Even with Conroe on the way, are CPU's dead for gaming?

[josh6079]

With the news about DX10 and teh R600,http://www.ukgamer.com/article.php4?id=322&page=1, if you were a gamer, what would you do with a processor as good as the Conroe? I mean, physics calculations are starting to get taken into the hands of "special" processors, visual graphics are being processed more and more strictly by GPU's and less dependent on CPU's......

What does a good processor do anymore for gaming?

 

[Megatomic]

AI? Something's gotta make the game run, it's not all graphics and physics....

 

[biostud]

Seems like a vidocard will be more like a console plug-in, specially when ATi has demonstarted their cards processing both physics and sound.

 

[fixxxer0]

Well, this is why I use a computer for gaming and not an X-box or PS3 whatever....

My computer does much much more things. Many of which are dependant on the processor. And I assume MOST people do more than gaming.


So maybe the fastest OC'd processor won't get u 30 more fps, but it will let you keep youre 60or whatever fps while you do other things in the background now.... the beauty of dual core.

 

[BrownTown]

The CPU still does alot of stuff, including running the drivers that tell the graphics cards what to do...

 

[Athlongamer]

Originally posted by: fixxxer0
Well, this is why I use a computer for gaming and not an X-box or PS3 whatever....

My computer does much much more things. Many of which are dependant on the processor. And I assume MOST people do more than gaming.


So maybe the fastest OC'd processor won't get u 30 more fps, but it will let you keep youre 60or whatever fps while you do other things in the background now.... the beauty of dual core.

scraight up dawg...

lol

I agree

 

[450R]

If we're staying within the bounds of gaming - artificial intelligence is in need of some serious attention. I have yet to see anything I would consider even close to good AI in today's games. It's almost like some developers are intentionally skipping out on the SP/cooperative side of games just to avoid coding AI, and I for one am tired of empty-shell releases for MP kiddies like BF2. I'm tired of the fluff.

 

[wpeng]

I use my computer for other things than gaming, but I don't do processor intensive stuff. So can someone answer the question? If you are gaming, at what point (processor speed, etc..)does the processor stop mattering?

 

[bluemax]

The Celeron is a good example here. There are **SOME** games that do almost as well with a CeleronD as a much higher processor because it's strictly video performance. There are others that the CPU makes a much larger difference on.

Though if you had VERY little expendable cash (like me) it would be better to get a cheap Sempron and a decent video card, than one good processor and a crappy video card.

Sempron + cheap PCI-e16 motherboard + 7600 video = great performance and value!!

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: josh6079
What does a good processor do anymore for gaming?

Yeah, why the heck do we need to spend our hard earned bucks on that silly little heat producer anyways? I say we just leave that stinkin' little socket empty, 's what I say! That $300 plus $50 for a top notch HSF could come in handy for a second video card. DOWN WITH CPUS!!! See, we don't need those things after all. I'm just gonna reach down and rip out mine just to show you guys th a a a

 

[bluemax]

Bye Zap. Yeesh.....

For gaming:

$100 processor + $200 video card beats
$200 processor + $100 video card ANY day!

If you're on a TIGHT budget, sink the money into video more than processor. Follow my advice from two posts up.

 

[josh6079]

Whoa, I wasn't trying to bash CPU's altogether, but I'm really just curious as to what kind of actuall stress is put on a CPU when gaming. I know AI can be a big factor, but isn't as of yet. 450R commented on games like BF2 to be lacking in that area. And even when a game comes out with good AI people complain about it being too hard. e.g. the ending levels of Far Cry (actually I remember a lot of people complaining about the whole games difficulty) I'm all for good AI, and if that is the only thing that my CPU is going to be contributing than great. But, as of now and in the few months that are left until Conroe, what game is going to put the AI stress on such a processor?

 

[JPH1121]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
The CPU still does alot of stuff, including running the drivers that tell the graphics cards what to do...

I heard that Vista is going to have an API that permits compiled programs to speak directly to hardware rather than going through drivers.

No evidence on that one though or anything of any sort to back it up...

 

[bluemax]

Originally posted by: JPH1121

Originally posted by: BrownTown
The CPU still does alot of stuff, including running the drivers that tell the graphics cards what to do...

