FINALLY - a website that tells what really matters for gaming!

[RussianSensation]

I haven't posted much on these forums. But I continued to stress one important aspect when I did post, both in video and cpu forums. I even made this thread about 1 year ago when everyone was too excited to scream how A64 is "smoking" P4 in gaming benches:

The Real Deal - If you want a gaming rig, spend 90% of your funds towards a videocard and not the cpu.

I simply could not understand how so many smart forum members that shared their knowledge and information about gaming continued to provide recommendations which I found to be less than ideal given the bang-for-the-buck criteria praised all over these forums. For example, even today I see tons and tons of people here with A64 3200+ @ 2.6 ghz and mere X800s or 6600GTs paired with them. It never made sense to me...

Recently, I went as far as to say that CPU speed does not even matter for real world gaming applications when an argument took place between recommending an FX57 and X2 4800+ cpu to a forum member (please see my response on page 2). Again, I have to make it clear that small differences in minimum framerates and the user's preferences for multi-tasking should still be considered and not discounted. Previously, Tom's Hardware changed they way they benchmarked CPUs when they started testing gaming applications at 1280x1024 at minimum when Anandtech and FiringSquad continue to show 800x600 and 1024x768. Sure, at those resolutions, cpus separated themselves from each other, but no one in their right mind would use them for gaming with a high-end gpu.

I couldn't have agree more with this website:


Article Conclusion:

"Having analyzed the obtained results we can state that any of the contemporary CPUs will be good for games. Let?s take a look at the results once again. Even though all our tests were carried out in real applications are still somewhat synthetic. In order to reveal the performance dependence on the CPU speed we had to set lower resolution, disable anti-aliasing, reduce the textures quality, etc. In these testing conditions all CPUs provided more or less acceptable fps rate. Some processors were faster, some were slower, however, in real gameplay with real graphics quality settings any gamer would use, all this advantage will disappear. This is because the graphics quality and other gaming settings are usually determined by the graphics card potential. By increasing the quality settings, the fps rate will drop down to 40-60 fps, which is ok for normal gaming experience. And you know, any Pentium 4 CPU with the actual working frequency of 3.0GHz and up and any Athlon 64 with the performance rating of 3000+ and up can process that number of frames per second, as we have already shown in our tests. In other words, in real gaming conditions the performance will still be limited by the graphics processor, and not by the CPU.
I have to stress that we arrived at this conclusion having one of the today?s fastest and most powerful graphics cards in our system: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT. And if this powerful graphics card doesn?t require a super-fast CPU, then what can we say about the mainstream graphics solutions? It means that gamers with the mainstream or slower video subsystem shouldn?t even think of getting a powerful CPU: it will be just a waste of money.
So, we can state that games are not the applications you should look at when shopping for the new CPU. There should be some other applications involved, and each of you should define the set of tasks for himself. - XBitLabs - Contemporary CPUs and New Games: No Way to Delusions!

And yet I fail to see why someone would not buy A64 3000+ or 3200+ and 7800GT for example and instead get A64 3800+ X2 and X800GTO (both options come to about the same price with gaming goal in mind) and tempt their luck at unlocking it into X800XT, which is slower than 7800GT anyways.....And the amount of flames AGP users with "ancient" P4s and S754 systems receive from comments such as CPU bottlenecking is mind-boggling.

Please feel free to comment.

__________________________________________________________________________

UPDATED: Part II has been released - Sempron and Celeron D processors thrown into the mix

 

[rise]

why would you recommend a 3800 or 4000?

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
And yet I fail to see why someone would not buy A64 3000+ or 3200+ and 7800GT for example and instead get A64 3800+ X2 and X800GTO (both options come to about the same price with gaming goal in mind) and tempt their luck at unlocking it into X800XT, which is slower than 7800GT anyways.....And the amount of flames AGP users with "ancient" P4s and S754 systems receive from comments such as CPU bottlenecking is mind-boggling.

Please feel free to comment.

Because games are not our #1 priority for many of us. Especially with the large amounts of multitasking that dual core opens up.

I do agree though, you're much better served by getting a 3000+ and overclocking that with a 7800GT (funny, my rig is a 3000+ @ 2.6 and my 7800GT is in the mail on it's way to me as we speak!), than going for something crazy like an FX-55 or FX-57 and an X800GTO.

 

[Mik3y]

Excellent thread. I say STICKY here!

 

[xenolith]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

... instead get A64 3800+ X2 and X800GTO ... and tempt their luck at unlocking it into X800XT ...

