Gaming Processor

[lopri]

harpoon: Sorry you're stretching things way too far. No one can deny the validity of what you're saying but at the same time if everyone was happy with that "flexibility", we wouldn't have 7900s, X1900, 24" monitors, SLI, CF, etc., not to mention DOOM3, Chaos Theory, Unreal 3. People would be content to be playing games at 800x600 resolution with DirectX 7.

Again, what you're saying is true. But it's not very relevant to what I was arguing. Or better yet I wasn't very relevant since I didn't know what exactly OP's problem was.

 

[Koudelka]

Originally posted by: lopri
If there are options to lower the graphics details, try it and see if it runs faster. MMOs can be quite stressing to CPU indeed, especially if the game is in beta stage.

I have. I have them almost on the lowest settings. My FPS ranges from 15-50. usually around the 20-25 though and 15 when in combat with a party of people.

Other people i know with lesser vid cards have stated they get a stable fps of 30 in combat.

So, it just led me to believe i needed a CPU upgrade.

 

[harpoon84]

Not trying to start an argument with you lopri, just thinking outside the square a little.

Basically, what I am saying is that for CPUs, there is a certain 'optimum' level to aim for that enables ALL current games to be totally smooth. Currently, that level is around the E6600 mark.

With GPUs, things are infinitely custimizable. Heck, you can still bring an 7950GX2 SLI or 1950XTX CF to it's knees if you really wanted to - take Oblivion for example.

 

[lopri]

Just noticed that you have a 7900 GT? Could it be the case that the game utilizes more than 256MB framebuffer? What are other people's (whose FPS stays around 30FPS) system configuration?

 

[Koudelka]

Others are getting these with amd dual cores, and x850's, 7700's, and the cheaper 7800

I have an evga 7800gtx ko

I'm assuming the rest of the people claiming 30 fps have at least 2 gigs of ram as well.

 

[Conky]

I think some of what prompted this was my wanting to play BF2 tonight with my good friend. I had never had it run this smooth on my old Northwood 3.06 w/HT and now it runs like a bat out of hell on my E6400 with my X850XT.

Just waiting for the screens to load before was a serious pain in the butt and I still have the same RAM and videocard. Now, it's like a new game. I can't wait to own my bud in this game. He has been taunting me forever with his 4000+ and dual 7900 SLI system but I know I can play this game now and own him despite his awesome videocards... which will make it even sweeter. :laugh: However, knowing him, he will upgrade to Conroe and SLI and try to catch up, lol. It still won't help... hardware only gets you so far in most videogames but I gotta say that BF2 is a mother as far as minimum system requirements.

 

[Koudelka]

I never really found BF2 to be that bad, despite the trouble a lot of people are having to get a great FPS with top settings.

 

[Conky]

Originally posted by: Koudelka
I never really found BF2 to be that bad, despite the trouble a lot of people are having to get a great FPS with top settings.

Well, BF2 sucked with a 3+GHz Northwood which was a surprise because pretty much every game under the sun ran well on a 3+ GHz P4.

My big game is COD2 and it ran fine on my old machine but even better now. I'm an old school FPS gamer and it took me forever to move up from 800x600 to higher resolutions only because FPS is so crucial when you play online. It's sweet to be able to turn up the graphics and still own.

 

[Koudelka]

Yeah, the only game that has ever given me problems is CS:S.

I find it odd that in HL2 with max settings i dont think i drop below the cap'd fps.

In CS:S with medium settings, i get about 30fps average (including firefights, etc.) Some custom maps i'll get 20fps.

I've never really looked into it much, but i know people with lesser specs have better fps than i do in CS:S, but lesser fps in games like FEAR, COD2.

 

[Sjokoprins]

For example: when i overclocked my AMD 3000+ Venice from 1800 to 2600 mhz i got an 30% boost in games like HL2, COD, EQ2, etc, with an nvidia 6600GT.
Now i have an 7800 GS (480/1450) and thats literally 2-3 times faster.

So i think a fast processor will give u a nice boost.
Going to an FX 60 will only give u 15 % i think in single-threaded games.
Going to C2D E6600/E6700 gives u 35 - 45 % i think in single threaded games.

So for single- and multithreaded games the best choice is the C2d, but then again u need new ram, cpu and mobo. It all depends on your budget

 

[Dribble]

Like others have said it depends where you're bottleneck is which depends on the game as much as anything. Unless the game you want to play really takes advantage of dual cores there's not much point you buying another A64 as the one you have already goes at 2.5 so even if you got one that could do 2.75 that's only a 10% speed increase which would be bairly noticable in a game. The only way to get much faster single threaded performance is to buy an intel core 2 duo (preferably E6600 or better) and o/c.

