I'm sorry, but there's just not any software (games) that can take advantage of more than 1GHz CPU's.....

[Whitedog]

Is there???? I don't think so...

I've heard people with 1GHz computers say they are going to buy a 1.5 P4... You people that say this, are you just satisfying your own ego or something?

A 1GHz with GeForce2 card will play ANY game out right now beyond anything you'll notice performance wise... So what is the reason you would want to upgrade? So you can play games that haven't even come out yet? Why don't you just wait until the day comes when you buy something that will "noticeably" play better on a faster computer? By then, you'll be able to by 2GHz CPU for $200... ya Think?

 

[Viper GTS]

Hell, even my lowly P3 933 / GF2 is more than fast enough to play any current game. WIth the one possible exception of Deus Ex.

Viper GTS

 

[fkloster]

Is it true that now with the release of the Geforce Ultra's, that the new bottleneck for computers & games is no longer the video card but falls back now to the CPU? My 3d mark scores appear to show this. No matter how fast my memory is on my card (within reason) my scores are the same until I adjust my cpu speed... correct me if I'm all wet!

 

[Need4Speed]

There is plenty of software that will benefit from 1Ghz+ CPUS. Not everything revolves around gaming where the bottle necks are the video card. There are dozens of applications where the CPU is the bottleneck. Render farms for instance, or FEA and CAD packages all benefit from more speed.

 

[BoberFett]

Frames per second in games is not the only measure of a CPU. As long as any action on a computer takes more than a fraction of a second, there's room for faster processors. Rendering a single CG frame still takes a lot of time.

 

[ArkAoss]

if any body saw the data rates on the review of the p4 they had a 32 mb card, and every game they tried, when they popped the resolution up, every thing evened out, the p4's usually got a frame better, so the card is still a slight bottle neck

 

[Whitedog]

Viper, I'm playing Deus Ex on my TBird 700 + GTS and it is totally smooth (once I applied the D3D patch...shesh)

OK, I'll change the title to "games" hehe THat's kinda what I went.

 

[Whitedog]

Oh sure, bench testing might show MORE "FPS" but, are you going to notice the difference between 120 and 150 FPS??? hehe

I can't see anything higher than 50 myself. My eyes just aren't that fast

 

[Modus]

Nope, even a Duron 600 is too fast for a GeForce 2 Ultra at normal resolutions. Sad, really, that everyone pours so much time, money and effort into their CPU speed when the video is really what limits them in applications where it matters.

The only useful applications that currently see any benefit from an over 600 MHz CPU are professional 3D rendering and digital video (MPEG4) encoding.

If only video card manufacturers could somehow write their drivers in such a way as to allow the CPU to do much of the work and alleviate fill rate bottlenecks. Our current 3D acceleration paradigm is inefficient, leaving monstrously powerful central processors to twiddle their thumbs while memory-bandwidth-crippled video cards work like dogs to get the graphics flowing.

Ideally, we should abandon all research into hardware 3D acceleration and pour those resources into designing faster and faster CPU's with robust SMP capabilities. These CPU's would host "soft 3D accelerators" just like current CPU's host softmodems. Just think: nVidia's fastest GPU is still not as powerful a processor as an Athlon 600. Now an Athlon 1.2 has twice the power -- a whole 600 MHz essentially wasted. Why not implement a software 3D accelerator, in essence, a really good driver set? It could still be D3D and OGL compatible, but it would use the CPU for most of its work.

Who knows, maybe in a couple years, CPU's will be so fast that I'll be forced to write a new essay on Win-videocards

Modus

 

[fkloster]

So Modus, you are saying that a Duron 600 with an Ultra in Q3 would look the same as an Athy 1G with an Ultra in Q3?

 

[Whitedog]

fkloster, I would say so. Sure, the Demo might show more "FPS", but are you going to "See" them? I wouldn't think so. I personnally can't tell when it gets higher than 50.

Sure, I know when scenes get "intense" the frame rate drops, but if the rate never gets below 40-50, you'll never notice one way or another.

My point wasn't that Faster CPU's don't produce higher benchmarks, but they just porduce numbers that we cant see with out own eyes.. You can honstly tell me you can tell the difference between 100 and 140 FPS? Impossible.

