a current rig. What I want to know is which item to upgrade to make things run at high res either w/ or w/o AA/AF.

But the point of CPU comparisons is to see which CPU is faster period. Showing games at 2560x1600 8xaa etc does not show anything except how powerful the GPU is.

That's why the tests are hardocp are useless for this type of comparison while at Tom's Hardware (as much as I don't really care for Tom's) they show more than games. They have 3DS Max tests, 3dMark CPU tests, PCMark etc.

 

[Nathelion]

I think what the OP is asking is which upgrade would be best in his particular situation, not how to properly benchmark a cpu.

 

[themisfit610]

But the point of CPU comparisons is to see which CPU is faster period

But what you fail to realize - is that knowing which CPU "is faster period" does not matter in the gaming context (or any context for that matter)

All that really matters is what product will give you the best performance for what you want to do. Nobody games at 800x600 (unless they have old hardware). It's true that doing CPU comparisons with maxed out graphics is foolish because yes, you will be looking at GPU performance more than anything. But if you look at settings that are actually relevant - i.e. close to maximum that the system can handle where you won't be totally GPU bottlenecked - you will see the differences that actually matter. And besides, even if you do crank up settings to the maximum playable with each system, as long as you keep the video card and other components equal, you're still showcasing the difference between CPUs - just at the settings the user will actually use! I favor a middle of the road approach to satisfy people who like numbers, and people who like actually gaming.

And 3dMark doesn't matter - sorry. Neither does stuff like Sandra memory bandwidth / CPU benchmarks. That synthetic crap is totally useless for evaluating the performance of a product in a real world scenario. Do some content creation tests with Photoshop, Premiere, etc. Do some encoding tests with LAME, OggDrop, and Xvid / x264 / Windows Media. Do some rendering tests with MAX, Maya, POV-ray etc... That's where the CPU differences are really obvious.

 

[Lord Banshee]

Thanks guys those links were exactly what i was looking for.

Some comments:

My current gaming experience works great i have no problems play the two games i play right now at max quality CoH and AOE3. But not to sure about games coming out very soon like Bioshock, man this game looks amazing i just hope it doesn't make me bored as most FPS do after a week, but then again i can say I've played all the most recent FPS too so my taste in games are kinda one sided anyway.

About My main purpose of my machine, well it doesn't have a real main purpose. During the year it is mostly used a a web surfing machine in vista and WinXP with CAD modeling when have to do some 3D model for work. I usually use my laptop to do most of my EE work as sometimes i am at school for 10 hours and i live like 20-30 min away from school. During the summer months and sometimes on the weekend i game.

I know the quad cores will help me 0 -5% currently in all games this year at the setting i would play them at unless Crysis or UT3 really did some mind blowing SMP programming. But it will help out for multi-tasking as i usually have 4-10 application open at one time , it will also help with my CAD work. The 8GB will also help with the above but i think it will help the most of EE application and CAD work, not to mention vista OS response with all that memory... damn it would be fast haha

But yeah thanks again for the sites it was exactly what i wanted.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: themisfit610

But the point of CPU comparisons is to see which CPU is faster period

But what you fail to realize - is that knowing which CPU "is faster period" does not matter in the gaming context (or any context for that matter)

All that really matters is what product will give you the best performance for what you want to do. Nobody games at 800x600 (unless they have old hardware). It's true that doing CPU comparisons with maxed out graphics is foolish because yes, you will be looking at GPU performance more than anything. But if you look at settings that are actually relevant - i.e. close to maximum that the system can handle where you won't be totally GPU bottlenecked - you will see the differences that actually matter. And besides, even if you do crank up settings to the maximum playable with each system, as long as you keep the video card and other components equal, you're still showcasing the difference between CPUs - just at the settings the user will actually use! I favor a middle of the road approach to satisfy people who like numbers, and people who like actually gaming.

And 3dMark doesn't matter - sorry. Neither does stuff like Sandra memory bandwidth / CPU benchmarks. That synthetic crap is totally useless for evaluating the performance of a product in a real world scenario. Do some content creation tests with Photoshop, Premiere, etc. Do some encoding tests with LAME, OggDrop, and Xvid / x264 / Windows Media. Do some rendering tests with MAX, Maya, POV-ray etc... That's where the CPU differences are really obvious.

did you read the OP, obviously not. He said he also uses the machine for work. Including apps that can use 4 cores.

Still the fact is C2D > AMD anything right now. So why are you even arguing...half of your post is arguing with me. Half of it is agreeing with what I just said earlier, C2D is faster.

