Question on video cards and cpu processing

[phillyman36]

I read in a forum that the new 7 series geforce doesnt take up any of the cpu resources. I thought that held true for all graphics cards. Would a regular evga 6800 take away any resources from my cpu or does it gpu do all its work? I hope im asking this question right

 

[Matthias99]

There's always still some CPU overhead from the drivers. But all the actual rendering work is done by the GPU with any modern video card.

There are a few exceptions to this, but mostly on older/lower-end hardware. For instance, on Intel GMA900 integrated graphics, vertex shaders are actually computed by the CPU. But it's all in hardware on any remotely recent discrete graphics solution.

 

[xtknight]

Vertex shader processing is also offloaded to a secondary core if you have dual core.

 

[phillyman36]

Hey Matthias(or anyone) if you had to choose between a 7600gt or a 6800(pci express ) which would you pick. and why

 

[coolpurplefan]

I think the 7 series has a more powerful HDR. But, the ATI x1900 xt can do both HDR and AA if I`m not mistaken.