Originally posted by: Markfw900
You guys missed my point. A single core Athlon64 still beat a P4 with HT enabled in an SMP enabled game, and wiped the floor with them in dual core. The P4 even with HT is crap for games compared to the Athlon64 single or dual core.
3800+ got 87 frames vs. 3.2ghz with 82.9 frames at 1280x1024 4AA - is that something you are going to notice?
The fact that a 3-year-old P4 2.4C/2.6/2.8@3.2ghz (or stock 3.2ghz) is closely matching 3800+ in games is pretty good, dont you think? But to be fair, you'll never notice the difference in any game between P4 3.2ghz and 3800+ because your graphics card will tank in all newest games before you become GPU limited.
That is why you see 3800+ get 66.2 frames, P4 3.2ghz get 66.8 frames and X2 4800+ get 67.6 frames at 1600x1200 6AA/16AF - all are playable framerates though. So when you say that P4 is crap for games, that may be so at 800x600. Yet anyone with a decent graphics card (probably most gamers who have these high end cpus) will max their graphics card first. Xbitlabs showed this exact scenario in their recent cpu analysis.
I think what is interesting to take away here is thgat besides these benchmarks we have no seen anything remotely close that would want to make someone get a dual core for gaming. Perhaps now game developers will take notice and add in more detail and transfer more work load on the cpu. Nowdays, the only way to ensure smooth gameplay is buying the fastest graphics card you can get your hands on. That begs a question, why even get anything faster than 3000+ for games if you'll notice no benefit?