More likely that the bottle neck is your graphics most of the time, in which case getting a faster graphics card makes more sense. Unfortunately for you a 7800GTX is already pretty quick. For a big upgrade you'd need to buy something like a 7950GX2 or wait for the next gen cards to come out.

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: harpoon84
Let's take the X2 5000+ and E6600 for comparison for BF2:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1996942,00.asp

X2 5000+ framerates get down to ~45fps, compared to ~62fps for E6600. Obviously both are still much better than my Northy 3.3GHz @ ~30fps, which goes to show that online FPS games suck up as much CPU speed as you can throw at it. It should be noted though that above E6600 levels you see the law of diminishing returns kick in as anything above 60fps is deemed 'totally smooth' by most people.

The often mentioned line 'GPU is the main bottleneck in games' is true only in certain games.

That article only uses 1280x1024 and doesn't use any AA. I don't know who games these days without AA, but it's not quite realistic. I promise you, that E6600 and 5000+ are on pretty much equal ground once AA is introduced.

The graph states that overall the E6600 is 18% faster than the 5000+. Fine. But if they were to bench an even SLOWER chip with a GX2 or x1950xt against the E6600/7900gt combo, they'd find that the SLOWER chip combo now BEATS the E6600 by 30% or more.

Anyway, we're talking about a beta test game that likely has room to improve in its coding, with only 3rd party people claiming good performance. My thoughts are: 1) don't believe anything anyone tells you without some kind of proof and 2) don't upgrade for a game that isn't out yet.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: harpoon84

Originally posted by: lopri
The flexibility of CPU/GPU per game setting is a different subect, though.

So do you disagree or agree on that point?

For example - my current system is a P4 2.6C @ 3.3GHz, 2GB RAM, X850XT @ 610c/590m. It's ageing, but it's still not *that* slow, relatively speaking.

I can make GPU limited games like COD2 and FEAR have acceptable framerates by turning down the details to a mix of 'medium' or 'high' levels instead of 'highest' or 'max'. Sure, the game doesn't look as good, but at least it's playable, instead of slideshow esque.

However, I can't for the life of me tune BF2 and CS:S (online FPS games) to get minimum framerates above 30fps. These are intense online shooters, and truly require a fast CPU during big firefights with lots of gunfire and explosions and such.

Let's take the X2 5000+ and E6600 for comparison for BF2:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1996942,00.asp

X2 5000+ framerates get down to ~45fps, compared to ~62fps for E6600. Obviously both are still much better than my Northy 3.3GHz @ ~30fps, which goes to show that online FPS games suck up as much CPU speed as you can throw at it. It should be noted though that above E6600 levels you see the law of diminishing returns kick in as anything above 60fps is deemed 'totally smooth' by most people.

The often mentioned line 'GPU is the main bottleneck in games' is true only in certain games.

If you cant get BF2 or CSS to run acceptably on that 3.3ghz rig then theres somthing wrong. Ive had both games run fine on an A64 3200+ (equivilant to a 3.2ghz P4C) with a 9800 PRO. They also ran fine on an opteron 842 rig (1.6ghz opty) with the same video card. Settings werent set to low either.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel

Originally posted by: harpoon84
Let's take the X2 5000+ and E6600 for comparison for BF2:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1996942,00.asp

X2 5000+ framerates get down to ~45fps, compared to ~62fps for E6600. Obviously both are still much better than my Northy 3.3GHz @ ~30fps, which goes to show that online FPS games suck up as much CPU speed as you can throw at it. It should be noted though that above E6600 levels you see the law of diminishing returns kick in as anything above 60fps is deemed 'totally smooth' by most people.

The often mentioned line 'GPU is the main bottleneck in games' is true only in certain games.

That article only uses 1280x1024 and doesn't use any AA. I don't know who games these days without AA, but it's not quite realistic. I promise you, that E6600 and 5000+ are on pretty much equal ground once AA is introduced.

The graph states that overall the E6600 is 18% faster than the 5000+. Fine. But if they were to bench an even SLOWER chip with a GX2 or x1950xt against the E6600/7900gt combo, they'd find that the SLOWER chip combo now BEATS the E6600 by 30% or more.

AA or no AA, it doesn't matter in BF2 because it's a CPU bound game. I run at medium/high settings 1600x1200 2xAA/4xAF on my X850XT and I get the same framerates if I was playing at 1280x960, because my GPU is not the bottleneck.

I don't need you to promise me anything because I've been playing games for a long time and can easily tell if a game is GPU or CPU limited - just turn down the res, if things improve you're GPU limited, if not, CPU limited.

