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

[Modus]

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. . . When I overclocked my cpu, my score went up. What gives?>>

What gives is that 3DMark is a completely useless synthetic benchmark. Run a real-world test like Q3A or UT or MDK2 and you'll see that at 1024 and above, your Ultra is way too slow for your CPU.

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?>>

And every one of those is a professional graphics software package, which lie in the real of an extreme minority of computer users. As for Excel, if you're ever at the point where a spreadsheet is stressing your 1 GHz CPU, it's time to switch a proper database with SQL or something more advanced where they have searching algorithms to take care of it.

Basically, the majority of users today will see no benefit from CPU's over 600 MHz until video card fillrate catches up.

Modus

 

[Pyro]

is EVERYONE gnoring the fact that even though todays CPUs would offer outta this world fill rates, they are crippled by the lowly system memory speeds???
Think about it, the geforce and radeon offer almost 6GB/s of memory bandwidth, while DDR is at 2.1 and even the extremely expensive p4+RDRAM offer a mere 3.2.
To futher support my argument, if you read some video card overclocking articles you'll know that increasing the core clock doesnt do much, while increasig the memory clock will give you a noticable speed increase.

IMHO Video card manufacturers are doing great. ATI and nVidia are on 6-8 month product cycles and in several months we'll be seeing the GeForce3 and Radeon2

 

[ModemMix]

my crappy eyes are happy with a 60hz refresh rate on my monitor so as far as im concerned 60-70 fps is all ill ever need, but i do like to maintain that rate with all the eye candy on, also there is the fact that i have a rare disease called upgradusophiliopalious. It requires me to constantly upgrade my computer then spend weeks benchmarking it with software that mean absolutly nothing in the real world. I find this to be EXTREAMLY satisfying.


ModemMix

 

[urbantechie]

I'm running a Katmai 600 and a TNT1 card. All I need is a new video card (soon) I think my machine will be fast for almost any game.

 

[Cosmic_Horror]

what about games like MS flight simulator 2000 which is very cpu intensive due to all the calculation it has to do to reproduce the physics of the game?

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Actualy oem's use tnt2 m64 cards in there systems because they are cheaper than the lowly tnt2. I mean people who buy these things are crazy a 1.2GHz tbird with a tnt2 m64 get real.

 

[nippyjun]

Even the fastest processor today with the fastest video card today can't run games at 1600x1200 @32 with FSAA at 60fps or greater.

 

[G14]

According to this benchmark at Toms Hardware there is quite a performance gain between a 1 ghz and a 1.5 ghz computer in Quake 3 Arena. Now like it has been noted above the eye can not notice above say 50 fps. However your eye can notice the difference between 1024x768 and 1600x1200, the difference between 16bit and 32bit color, and the difference between medium textures and high textures.

 

[G14]

Originally posted by nippyjun:


<< Even the fastest processor today with the fastest video card today can't run games at 1600x1200 @32 with FSAA at 60fps or greater. >>



I wonder if that's true. I'll try it when I get home

 

[AudiPorsche]

You cares about how fast games can run..... anything above 60fps nobody in the world can tell drfference , the human eye can not distinguish between 60fps and 170fps.


The next thing that needs to be done is make some new games that are actual worth running.

 

[Viperoni]

Quick guide:

Low resolutions:
Your CPU will most likely be the limiting factor
If you overclock to say 50mhz high, and you get more fps, that means only 1 thing.
Your processor is the limiting factor
Now if your speed doesn't increase, then your video card is the limiting factor.
Try overclocking it; your speed should increase

High Resolutions:

This is a split depending on your video card
At 1024x768, most likely your video card will be stopping you. Overclock it and you get more speed. But if you have a GF2 ultra, then theres a chance your processor will still be slowing you down.

As for the arguement of faster processors, you need them for Features such as &quot;motion blur&quot;, &quot;FSAA&quot; (needs it a lot).

Let's look at FSAA for a moment.

FSAA (4x on my Radeon) basically draws out the whole picture 4x, then blends it together.
Whenever I enable it, all of my games (CounterStrike ) look very very smooth, no sharp edges at all.
&quot;Hand Painted&quot; is what I like to call it.


So let's put the top section and the bottom section together:

If your running that GF2 ultra @ 1024x768, the CPU is the limiting factor.
Now if you turn on FSAA, that'll crunch it even harder.
So you will need the extra processor speed, to get more FPS out of your system.


