Video Card to CPU bottleneck ratios

[deftron]

Hey.. just wondering if theres a guide anywhere
to what Video Cards you can use with what CPU's before you experience a bottleneck

example...

p3 700 and a Geforce 3 .....wasted money on Geforce 3
Athlon 1.4 and a Voodoo 3 .... well, you know

Something that would tell you the
most powerful Video Cards you can use with certain CPU's (and vice-versa) before you
stop getting any performance improvement.

 

[HappyGamer2]

it would be kinda hard to do beacuse it would depend on the game and the game settings,res etc

 

[richleader]

Yeah, I have a tbird 900, wondering if it's worth upgrading to a 1.3-1.4 xp, or if a geforce 3/radeon 8500 will be enough come xmas time.

 

[deftron]

<< it would be kinda hard to do beacuse it would depend on the game and the game settings,res etc >>




True...



But I was just meaning in a broad sense...

 

[Chikin]

As HappyCamper2 says, is it greatly dependant on the types of game(s) you play and what settings you use.

In a broad sense, the more video performance demanding the game is (with FPS-type games topping the list), the higher the resolution you use, and the more eye candy you turn on (eg. SHQ settings, M/FSAA), the better off you'll be concentrating on video cards specs rather than raw CPU speed.

eg. If you own a Athlon 900, are a Quake3-head, play at 1600x1200 32bit with SHQ settings, then you may as well go for a GF3/8500. Changing your CPU in this case would have very little impact on your resultant frame rate.

 

[richleader]

The nice part of having a slow cpu is that cranking up the resolution is a no brainer.