I just used that example because it shows a game that is not GPU constrained. If you look at the other games tested, from memory about half have a notable difference between the X2 5000+ and E6600 - the rest are mainly GPU bound.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: Soviet

Originally posted by: harpoon84

Originally posted by: lopri
The flexibility of CPU/GPU per game setting is a different subect, though.

So do you disagree or agree on that point?

For example - my current system is a P4 2.6C @ 3.3GHz, 2GB RAM, X850XT @ 610c/590m. It's ageing, but it's still not *that* slow, relatively speaking.

I can make GPU limited games like COD2 and FEAR have acceptable framerates by turning down the details to a mix of 'medium' or 'high' levels instead of 'highest' or 'max'. Sure, the game doesn't look as good, but at least it's playable, instead of slideshow esque.

However, I can't for the life of me tune BF2 and CS:S (online FPS games) to get minimum framerates above 30fps. These are intense online shooters, and truly require a fast CPU during big firefights with lots of gunfire and explosions and such.

Let's take the X2 5000+ and E6600 for comparison for BF2:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1996942,00.asp

X2 5000+ framerates get down to ~45fps, compared to ~62fps for E6600. Obviously both are still much better than my Northy 3.3GHz @ ~30fps, which goes to show that online FPS games suck up as much CPU speed as you can throw at it. It should be noted though that above E6600 levels you see the law of diminishing returns kick in as anything above 60fps is deemed 'totally smooth' by most people.

The often mentioned line 'GPU is the main bottleneck in games' is true only in certain games.

If you cant get BF2 or CSS to run acceptably on that 3.3ghz rig then theres somthing wrong. Ive had both games run fine on an A64 3200+ (equivilant to a 3.2ghz P4C) with a 9800 PRO. They also ran fine on an opteron 842 rig (1.6ghz opty) with the same video card. Settings werent set to low either.

An A64 3200+ is much better than a 3.2GHz P4 for games.

Anyway, read beachboys post, he stated he couldn't get BF2 smooth on a P4 3.06GHz HT - in line with my expectations.

I've done a lot of asking around on this and it seems only A64 or C2D players don't suffer from poor minimum framerates in BF2. Most P4 and AXP users will find framerates can drop down to 30fps or below at times.

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: harpoon84
AA or no AA, it doesn't matter in BF2 because it's a CPU bound game. I run at medium/high settings 1600x1200 2xAA/4xAF on my X850XT and I get the same framerates if I was playing at 1280x960, because my GPU is not the bottleneck.

I'm not trying to discount your knowledge of gaming here. You've played with the hardware you're talking about-- I haven't. So I must depend on third party benchmarks to show me. I'm not saying your claim isn't valid. But here is a benchmark that tells a completely different story for BF2:

BF2 4xAA 8xAF
x850XT PE
1024x768.......59.8
1280x1024.....48.4
1600x1200.....38.8

There's a good 30% difference right there between 1280x960 and 1600x1200. Granted, that's with 4xAA/8xAF. But, it's the same thing with noAA/noAF.

Here on Anandtech, the show, like I said, at 1280x1024, with CPU speeds ranging from 2ghz to 2.7ghz, only a 10% increase in fps. At 1600x1200, the difference is 2%. That is GPU limitations.

I'm not sure why you didn't see an fps change when switching resolutions. Possibly because your frames were higher than your refresh rate. I don't know. But every other benchmark out there shows that BF2 will get lower fps when you raise the resolution.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel
I'm not sure why you didn't see an fps change when switching resolutions. Possibly because your frames were higher than your refresh rate. I don't know. But every other benchmark out there shows that BF2 will get lower fps when you raise the resolution.

There's never been a game that didn't have higher framerates, while running lower resolutions. Not only is it not as hard on the video card, it's easier on the the cpu, also.

 

[Cheex]

Look at my specs....what is my limitation??

CPU: Intel Pentium D 915 2.80GHz @ 3.02GHz
GFX: Sapphire Radeon X850XT 520/1080 @ 540/1174 (PE speed)
RAM: 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR2 533 @ 587

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: Cheex
Look at my specs....what is my limitation??

It's not that cut & dry of an evaluation. As you can see from the benchmarks I linked to, resolution plays the key role in determining that. What resolution do you generally play at? What does your monitor limit you to?

 

[Cheex]

My monitor limits me to 1280x1024 but i play at my desktop resolution 1024x768.
I have a 17" CRT monitor (Samsung SyncMaster 793s).

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: Cheex
My monitor limits me to 1280x1024 but i play at my desktop resolution 1024x768.
I have a 17" CRT monitor (Samsung SyncMaster 793s).

IMO, your limitation is your monitor. You shouldn't have any trouble playing games at 1024x768 with your setup.