I thought people were taking the X800GTO and "unlocking" the 16 pixel pipes making it a XT850XTPE?

 

[Hacp]

Thats only GTO squared. The regular gtos have a chance of unlocking but its hit or miss. They also can't be oced to XT speeds either.

 

[Furen]

Just so everyone knows a "bottleneck" is the component that holds back the others (basically the weakest link in the system). If your framerate increases (with a decent proportion to the clock increase, if the upgraded CPU is from the same family) then your CPU is a bottleneck. It doesnt mean that the gameplay will suck or anything of the sort, just that the CPU is the weakest part of the system.

For a 3200+ I'd say an X800XL on the higher end, or an X800GT (both of which are available in AGP, according to Newegg, anyway).

 

[Markfw]

Again, the thing I would REALLY like to see these guys do, is fully configure the PC's in these tests, with anti-virus, anti-spyware, and a couple other normal utilities for games. THEN run benchmarks. I totally agree, that IF the only thing running is the game, the GPU is the most important thing. That is a big IF, as it never happens in real life.

Also, don't forget the new multi-threaded drivers from Nvidia, even in their first release do 5-50% improvement in dual-core mode (usually 5-10 I grant you)

 

[xenolith]

Originally posted by: Hacp
Thats only GTO squared. The regular gtos have a chance of unlocking but its hit or miss. They also can't be oced to XT speeds either.

So you're saying the gtos are unlockable, but just more hit or miss? And the gto2s are a sure thing?

 

[Zebo]

LOL Average frames are intels freind.. this ones's better paints true picture of what dogs they are. And BTW where is A64's in that article? You're actually trying to prove CPU does'nt matter when they leave the top dog out???! <Crazy>


http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1854788,00.asp

The results speak for themselves. The average frame rate across all six games for the Athlon 64 system is 61fps, while the Pentium 4 averaged 54fps. That's a 13% difference?not tiny, but not large enough to bowl us over. What is more important, we feel, is how often a game runs slowly enough that you can feel it. This methodology is consistent with the one used by a new performance analysis tool in the works at Intel. We picked arbitrary performance thresholds, but these are numbers based on years of game playing experience. We picked frame rates at which you actually notice an impact on how the game feels, not the absolute minimum required to play and enjoy a game. This is where the Athlon 64 really kicks the Pentium 4 in the teeth. Our P4 system spent almost a third of the time, across all games, beneath our target minimum FPS. The Athlon 64 system, on the other hand, spent only 14% of its time there. This is a difference of a whopping 121%!

Recently, I went as far as to say that CPU speed does not even matter for real world gaming applications

Why does'nt this forum have an ignore list yet? Seriously RS you're way smarter than this.

CPU speed does'nt matter?

Far Cry 1.3 HardwareOC Far Cry Benchmark Demo , max details, AF = 1, AA = 0, 1600 x 1200

A643000 Stock = 51.20 FPS

A643000 800Mhz OC = 84.14 FPS

Nevermind the fact most games that are very CPU reliant due to the physics engine, A.I., and such, and a good Processor speed can be the difference between playable or not.

WoW is a prime example as even a 6800U bonks with just a 2500+ coupled with it, make that a A64@2.4ghz+ and you can tack on as much as 100% more FPS=Huge performance boost.

 

[hooflung]

While I would say that any Athlon 64 and midrange card, such as the 6800 or X800PRO, would provide you with pretty good gaming experience ( I have a 3000+ s754 and the 6800 and it games JUST FINE ) I will say that my X2 3800+ and 6800 are a hell of a lot nicer. A 7800 would just be a waste for me. It doesn't take that much to play City of Villians and the occasional skill change in EVE. Hell I even have an old DX7 Radeon DDR 32mb that can do both those chores and not as bad as one might think. Seems a bit wierd that the Radeon DDR and its 128bit 333mhz memory can still play dx9 games (even better than some true DX8 cards with the same settings.)

 

[Corporate Thug]

another excellent post from RR

you da man!

 

[fatty4ksu]

FANtasatic post@

 

[Doctorweir]

Man...we are a overclocking community...we like buying cheap stuff and turn it into better components.
That's for both CPU AND graphics. Never seen one of the serious guys here to recommend buying a FX-57 when you can get the same performance with a cheap 3200+ and a little effort...
And btw most of the guys here have an "upper class" graphics board from what I see. I stick with my 6600GT 'cos it's fair enough for MY purposes. I will also keep it when I upgrade to an Opteron 165, because it is enough for ME. Besides it's helluva fast b1tch and runs everything smooth...
/rant

 

[n7]

It's nothing new that the video card is the most important factor for gaming.

