Processor speeds- does it matter?

[KillaKilla]

How much- for gaming- do CPU speeds matter? I'm not talking about FSB- I mean the... um... high numbered one.

What I'm asking is is it worth the money to get a 2.8 Ghz over a 2.4Ghz (800Fsb of course)? Assuming that I will do absolutely no OCing on them.

 

[bw2314]

I would not be worth it to get a 3.2 GHz right now because the price is too high because it's Intel's flagship cpu right now. But 3.0 GHz can be gotten for pretty cheap so it's worth it yeah.

 

[clicknext]

A small amount of MHz increase doesn't matter. I (accidentally) made my AthlonXP 1600MHz drop down to 1200, and my games (Halo, Max Payne 2, NHL 2004, CS) are still performing the same. I'm sure there would be a difference if I benchmarked, but just playing and using my computer normally, I don't notice one difference.

 

[crapito]

it matters in the sense that you don't want your CPU to be your weakest link, ie Radeon 9800 Pro with 1GB PC3500 and a Celeron 733... but, between a P4 2.8 and P4 2.4, you'd be better off getting the 2.4 and spending the $40-50 saved on RAM/video/HDD/etc.

 

[Shimmishim]

Originally posted by: crapito
it matters in the sense that you don't want your CPU to be your weakest link, ie Radeon 9800 Pro with 1GB PC3500 and a Celeron 733... but, between a P4 2.8 and P4 2.4, you'd be better off getting the 2.4 and spending the $40-50 saved on RAM/video/HDD/etc.

agreed!

you can spend the money else where

 

[screw3d]

But then if you do distributed computing.. you'll need all the MHz you can

 

[Mardeth]

Depends also alot of the games also. Like Jedi Knight is CPU dependent...

Also if youb buy a high end videocard and want to get all out of it you need a fast processor.

3DMark isnt a good program to see how much CPU matter btw...