 

[myocardia]

Cheex, the only thing that should be holding you back at 1024x768 would be Vsync, unless you're trying to run Oblivion:ES, then it's your processor and your video card.

 

[harpoon84]

Originally posted by: deadseasquirrel

Originally posted by: harpoon84
AA or no AA, it doesn't matter in BF2 because it's a CPU bound game. I run at medium/high settings 1600x1200 2xAA/4xAF on my X850XT and I get the same framerates if I was playing at 1280x960, because my GPU is not the bottleneck.

I'm not trying to discount your knowledge of gaming here. You've played with the hardware you're talking about-- I haven't. So I must depend on third party benchmarks to show me. I'm not saying your claim isn't valid. But here is a benchmark that tells a completely different story for BF2:

BF2 4xAA 8xAF
x850XT PE
1024x768.......59.8
1280x1024.....48.4
1600x1200.....38.8

There's a good 30% difference right there between 1280x960 and 1600x1200. Granted, that's with 4xAA/8xAF. But, it's the same thing with noAA/noAF.

Here on Anandtech, the show, like I said, at 1280x1024, with CPU speeds ranging from 2ghz to 2.7ghz, only a 10% increase in fps. At 1600x1200, the difference is 2%. That is GPU limitations.

I'm not sure why you didn't see an fps change when switching resolutions. Possibly because your frames were higher than your refresh rate. I don't know. But every other benchmark out there shows that BF2 will get lower fps when you raise the resolution.

I'll tell you why...

Firstly, I don't run it at HIGH details 4xAA/8xAF. HIGH details is very GPU intensive, and doesn't look all that much better than MEDIUM details. See HIGH vs MEDIUM comparison here: http://www.tweakguides.com/BF2_5.html

I run 1600x1200 MEDIUM/HIGH (more on MEDIUM) 2xAA/4xAF - it's a LOT easier on the poor ol X850XT, trust me.

Secondly, Anandtech tests BF2 using prerecorded timedemos, which only stresses the GPU as the CPU isn't required to do hitbox/netcode/physics calculations on fhe fly. I'm not playing timedemos online, I play with 63 other people on the same server. That's a heck of a load on the CPU.

You need to do a FRAPs run over many gaming sessions to get a TRUE idea of in game framerates, not some timedemo framerate, which is NOT indicative of live gameplay performance.

MIMIMUM framerates are all the same, regardless of resolution. When I fight, worse case scenario is ~30fps (bad), best case scenario is ~50fps (acceptable).

Depending on the map, my AVERAGE in game framerate in BF2 (according to FRAPS) is around 45 - 50fps, which isn't too bad actually. It that was a MINIMUM framerate I'd be happy, but it's not, it's the AVERAGE. It's only when there are a lot of enemies at the same time, then my machine struggles a little to keep MINIMUM framerates above 30fps.

 

[lopri]

This thread doesn't do any good for the OP but became a stupidity-fest.

1. One party argues that under CPU-bound (edit:typo) cituation CPU is more important than GPU in games.
2. The other party argues, naturally, the other way around.

Keep going, eh?

Edit 2: Harpoon: Now I see why you've been preaching the importance of CPU in games. You play games with medium detail setting with X850XT and you just upgraded to C2D? And this talk is about BF2?

For once, you should remember that your experience is, often times, your experience. And BF2 isn't everything in the world. If anything, it's one of the worst-coded games. No wonder CPU means something there. Today's games, if it were to be played "the way it was meant to played" it's mostly GPU bound. (1600x1200/4AA/8AF) It doesn't mean everybody should buy expensive video cards at all, but it's just a natural progress in visual technology/hardware and I'm not saying it's my opinion. It's almost a given. I respect your gaming experience but I don't think it's a good idea to generalize your experience in public. Everybody has different experiences and shouting it out loud only reveals..

Edit 3: I feel so stupid for staying in this thread this long. I'm done here and thanks to the folks that helped opening my eyes.

 

[harpoon84]

Yeah, sorry to OP it has kinda strayed off topic but people keep responding to my posts so it's only etiquette to respond back. :/

I haven't yet upgraded to C2D, but I will soon, still deciding on the video card atm...

I really wish I can play at 1600x1200 4xAA/8xAF HIGH details, but then I get unplayable framerates in game. And if I *do* have a card that can handle 1600x1200 max details/AA, then the onus would again be on the CPU, and we're back to square one.

I'm certainly not trying to force my opinion on anybody, but I'm just saying, from my experience, online games are really heavy on the CPU requirements. I agree, BF2 is a piece of coding junk, and requires 2GB just to play well at high details. But I consider CS:S a more polished product and it's still very CPU bound.