Plus synthetic tests ARE valid, why? It's simple...whichever can crunch the numbers faster in the test IS a faster chip. Other tests take into account stuff like memory, HDD, which also leads into the motherboard controller(s). To eliminate all that is how you determine which CPU is faster.

 

[themisfit610]

Okay - you missed my whole point. I did read the OP's post, and that's why I added bits about benchmarking content creation etc. These are important parts of my own computer usage, and are real world tests.

My whole point is that when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter which CPU is faster. That sounds outlandish, but consider that all the other stuff you mention like memory, HDD, motherboard chipsets etc forms a platform with the CPU. There's no point (when comparing platforms) to isolate the performance of a specific component. That's the whole point here. We're really comparing platforms.

I won't argue that the C2D isn't faster. I'm no AMD fanboy, and that's not my objective. I just think it's much more valid to look at the overall performance of these platforms than it is to isolate the performance of one component alone. If you can do both, great.

All I'm saying is that synthetic benchies like gaming at 800x600 or Sandra stuff just doesn't represent anything you do with your computer.

~MiSfit

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Okay - you missed my whole point. I did read the OP's post, and that's why I added bits about benchmarking content creation etc. These are important parts of my own computer usage, and are real world tests.

My whole point is that when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter which CPU is faster. That sounds outlandish, but consider that all the other stuff you mention like memory, HDD, motherboard chipsets etc forms a platform with the CPU. There's no point (when comparing platforms) to isolate the performance of a specific component. That's the whole point here. We're really comparing platforms.

I won't argue that the C2D isn't faster. I'm no AMD fanboy, and that's not my objective. I just think it's much more valid to look at the overall performance of these platforms than it is to isolate the performance of one component alone. If you can do both, great.

All I'm saying is that synthetic benchies like gaming at 800x600 or Sandra stuff just doesn't represent anything you do with your computer.

~MiSfit

The whole question is whether or not a C2D would be faster...it is. That is what I'm getting at...show the CPU vs CPU only.

 

[lopri]

No offense to OP but this thread looks kinda flamebait-ish.. I'd just say that upgrades are one's choices. No reason to be feel 'forced'.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: lopri
No offense to OP but this thread looks kinda flamebait-ish.. I'd just say that upgrades are one's choices. No reason to be feel 'forced'.

Most definately. I upgraded from my X2 3800+ running 2.6Ghz on a DFI Lanparty UT SLI-D for a C2D with P5B Deluxe only 5 months after I built it. I couldn't resist the large difference.

 

[bryanW1995]

yeah, well, I HAD TO upgrade from my opteron 180 to an e6750 after only 6 wks because, um, well, I, um, couldn't play kotor at high enough framerates...or, uh, civ4 was running too slowly...never mind...

let's face it, it's just fun to take a cpu that intel/amd says will run at 2.4 or 2.66 or whatever and get it to 3.5-3.8 orthos stable 24/7. Kinda makes you feel like you're sticking it to the man.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: Lord Banshee

So what i was wondering if there are "ANY" benchmark that are given with 1920x1200 res, max quality, and 4xAA, 8-16xAF that shows one CPU is better than the other? If so could you post the links?

The only game today that I can think of will be significantly faster on a C2D architecture is Supreme Commander. Although I couldn't find benchmarks at 1920x1200 4AA/16AF, at 1600x1200 the performance gap is enormous.

Quad @ 2.66ghz is more than twice as fast as FX-60 2.6ghz
In this review - LINK, the performance difference is again very significant.

But if you play racing games, FPS games and not so much strategy, I'd just the graphics card and do a full system overhaul later on when PCIe 2.0 and DDR3 is available.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
Plus synthetic tests ARE valid, why? It's simple...whichever can crunch the numbers faster in the test IS a faster chip. Other tests take into account stuff like memory, HDD, which also leads into the motherboard controller(s). To eliminate all that is how you determine which CPU is faster.

No, they're not valid. Insofar as the results cannot be properly extrapolated into real-world results.
Case in point, a review between the Celeron 440 (Conroe-L), and the AMD Sempron 3600+. In the "toy benchmarks", the Celeron was ahead of the Sempron in all of them. However, when it came to the actual real-world gaming benchmarks, the Sempron beat the Celeron. So benchmark results do NOT represent real-world results.

In fact, for some workloads, an AMD64 is as fast or faster than a C2D. Yet in toy benchmarks, the C2D mops the floor with an AMD64.