 

[jfall]

I think it is more of a question of if I get 100+ frames in QuakeIII, then i have a better chance of getting higher fps in other more intense games, such as ultima and unreal. No one needs to have really over 60 fps in quakeIII, but if they are getting 60 fps in QuakeIII, in other games, they might see 20

 

[Modus]

fkloster,

<<So Modus, you are saying that a Duron 600 with an Ultra in Q3 would look the same as an Athy 1G with an Ultra in Q3?>>

Absolutely, at proper resolutions. Just check Anand's Duron review and look at the Q3 1024x768 benchmarks. Everything from a D/600 to an A/1000 scores the same.

Modus

 

[noxipoo]

at least people here don't buy 1ghz DDR athlon systems from OEM with TNT2's. OUCH! not even TNT2 Ultras, funny how they get away with that now, hopefully the population will get more tech savvy in the future. imagine a corvette with escort wheels! OUCH!

 

[Modus]

Whitedog,

<<Oh sure, bench testing might show MORE &quot;FPS&quot; but, are you going to notice the difference between 120 and 150 FPS??? hehe>>

Actually, bench testing shows NO difference whatsoever between a D/600 on an Ultra and an A/1000 on an ultra. The Ultra's too slow for both of them; it couldn't care less who's doing the whipping, neither will make it go any faster.

Modus

 

[Deeko]

RC5 dude, RC5. It may not be a game, but it certainly takes advantage of new processors

 

[Whitedog]

RC5???? BWAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHA

Anyone out there that buys a New computer to run RC5 is a PURE PROPELLER HEAD GEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!

 

[fkloster]

What is wierd in my setup that makes me tend to believe that the cpu is a bottleneck is when I got my Ultra, I rand 3dmark with the memory @ 450 and then @ 500 and got the exact (well, almost) same score. When I overclocked my cpu, my score went up. What gives?

 

[Need4Speed]

As I said befroe:

Render Farms
FEA
CAD
CAM
Maple
MathCAD
3d studio MAX
3d studio VIZ
Lightscape
Lightwave
Maple
Algor
DesignSpace
Excel
....Starting to get the point?

 

[Whitedog]

This deal with CPU and Video card is a well known combination of &quot;What gives&quot;

There is a point in both cases that they become useless... for example, once the CPU becomes the bottleneck, it's useless to upgrade to a faster Video Card. and visa-versa, when upgrading the CPU is rendering useless performance, it's a waste to use a faster CPU. Upgrade the Video Card!

Someone mentioned 1GHz with TNT2 Video cards.. BWAHAHAHA... these guys are just after the ingorant croud that only knows &quot;megahertz&quot; and are after a buck.

Then again, it depends on the end users applications.. We use &quot;at work&quot; 1Gig Piii's with 810e video! hehe.. Office apps man... Don't need 3D.
So, If I were buying an office computer, I would be STUPID to buy one with a GeForce2 card in it wouldn't I?

 

[BigToque]

I think it will be good when we can have the FPS at a constant 60 with no variation. Once we can do this, we only need to concentrate on image quality and features on a card.

 

[Deeko]

(I edited this cause it wasn't nice )

 

[Whitedog]

I honestly think that the world should stop it's intense focus on CPU Megahertz.. and focus a lot more attention on Memory and Graphics...

I'd like a system (PC) with graphics capabilities like &quot;X&quot; box. (256bit memory path??.. guessing)

with a system like that, couldn't software companies give up some AWESOME stuff? I don't think a faster CPU would help them.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a computer that could do stuff like the &quot;X&quot; box is doing? (and only with a Piii 733!!!!)

No computer on the planet will be able to display graphics like the &quot;X&quot; box can right now! (there's been reviews)

 

[Whitedog]

Deeko, this thread is ABOUT game software... so

I think most people would agree that, even if they didn't primarily play games, use &quot;Gaming software&quot; as a motivating factor in buying hardware upgrades... i.e. new video card, faster CPU...

RC5.. hehehehe... Sorry, I'm not a fan of such useless services running on my computer. My .02 on RC5, is just a tool for people to &quot;flex there muscles&quot; on how fast their computer is. Nothing more. If that hurts your feelings, oh well. sorry.

 

[NoreagaCNN]

The Question is.............Can anybody play TRESPASSER, hehe. I haven't tried it since I got my new comp i should go check it out.

Peace,
Nore