Vid Performance to CPU power?

[DarknRahl]

I'm running a T-Bird 1.3 Ghz system with 512Mb's SD133 Ram and a Geforce2MX.

I promised my girlfriend I wouldn't upgrade my video card until Doom3 comes out. I'm a bit alarmed from the latest Radeon review as it seems my CPU is a bit to feeble to really get the card performing for me.

I'm thinking about a Geforce4 TI4200 at the moment but things may change by the time Doom3 rolls around.

Any advice anyone could give me in regards to video card performance coupled with the CPU?

 

[Asrial]

I heard "somewhere" that the future games are moving towards being more dependant on GPU and less dependant on CPU.

I was playing Unreal Tournament on my Voodoo 3 16mb with an AMD-K6-2 500mhz and while it ran good, it was still jerky alot (low fps) in low detail mode.

However, when I upgraded to an Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4ghz) using the same card.. instant smoothness with high details.

I've also seen the benchmarks where it shows the R300 with low performance marks on slower systems "but it's still going to outperform any card out there". You just won't be getting all that you can from it because your CPU is bottlenecking it.

What I suggest is this (cause I'm doing this myself too, heh heh)...

Wait until Doom 3 nears a release date and make a decision then. By that time, CPU/motherboard prices may be alot lower (2400+ for $100 anyone?) and the competition between nVidia and ATI should have lowered the prices on the high end cards.

The Ti 4200 is something I'm thinking about and it should be more than enough to play Doom 3.. but it's not DirectX 9 compatible and eventually, those games ARE going to come out.

I know this doesn't answer the question really, but maybe gives you more food for thought

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Asrial
I heard "somewhere" that the future games are moving towards being more dependant on GPU and less dependant on CPU.

I was playing Unreal Tournament on my Voodoo 3 16mb with an AMD-K6-2 500mhz and while it ran good, it was still jerky alot (low fps) in low detail mode.

However, when I upgraded to an Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4ghz) using the same card.. instant smoothness with high details.

I've also seen the benchmarks where it shows the R300 with low performance marks on slower systems "but it's still going to outperform any card out there". You just won't be getting all that you can from it because your CPU is bottlenecking it.

What I suggest is this (cause I'm doing this myself too, heh heh)...

Wait until Doom 3 nears a release date and make a decision then. By that time, CPU/motherboard prices may be alot lower (2400+ for $100 anyone?) and the competition between nVidia and ATI should have lowered the prices on the high end cards.

The Ti 4200 is something I'm thinking about and it should be more than enough to play Doom 3.. but it's not DirectX 9 compatible and eventually, those games ARE going to come out.

I know this doesn't answer the question really, but maybe gives you more food for thought

You still need a new CPU for the newest and greatest cards. At Anand's latest CPU/GPU shootout, they took an unlocked Athlon XP and ran it in Unreal Tournament 2k3 (very GPU dependent) and got some interesting results:

Asrial - do remember that a K6-2 500 MHz doesn't compare to a PII/PIII 500 MHz, and can't feed the Voodoo 3 fast enough for Unreal Tournament. Also remember that UT is very CPU dependent, and also that it was built from the ground up to support Glide - Direct 3D and especially OpenGL were afterthoughts at the time.

A GF2 maxes out with an 800 MHz (real rating) CPU
A GF3 Maxes out around 1400 MHz
A GF4 keeps on going up, even with 1600+ MHz.

This is, of course, only pertinent to Unreal Tournament 2k3 but it's very interesting nonetheless, as future games will be similar.

 

[Asrial]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
You still need a new CPU for the newest and greatest cards.

You don't "need" a new CPU. It helps tremendously but you don't "need" it.

 

[Peter]

There has to be some sort of balance between CPU and GPU power ... the fastest scene calculation (in the CPU) doesn't help any if the GPU can't process the rendering anywhere near as fast - and vice versa, a faster graphics card is useless if the CPU can't feed the scene geometry adequately fast.

Computer improvement algorithm:

1) Identify bottleneck.
2) Buy new stuff to eliminate.
3) Repeat until out of money.

regards, Peter

 

[DieHardware]

Computer improvement algorithm:

1) Identify bottleneck.
2) Buy new stuff to eliminate.
3) Repeat until out of money.

LMAO