CPU and Video card equality

[Haervii]

I've always heard about how bottlenecks form when the CPU or video card is faster than the video card or CPU. (e.g. an ATI Rage Pro with a 1.2Ghz Athlon or a V5500 with a CyrixII)
So with a Duron 900-950Mhz and a Geforce2MX, which would be the bottleneck? and how about that OCed Duron with a V5500?


Thanx for any replies/comments, etc.

 

[Viper GTS]

It would depend on what resolution you were running. With either board, at 1024x768 the video card would be the bottleneck. Also with either board, @ 640x480 the CPU would be the bottleneck.

Viper GTS

 

[Noriaki]

It's the same for any CPU/video card combo

Low res the CPU is the bottleneck
High res the video card's memory is

 

[Viper GTS]

High res the video card's memory is

Not necessarily, it could be fillrate limited. Remember, rendering at 1280x960 requires four times the time as rendering at 640x480. If a GPU can spit out 100 fps at 1280x960, then it could render ~400 at 640x480. But there's no way the CPU could keep up.

Viper GTS

 

[Rand]

There is no set speed at which any certain video card/processor will be the bottleneck.

What the bottleneck is in a system depends as much upon what color depth and resolution your running at and what the application is than what the processor/video card is.
In a FPS like Q3 you could be video card limited at a resolution of 1024x768 even with a Geforce2 if you had anything 650MHz or faster, wheareas in say most RPG games you'd likely be processor limited even at a resolution like 1600x1200 even with something like a 1.2GHz Athlon even if you only had something like a Voodoo3 for a video card.