extensive comparison on CPU vs GPU

[biostud]

only intel and nvidia

http://www.tomshardware.com/re...-gpu-upgrade,1928.html

 

[Tempered81]

nice chart... Interesting game results. would have liked to see penryns, phenoms and ati cards

 

[manko]

Thanks, good article. I'm building a budget system with an overclocked E2200 now. This article confirms that money spent on the GPU will go a lot further and that even the E2XXX series can still do ok with a decent graphics card.

In Crysis, the E2160 at 3 GHz is able to catch up with the E6750 at 2.67 GHz (standard clock rate). The jump in performance from 2400 to 3000 MHz represents an additional gain of 15%. If you assume an E2160 standard clocking rate of 1800 MHz, this is a total of 40% more overall power that the graphics card is able to transfer to the screen.

World in Conflict: The Geforce 8800 GTS 512 OC with the E2160 at 3 GHz comes close to the level of a E6750 processor, which is almost three times the price.


The E2160 and E6750 with the Geforce 8800 GT or 8800 GTS 512 is the best option, purely from a price point of view.


The difference in performance among CPUs costing $77, $268 or even $1,237 (50, 170, 800 Euros) is actually relatively low. If you compare an E2160 at 1800 MHz to an E6750 or Q6600, you will find a 30% difference in the overall results. If the E2160 is overclocked to 2400 MHz, though, the difference in overall results is just 15%. The smaller cache of the E2160 budget CPU can be overcome by a higher clocking rate of up to 3 GHz.

 

[Lonyo]

That's the message that nVidia have been trying to push.
It wouldn't be too surprising if they gave some encouragement for such an article to be made, and they may have been an influence.

But you can't exactly argue for bias, the message is pretty obvious and people have known it, but it's nice that THG put it in pretty simple terms. There's not always any point in upgrading one component if you're bottlenecked by another.

 

[JACKDRUID]

Great job THG! awesome review!

 

[vexingv]

this is a really extensive comparison. too bad AMD CPU and GPU testing wasn't performed as well. also, i don't think there were any UT3 engine based games in those benchmarks; its inclusion would have covered most of the popular, modern, 3D gaming engines--id tech, source, crysis.

their conclusions make me actually consider OC-ing my S939 X2 4200+ to hold me over for nehalem and improve my framerate in TF2 as, unfortunately, the Source engine seems to be greatly affected by CPU speeds (as opposed to say COD4, which doesn't seem to vary much between CPU speeds).