What i found most interesting about that article is how horribly Intel CPUs do in games.
Ever since AMD introduced the A64, there's been no contest, but i never really realized how much of a joke they are in comparison.
The other very interesting thing is that some newer games are indeed multithreaded

X2 (or Opteron dually) FTW!

 

[anandtechrocks]

Originally posted by: Doctorweir
Man...we are a overclocking community...we like buying cheap stuff and turn it into better components.
That's for both CPU AND graphics. Never seen one of the serious guys here to recommend buying a FX-57 when you can get the same performance with a cheap 3200+ and a little effort...
And btw most of the guys here have an "upper class" graphics board from what I see. I stick with my 6600GT 'cos it's fair enough for MY purposes. I will also keep it when I upgrade to an Opteron 165, because it is enough for ME. Besides it's helluva fast b1tch and runs everything smooth...
/rant

God your 6600 GT is amazing... I wouldn't get a new one either! My 6600 GT runs FEAR perfectly and according to the FEAR video test I never drop below 40 FPS!. (all medium settings, no shadows, 1024x768)

 

[DasFox]

RussianSensation in a NUTSHELL, it's all just basic sense in computing and with just a little experience easy to understand. Your not going to go out and buy a FX 57 and then slap in a FX 5200 and expect much here and then the same said for taking a older agp system running a T-bird or Duron and slap in a 6800 GT and expect much there either.

The point to this is, there needs to be some balance with the parts, otherwise things that are extreme on one end just choke things, as they say in the industry "Bottleneck"

NO CPU is important, ALL parts are important! A very uneven balance of parts will choke, bottleneck gaming performance!

 

[classy]

They are an excellent website and it is well done as usual for them. The question is how much multi-tasking do folks do. I believe I represent maybe 95% of the population and truthfully cpus have become so powerful in all honesty you can't really tell the difference. And as for encoding can a person tell the difference of 25-30 seconds?

 

[JRich]

I thought physics were CPU calculated? I do agree, though, that a GPU upgrade would be better for the most part.

 

[A554SS1N]

Alot of people may get a good CPU and a less good graphics card because they are constrained by budget, and having a fast CPU means that a little further down the road when upgrading is made, only a new graphics card would be needed, and possibly a little more RAM. Cutting back on the CPU when building a new system just because it's Ok now seems like a way of limiting performance two years down the road when things are a little more CPU bound. I'd rather know I've built a system that has less to upgrade in the future, rather than one where I'd need to change more items. I must admit my definition of a good choice of CPU now, though, is an A64 3200+ And a choice of a 6600GT is ample enough for me to get me through to the next major speed bump in mainstream cards...

 

[Markbnj]

I had a chance to "test" this anecdotally when I upgraded from my 2.5 ghz Pentium to a 4400+ a couple months ago. I swapped in the same 6800GT that I had been using in the old machine. Not the top of the line card, but not bad either. In my case the graphics card was not the bottleneck: the CPU and amount of ram were. Games like BF2 run so much smoother in the new rig that it is like night and day.

So I agree with those who talked about balancing components. If it is dumb to have an X2 4800+ and a GeForce 5500, it is just as dumb to have a 7800GTX and a 2.5 ghz P4 .

 

[Geomagick]

In the last year I have done 1 cpu upgrade and one graphics card upgrade.

The cost in both cases was very similar.

The first was going from an Athlon 64 4000+ Clawhammer to an Athlon 64 X2 4400+. The diffference in normal usage was pronounced, the difference in games was virtually nill.

The second was going from a 6800GT to a 7800GTX. The difference in normal use was nill. The difference in games was astounding.

The more effective upgrade for me overall was the graphics.

 

[wseyller]

I agree the video card is the main component for gaming but at certain resolutions if your cpu is not up to par it can hold back your video card so your gpu will not preform as well as it could.

 

[tornadog]

finally my decision to go for a AMD 3000 and a 7800 GT stands vindicated, because my comp is primarily a gaming machine. it does absolutely nothing else. I could even call it an overly expensive game console....

 

[DarkKnight69]

I think it is fnny when people spend the money of a 3800+ or a 4000+ and a 7800gtx when they have a 17" crt. I run any game on the market not 1280x1024 full aa/af and details on full with my dothan @2.7 and my 6800gt at ultra speeds.