NippyJun is 100% correct




<< You cares about how fast games can run..... anything above 60fps nobody in the world can tell drfference , the human eye can not distinguish between 60fps and 170fps. >>



But when you look at it, when you're doing 60fps staring into the wall, then you actually started firing rockets and what not, your FPS will drop to around 40, just an example mind you.
But if you're pushing 170fps to begin with, and you drop to 100fps per se, then you wont notice any difference.

But you're correct in the basic fact that you won't see any difference between 60 and 170fps.

 

[G14]

<< NippyJun is 100% correct >>



Viperoni, have you tried running Q3 at 1600x1200 with FSAA with a P4 1.5 GHz and a 64mb GeForce2 ULTRA?

 

[Dug]

Well I've run benchmarks on my P3 at default 700 and oc at 952. Absolutely no difference in fps in any game as long as I'm running at 1024x768 and higher. In fact I try to run most games higher than 1024 if they support it.
The only reason to go higher is because most people here love to tinker with computers. It's fun to see what you can do with any paticular piece of hardware. I personally don't need to run my cpu at 952, but I do. I don't need to run my memory at cas2, but I do. Actually I don't need to play games, but I do.

Getting higher Mhz, more fps, etc, is like climbing a mountain. You do it because it's there.

 

[iknowcomputers2]

sounds more like someone's mad they don't have a 1.5ghz pentium IV

 

[Imaginer]

&quot;image quality and features on a card.&quot;

That is what is good about the Radeon. A featured card with good performance.

And I think that chipsets need to be designed with a higher fsb. More like 500mhz about this time. And I am not talking about theortical (sp?) DDR or xDR rates too. Then maybe everything can be improved.

 

[beat mania]

try running some emu and tell me you don't need all the processing power that you need.

 

[MagnusInscitia]

Come on people...these 1+GHz cpu's are being manufactured for voice and &quot;face-print&quot; recognition.

-an anonymous intel marketing dir.

 

[sXidman]

clock speed doesnt really count.

www.emulators.com/pentium4.htm for the curious and the people with time. really interesting.

 

[MagnusInscitia]

sXidman:

nice article!

 

[CQuinn]

Whitedog, If you want this thread to be about GAME software then you
should have specified that from the start. By making the title
about &quot;software&quot; with games in parentheses - you give the impression
that games are only a subset of your overall opinion.

[rant]
But, If I can add my opinion to this, I'm a little miffed at these
people who keep trying to tell me how much CPU power I do or don't need.

Buy a Clue folks... It's not about whether the software can use the
power of the CPU; It's about how the USER can take advantage of the
additional power to do more with the system than just what the software
wants. If I can think to do more than one thing at a time while
playing, then I want a system that can keep up too.

The more powerful we make these systems, the more someone else is going
to add more bells and whistles into their apps to use up more CPU cycles
and keep everyone else playing catchup again. Most of us remember when
Doom was considered a realistic 3D shooter, well we've come a long way
since then, and we still see areas where gaming look and feel can be much
improved. And that is being done by people (John Carmack) who look beyond
today's setups to what they can do with technology months to years down
the line. Frankly, its a good thing you think the systems of today are
good enough for now, because the game designers are making it their job
to make todays systems nearly-obsolete for playing the next generation
of games.

 

[damac]

I have a voodoo 5500 in my rig right now with a 1313mhz tbird.

during heavy fights in 1024x768 32bit color, my framerate will drop to like 6-7 fps and be unplayable. So is that maybe my video card? Plus at this resolution not many games even a year old will play at a constant 60fps and above.

After just making my rig in the past weeks with all quality parts IM pretty damn unsatisfied with real world performance with the geforce ddr and voodoo 5500. I hope its my cpu and the nv20 will do something about it

 

[faolan]

Actually, the makers of Sacrifice have stated that the engine won't run out of things to make look better until it's run on a 3gHz machine. So theres at least one game out now

I always buy a slower then the max machine simply for the price difference. While buying a faster machine future-proofs it a bit longer, I find it's not worth the money to me since I build so many new systems anyhow.

 

[sandorski]

Damac: What games? Online or off? That just doesn't sound right to me, do know for sure that that is your fps score, or are you guessing? You may want to a game launcher, I use V5 Launcher which allows me to config each game separately. Go here for the download link for V5 Launcher and some other goodies.

 

[glen]

If you are playing a FPS and turn in a slow circle, 360 degrees in .5 seconds, at 60fps, you move in 12 degree incriments. Do I need to say more?

 

[backWERD]

emulators make excelent use of the power of processors.


the faster the processor the better the emulator runs.

IE ULTRAHLE.