I heard that Vista is going to have an API that permits compiled programs to speak directly to hardware rather than going through drivers.

No evidence on that one though or anything of any sort to back it up...

DX10 will lean that way too.

 

[the Chase]

Well... Watch the Conroe benches compared to A64 benches at 1600x1200 res. gaming benchmarks and decide then. I think it will be a small increase. I'm going to upgrade my vid card before I would go to Conroe but eventually I want to upgrade to a dual core. Probably the cheapest model Conroe and OC it to hopefully 3Ghz and be set for 2-3 years. I know (and somewhat agree with) your reasoning. We keep adding hardware and software optimizations while CPU's keep getting faster. Might start to get to be a tough sell for AMD/Intel soon to get people to upgrade.

 

[fixxxer0]

If you read all the articles on DX10 and its architecture and "goal"..... its true, we are moving away from CPU being used for graphics AT ALL.


The GPU is going to have to have some serious changes, especially since they are usually costing more than the processors people have in their computers.

Where it is going - no one can say for sure, but I don't expect the whole $500 replaceable card thing to be sticking around in the next 5 years...


I also agree with what people have said about the AI being serverly lacking, its pretty true - with MAYBE the exception of HL2, I haven't seen any major changes in the last 5 years, and the mutliplayer only games are ever so popular now. Maybe they got the AI to work so good, it took over... and its really all the software engineers now... they opened the company google.....and are goign to take over the world!!!

I need sleep.

 

[hardwareking]

the cpu will play a part when u game at low resolutions.Where the bottleneck is the cpu itself.
And for anything to work u need a cpu.
My view is that gfx card>cpu when it comes to upgrades.

 

[jlbenedict]

The gaming market composes of a very tiny share of the overall computer component market. To think that gaming is the only arena that justifies the use of a high performance CPU is foolish. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure if gaming didn't exist, there would be a noticable hit on revenues on many companies.. but, for the majority, gaming is a fraction.
There is still a need to further develop CPU technology. Better CPUS will come to the market whether gaming fully needs it or not.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Originally posted by: hardwareking
the cpu will play a part when u game at low resolutions.Where the bottleneck is the cpu itself.
And for anything to work u need a cpu.
My view is that gfx card>cpu when it comes to upgrades.

Even at low resolutions nowadays the video card is more important than the CPU when it comes to frame rates.

 

[Noubourne]

SLI makes the CPU and memory subsystem very important in today's games. You can't test a top end SLI performance on a budget processor because the CPU becomes the bottleneck and prevents the SLI setup from performing; a slow CPU can't feed it with enough information to keep it saturated, so it ends up sitting there waiting for more instructions.

Just look at the recent Oblivion CPU tests; if you have a top end SLI/crossfire rig; the bigger the CPU the better. Of course, you don't need an FX-60 to run an X1300 GPU, but if you have a top of the line CPU; then the better the GPU setup you can get the better it will be.

Generally you want to push BOTH the CPU and the GPU to their limits. This is done by matching GPU with a CPU that is capable of feeding it without spending more than is necessary on your CPU. The "art" of building a computer without wasting your hard-earned money. It's the reason Anandtech exists!

 

[imported_goku]

Originally posted by: jlbenedict
The gaming market composes of a very tiny share of the overall computer component market. To think that gaming is the only arena that justifies the use of a high performance CPU is foolish. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure if gaming didn't exist, there would be a noticable hit on revenues on many companies.. but, for the majority, gaming is a fraction.
There is still a need to further develop CPU technology. Better CPUS will come to the market whether gaming fully needs it or not.

Removing gaming the from equation, what is the point of a fast CPU then for the typical consumer? Does joe-nobody really need a 2GHZ Pentium M just to hookup his iCrap to his computer? Or to look at his kiddie porn collection? What about soccermom sally? Does she really need all that speed to look up recipies and how to deal with her failing marriage? I think not. They need to work on making high quality, low power usage computers that are affordable. They need to stop putting such expensive processors in these systems with friggen integrated graphics, even if the person doesn't game, they'll still benefit from a dedicated video card. They should be having $200 video cards and $50 processors because the performance benefit from a $200 processor isn't really that much anymore..

