Go crazy and buy an FX with your brand spanking new 7800GTX???

[Zebo]

http://www.firingsquad.com/print_articl...urrent_section=Home&fs_article_id=1701

Video card is still the limitation at higher res.

 

[Noid]

opps ... forgot this is a PCI-E card ..

n/m

 

[T9D]

Nice benches and test.

I dont understand their conclusions though. They say the 64's and some others past a certain speed are enough to keep the card fed well. But yet all the tests the FPS are almost exactly the same. Seems like they are all bottlenecked the same. We need much faster processors still.

"Based on our testing, the sweet spot kicks in somewhere around the A64 3500+ range."

Yeah in ONE test it showed that. For whatever reason Halflife 2 at one rez showed a difference. And it was at the lowest rez where it should have been the most CPU bound. I think the right conclusion should be that CPU's need to catch up a lot. But otherwise it's a good comparison.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: tk109
Nice benches and test.

I dont understand their conclusions though. They say the 64's and some others past a certain speed are enough to keep the card fed well. But yet all the tests the FPS are almost exactly the same. Seems like they are all bottlenecked the same. We need much faster processors still.

"Based on our testing, the sweet spot kicks in somewhere around the A64 3500+ range."

Yeah in ONE test it showed that. For whatever reason Halflife 2 at one rez showed a difference.

HL2 is more cpu dependant than other games because of all the physics calculations. In general, however, if all the tests are the same with different cpu's, then it means the game is GPU bound, and the cpu is not the limiting factor.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

again another reason to go X2 instead of FX

 

[aatf510]

Very nice benches!!

 

[Elfear]

Sorry to nitpick, but the author's example of a Ferrari with a 14" tire was lame. The height of the tire has very little to do with how well a car can accelerate, within reason of course. Tire width, and to a lesser degree aspect ratio, have a much greater impact on a car's ability to hook-up.

 

[aatf510]

Originally posted by: Elfear
Sorry to nitpick, but the author's example of a Ferrari with a 14" tire was lame. The height of the tire has very little to do with how well a car can accelerate, within reason of course. Tire width, and to a lesser degree aspect ratio, have a much greater impact on a car's ability to hook-up.

I am sure 14" tires would have too soft of a sidewall for a Ferrari to corner. Also, I doubt that you wouldn't be able to find supercar level performance tires to fit on 14" wheels.

 

[StrangerGuy]

People who buy 7800GTXs are going to run them at 16x12 or higher anyway. At those resolutions the GPU is going to be the deciding factor on frame rates.

 

[ND40oz]

Originally posted by: toattett

Originally posted by: Elfear
Sorry to nitpick, but the author's example of a Ferrari with a 14" tire was lame. The height of the tire has very little to do with how well a car can accelerate, within reason of course. Tire width, and to a lesser degree aspect ratio, have a much greater impact on a car's ability to hook-up.

I am sure 14" tires would have too soft of a sidewall for a Ferrari to corner. Also, I doubt that you wouldn't be able to find supercar level performance tires to fit on 14" wheels.

Here, these Hoosiers go down to 13" wheels, while 13 or 14 inch wheels probably wouldn't clear the brake rotors and calipers on a ferrari, there are plenty of cars that autocross, time trial, ralley, ect. with smaller wheels.

Hoosier A3S05

 

[CraigRT]

looks like it's time to upgrade both my CPU and my vid. card

 

[imported_Kensai]

They got their clockspeeds wrong.

3800+ is 2.4GHz not 2.2GHz
3500+ is 2.2GHz not 2.0GHz

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: Kensai
They got their clockspeeds wrong.

3800+ is 2.4GHz not 2.2GHz
3500+ is 2.2GHz not 2.0GHz

I believe it depends on the core.

Clawhammer vs Newcastle.
1MB vs 512K no exceptions.

Don't know if that stands true in this case, just a thought.

 

[imported_Kensai]

There is no 2.0GHz 3500+, there never was or will be, neither were there 2.2GHz 3800+s.
There was a 2.4GHz 3500+ once I believe.

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: CraigRT
looks like it's time to upgrade both my CPU and my vid. card

I'm all set for an X2, but seeing as I'm sticking with AGP for a while my GPU upgradability is limited. Maybe ATI will release an R520 in AGP format.

 

[coomar]

if they did it would be 50 dollars more (since they need a bridge), you might as well get a pci-e board and sell your agp

 

[jdogg707]

Originally posted by: Kensai
There is no 2.0GHz 3500+, there never was or will be, neither were there 2.2GHz 3800+s.
There was a 2.4GHz 3500+ once I believe.

No, there isn't a 2.4GHZ 3500+, but I believe they were going to release a 2GHZ 1MB L2 Cache San Diego based 3500+. Haven't seen the chip since the launch rumors, so I am guessing it either never matriculated, or did so in small quantities and didn't sell well.

 

[xtknight]

Gotta love these "go crazy" threads. Well that's good news for me since I have a 3500+.

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: coomar
if they did it would be 50 dollars more (since they need a bridge), you might as well get a pci-e board and sell your agp

Actually I'm planning on getting a 6800UE AGP8X when I find one for sale in FS/FT that's in my price range. In the meantime, my fully unlocked 6800 is doing well in the games I do have and play.

 

[Rock Hydra]

Originally posted by: StrangerGuy
People who buy 7800GTXs are going to run them at 16x12 or higher anyway. At those resolutions the GPU is going to be the deciding factor on frame rates.

WINNAR

 

[eastvillager]

I hate tests like this, they assume that all of do exactly the same thing at the same time with our computers.

What about those of us running other apps concurrently? What about those of us who like the data check in bf2 to process as quickly as possible?

In short, I don't buy a CPU just for e-peen framerate.

 

[Keysplayr]

Do you think it's a lot of programming work to take a game such as, for example HL2, and code it to run multithreaded to take advantage of DC procs? Or it this an unrealistic expectation of game developers to ever do something like this with already existing games?

I bet Crytek would patch out FarCry to be a multithreaded app. They always were eager to please.

Comments?

 

[xtknight]

There's a lot of changes required for (efficient) multithreading. It's almost like writing the whole thing over again, except this time around you know the algorithms and how you want the game to be. But basically it has to be coded over again if it doesn't want to be a hacked-up/inefficient mess.