NO ONE in their right mind displays benches at 800x600 to prove a point in gaming
When a cpu is maxing out at 15 frames at 800x600, that's a very relevant benchmark to me. That means its minimums are in the single digits! That means at higher resolution it will be a slideshow regardless of gpu load! Of course no one plays at 800x600, but if a CPU already can't produce even 30 frames steady at this shady resolution, it's not going to be viable at 1600x1200 where a 5870 will easily do 30 frames. In other words the CPU will push 5870 to 15 frames anyways. This is where you can crank to 8AA and get it for "free" because the E6400 cpu is too damn slow.
Take those same Re5 benches and up the filtering
Huh? I am running 8AA/16AF and getting faster frames than Q6600 @ 3.4ghz did with 0AA/16AF at 1680x1050. Where do you want me to up the filtering to ? 8AA in a shooter is very high already and it's 50% faster than a core 2 quad at 3.4ghz regardless.
Sometimes upping the filtering is not an option. Here is an example:
Dirt 2 1680x1050:
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...1-Phenom-doing-well-quad-cores-rule/Practice/
Core i7 3.5ghz =
58 frames MINIMUM (+75% faster)
E6600 2.4ghz = 33 frames minimum
(<-- if I wanted 33 frames I would get an Xbox 360!)
You can crank 4AA on a 5870 all you want, you are not going down to 33 frames. For example, my 4890 gets to 38 mins in Dirt 2 Ultra with 4AA.
I am not going to accept 38 minimum in a racing game since I can see these dips as slowdowns in the game. So sure you can get 5870 to 33 frames minimum by cranking edge-detect 8AA to the max. That's not real world gaming because you will get a jerky racing game.
As a result, I am going to lower anti-aliasing to 2AA to get smooth gameplay experience (i.e., to get 47 mins) because I don't want jerkiness in gameplay at the tradeoff of better image quality from higher AA in a racing game. So now imagine pairing 4890 with E6600 and using 2AA. The MOST the review got was 33 frames minimum with a 5870 and E6400 and 0AA. I already told you that a Core i7 3.9ghz with a 4890 and 2AA gets 47 frames minimum. That means with a 4890, you are going to be below the 47 mins with 2AA no matter how you slice it because you are at 33 frames without any AA and a way faster videocard!
Do you see the CPU argument now? And why saying oh just crank AA more doesn't always make sense? E6600 is already proving a jerky experience before we even talk about enabling AA.
and my findings completely contradict yours
Maybe you missed GTA4, ArmA2, Resident Evil 5, Dragon Age where there is multi-core scaling and Core i7 architecture smokes C2D. You are telling me a 2.0ghz c2D is going to have similar minimum frames as a Core i7 4.0ghz? Is that why 5870 users are using E7400 processors in their rigs?
The CPU is no where as important as the GPU and mostly any C2D at 3.2 or so GHz will not be bottlenecked by GTX 480 class (HD 4870-X3 TriFire) in most games.
I agree, but that doesn't mean there isn't a performance benefit from a Core i7 4.0ghz in a lot of games as well. In a game like Metro 2033 that rapes a GTX480 and 5870 sure a C2D 3.2ghz is not going to be a bottleneck. But a Core i7 4.0ghz will lay waste to a 3.0ghz C2D in Starcraft 2 for example or GTA4. Obviously if you create an unrealistic scenario of 16AA in SC2 on GTX480, then you are GPU bottlenecked. But who uses 16AA regularly?
Here take a look:
http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/battlefield_bad_company_2_tuning_guide,7.html
1680x1050 is 92% of the 1600x1200 resolution. They are using High detail settings and even then
Core i7 is getting 2x the minimum frames of X2 550. Which system do you want to game on? You probably would agree that 5870 will take at most a 20% hit going from 0AA to 4AA.
This means that a Core i7 system will get you above 60 frames in BF:BC2 with 4AA, while that Athlon X2 550
already can't give you 60 frames without AA! Think about it, you can't get 60 frames without any AA...so you are already not getting a smooth experience. In other words, you can apply AA with a Core i7 and 5870 in BF:BC2 and still get faster frame rates than a X2 550 without AA using the same videocard. So a cpu is not that important?
Again look here:
http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/starcraft_ii_wings_of_liberty_beta_performance,6.html
Core i7 3.7ghz is doubling the minimum framerates of Core i7 2.3ghz. So that means I can get 4AA and still be faster than the 2.3ghz core i7 system without AA.
I think you are missing a crucial point toyota is trying to make, and that is minimum frame rates. Just because you are testing 1680x1050 without AA, doesn't mean a faster CPU is worthless. New videocards are very efficient with AA on.
You can't just look at average frame rates and conclude that a C2D is fast enough because if you crank 8AA on 5870, a 3.2ghz C2D will be as fast as a Core i7 4.0ghz.
What if I don't want 33 frames minimum and I want 50 or 60? Not everyone is like BFG who loves to crank AA to the sky. I much prefer smooth mins with Vsync on over AA any day, if that AA takes me down to 20s or 30s.
Facebook
Twitter