What CPU will be LIMITED by a GF3??

[TargetDrone]

I haven't had time to dive through all the reviews, but from reading a few of the comments here, it sounds like the GeForce3 is finally a major step up from the current generation. For the longest time, nearly any CPU over 800MHz has been overkill/limited by the current crop of video cards. Does anybody have any ideas about how fast a CPU will have to be before the GeForce3 will start producing diminishing returns? I realize this would just be ball-park guestimations at best and would depend on things like how many bells and whistles were turned on, what the game was, etc.

 

[hans007]

well on a fully fillrate basis, and ram basis, all the CPUs limited by a gf2ultra would be.

 

[DominoBoy]

"a major step up from the current generation."

In some ways yes, in some ways no.

I suggest you read the comments that have been posted in the "Article" section about the GeForce3. There is really no reason to buy one if you already have a GF2, Radeon or especially Ultra. It will be a while before any games take advantage of it, and by then there will be new cards all over again.

Here are some comments from Anand himself that were already posted by my cousin in the thread on Anand's article.

"It may almost be worth waiting another 6-months for NVIDIA's next card release (by that time ATI will have a DX8 compatible part similar to the GeForce3 out as well) before upgrading."

"To the current crop of games that don't utilize these advanced features, the GeForce3 is still much like a GeForce2 Ultra. This was unfortunately a reality that NVIDIA had to face with the GeForce3. It is an excellent technology and the transition to it will have to occur at some point but the value of an upgrade to it at this point is questionable"

"the GeForce3 is actually very similar to the GeForce2 Ultra because its programmable nature is not being harnessed in which case it is nothing more than a GeForce2 Ultra."

"the performance gains are simply not going to be there for the current crop of applications and in this case, games."

"you shouldn't expect to see too much from the GeForce3 in terms of performance in current games.

"you can almost guarantee that ATI's Radeon2 (or whatever they call the successor to the Radeon) will be much like the GeForce3 except with ATI's own unique twists including a more advanced HyperZ subsystem."

There you have it. Those are comments straight from Anand. I don't even think the Nvidiots (they are a VERY sensitive bunch ) can flame me on this because these comments are not from me. The GF3 will be a great card in some circumstances (FSAA for instance), that's for sure, but if you already have a Ultra, GF2 or Radeon you should not worry about upgrading anytime soon.

As Anand and sooooo many other people have pointed out, by the time most of the GF3 features are used in more than a handful of games, there will be Radeon2 and GeForce4. Just something to think about before you spend all that money.

 

[TargetDrone]

Well nobody will have to worry about me rushing out and buying one of these when they first come out. The 'pimp daddy' card on my two systems is still a good old V3-2K@180. I didn't see a real need to upgrade with the latest generation of cards because they really couldn't do that much more for me in the games I was playing at the time (plus I could put that money towards something more useful like a DVD player . . . which I did). But once this new generation of cards comes out I'm hoping the current top of the line cards will drop in price (more so than they already have anyway) so I can snatch one up for a bargain and ride it until games starting taking advantage of all the GF3 features.

 

[DominoBoy]

Well nobody will have to worry about me rushing out and buying one of these when they first come out

hehe, yeah I hear ya! That's all I meant.

GF3 will definately be a nice card in many ways, but people who have a current card like Ultra, Radeon or GF2 shouldn't feel any pressure to upgrade anytime soon. And yes you are correct, it will be a good time to pick up one those other cards with the price dropping.

 

[BFG10K]

That depends entirely on what game you run and what settings you run it at.

For the longest time, nearly any CPU over 800MHz has been overkill/limited by the current crop of video cards.

I don't think so. Any current CPU would struggle to saturate a GTS or a Radeon at a setting of 640 x 480 x 32 or 800 x 600 x 32, no matter what game you played.

 

[TargetDrone]

Well that's true of course BFG10K, but I think you know what I was trying to say. With the exception of FSAA where settings around 800x600 seem to be a performance/quality sweet spot, I think it would be a fairly safe assumption that most people who originally had the money to invest in a GF2, V5, Radeon probably are not running them on dinky little 14" or 15" monitors where 640x or 800x looks relatively similar to 1024x or 1280x on a 17" or greater monitor. Actually just to counter my own point a little, my brother uses a V5 on a little 15" monitor and runs nearly all his games at 800x600 4X FSAA. It looks very nice, just a little small. But I'm pretty sure he's an exception to the overall trend. And if you were going to run most of your games at lower resolutions like that, you could probably have skipped this latest generation of cards altogether without lacking for performance TOO much. Voodoo3s and TNT2s could probably play most games available today at 640x or 800x with extremely smooth FPS. You might have to turn off a few of the high-end graphics options on some of the latest games, but at lower resolutions some of those might not be quite as noticeable.

 

[BFG10K]

but I think you know what I was trying to say.

I know what you were trying to say and I answered accordingly. It depends entirely what game you run and at what settings you run it at.

For example I have a P3 @ 728 MHz and a GF2 MX.
I run Quake 3 and UT at 640 x 480 x 32, so in that situation I'm CPU limited.
I run Quake 1 and Quake 2 at 1024 x 768 x 32, so in that situation I'm video card limited.

So what's my performance/quality sweet spot? It's completely different for each game.

 

[RobsTV]

With a Duron at 935MHz, the GF2 GTS card is the bottleneck.
With the cheap price of CPU's, most now, or in the near future, will have 900MHz+ units.
I can't see the GF3 being able to keep up with these CPU's, and still think it will be the bottleneck. I would guess 1.8GHz should max out the GF3.

A good test is simply overclock the card, and test the results. If improvements are small, then it's the CPU holding you back, if results are large, then it's video. It's video here, with the above combo. Kick on FSAA, and video scores plummet. A minimum reference point today is 1024x768x32 at 40fps minimum, (not avg), with all quality maxed out. That is about all you can get with the above combo in the most modern games. If you want to run higher res, or FSAA, then a much more powerfull video card is needed.

So there will be a large demand for the GF3. It is needed.

 

[Mykex]

Ok, I have a question I thought the G3 was supposed to be the first true GPU card? Not a GA like we have had in the past......

I guess I just assumed that a true graphics processor would need less CPU than a graphics accelerator,at least that is what the name implies to me.