Does running games in higher resolution tax CPU more?

[futurefields]

And if so, why?

 

[BrightCandle]

Depends on the game. Some games will run higher algorithms for effects on the CPU and thus end up slowing down considerably based on CPU speed as the resolution climbs (I think Arma 2 is one of those). Ideally these effects should be run on the GPU but its not always possible. But by and large most games don't scale badly with resolution changes due to a CPU limitation.

But the truth is unless we scoured the code of all these games we can't know for sure.

 

[anthd56]

As said it depends on the game. I believe most games tax the GPU more when resolution is increased rather than an increase of CPU usage. This is because the GPU has to push out more pixels whereas the calculations the CPU have to do is mostly the same.

But RTS/MMORPG depend a lot on CPU power due to unit calculations I believe (correct me if wrong) so sometimes you're held back by the CPU and even increasing the resolution doesn't lower the FPS as the GPU isn't being used much.

 

[tweakboy]

Good info. I thought it was a GPU thing myself. Cuz my system works avg 30 percent on games I play. That is not taxing CPU,, taxing is 100 percent cpu usage and wanting even more.