 

[coolpurplefan]

Unreal Tournament 2007. That`s why.

I think that will push your whole machine. And oddly enough, even after announcing that Epic will come out with Unreal Engine 3, they said they are already working on UE4. Welll, with up to 2 million pixels on the screen, it might take everything to run it at acceptable frame rates. However, I guess the only way to run games based on UE4 will be with quad cores.

Me just guessing anyway.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Originally posted by: 450R
If we're staying within the bounds of gaming - artificial intelligence is in need of some serious attention. I have yet to see anything I would consider even close to good AI in today's games. It's almost like some developers are intentionally skipping out on the SP/cooperative side of games just to avoid coding AI, and I for one am tired of empty-shell releases for MP kiddies like BF2. I'm tired of the fluff.

The problem here isn't the amount of computational power available for AI. The problem here is that sophisticated AIs aren't terribly common; they're very difficult to produce.

 

[jlbenedict]

Originally posted by: goku

Originally posted by: jlbenedict
The gaming market composes of a very tiny share of the overall computer component market. To think that gaming is the only arena that justifies the use of a high performance CPU is foolish. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure if gaming didn't exist, there would be a noticable hit on revenues on many companies.. but, for the majority, gaming is a fraction.
There is still a need to further develop CPU technology. Better CPUS will come to the market whether gaming fully needs it or not.

Removing gaming the from equation, what is the point of a fast CPU then for the typical consumer? Does joe-nobody really need a 2GHZ Pentium M just to hookup his iCrap to his computer? Or to look at his kiddie porn collection? What about soccermom sally? Does she really need all that speed to look up recipies and how to deal with her failing marriage? I think not. They need to work on making high quality, low power usage computers that are affordable. They need to stop putting such expensive processors in these systems with friggen integrated graphics, even if the person doesn't game, they'll still benefit from a dedicated video card. They should be having $200 video cards and $50 processors because the performance benefit from a $200 processor isn't really that much anymore..

The typical "joe-nobody" consumer is again a small fraction of the CPU market..
there will still be a huge need for fast cpu's in business's, government, data centers, etc.. etc.. I'm sure that market is a large majority.. The need will always be there..
In addition, operating system requirements are pushing for faster cpu speeds as well.
What are the requirments for Vista? I'm not sure.. but it isn't exactly slow.. In a few years, XP will no longer be supported.. therefore, "Joe-Nobody" will need to purchase a faster system just to keep up with the operating system requirements to check his/her email, check out his porn etc...

 

[imported_goku]

Originally posted by: jlbenedict

Originally posted by: goku

Originally posted by: jlbenedict
The gaming market composes of a very tiny share of the overall computer component market. To think that gaming is the only arena that justifies the use of a high performance CPU is foolish. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure if gaming didn't exist, there would be a noticable hit on revenues on many companies.. but, for the majority, gaming is a fraction.
There is still a need to further develop CPU technology. Better CPUS will come to the market whether gaming fully needs it or not.

Removing gaming the from equation, what is the point of a fast CPU then for the typical consumer? Does joe-nobody really need a 2GHZ Pentium M just to hookup his iCrap to his computer? Or to look at his kiddie porn collection? What about soccermom sally? Does she really need all that speed to look up recipies and how to deal with her failing marriage? I think not. They need to work on making high quality, low power usage computers that are affordable. They need to stop putting such expensive processors in these systems with friggen integrated graphics, even if the person doesn't game, they'll still benefit from a dedicated video card. They should be having $200 video cards and $50 processors because the performance benefit from a $200 processor isn't really that much anymore..

The typical "joe-nobody" consumer is again a small fraction of the CPU market..
there will still be a huge need for fast cpu's in business's, government, data centers, etc.. etc.. I'm sure that market is a large majority.. The need will always be there..
In addition, operating system requirements are pushing for faster cpu speeds as well.
What are the requirments for Vista? I'm not sure.. but it isn't exactly slow.. In a few years, XP will no longer be supported.. therefore, "Joe-Nobody" will need to purchase a faster system just to keep up with the operating system requirements to check his/her email, check out his porn etc...

That won't matter because it's not like he'll be upgrading his machine anytime soon. I doubt he would know how to install windows. If he wants a new OS, he'll buy a new computer..