Did I get the Bottleneck right?

Hi all,
Making it short:
I ran 3DMark05 on this laptop :
ASUS W3J : T2300/1GB-DDRII-533/X1600
Got this score with 6.8 catalyst driver : ~4200
I saw that the other ASUS W3J's with stock clocks and T2500/T2600 CPU's atmost give ~4400.
Does it mean that the GPU is more of a bottleneck than the CPU is?

 

For games, and gaming benchmarks like 3DMark, yes the graphics card is more of a bottleneck. Almost all processors Core 2 Duo and Turion X2 processer can game very well. So, going from a T2300 to a T2500, will result in an increase, but not a massive one. Processers are only a bottleneck, in systems that are used for processer intensive applications, such as encoding or video rendering.

 

3DMark05 is mainly GPU-dependent, so that is why the faster CPUs don't have much of an impact in the benchmark. However, 3DMark06 does depend a bit more on the CPU, so use that instead.

 

For gaming:
I think that GPU is most important
Then the AMOUNT of memory is most important.
And finaly the cpu is important (but take at least a core duo)

As example: I saw a lot of people who spend 200 to 300 euro's or dollars extra for a faster Cpu (something like a core2duo 2.XXGhz), good amount of memory (2GB), but choosen a slower or normal gpu (For example a 7400 or 7600).

Also some people bought a fast Cpu (core2duo 2.XXGhz), normal amount of memory (1GB) and a great GPU (for example a 7900GTX or 7900gs).

Myself:
i bought a normal Cpu (coreduo 1.83Ghz: 120 euro's cheaper than a 2.00Ghz processor at the moment i bought my notebook)
I bought a good amount of ram (2gb) and also a Great GPU (7900Gtx).

I'm sure of the fact that this was the best combination for the amount of money i've spend on it. If i bought for example a 7600 (ofcourse stock), a 2.16Ghz (coreduo) processer and 2Gb of ram then i would spend the same amount of money but the game performance wouldn't be as high as i have now. Also switching to from a 7600 to a 7900gtx and from 2GB ram to only 1GB of ram wouldn't give the same gaming performance as i have now



(this calculation is for a half year ago, i don't know if the comparison is correct for this date)

 

It is of course true that GPU choice will have the greatest effect on gaming performance. However, there is a definite performance increase going between a Core Duo and a Core 2 Duo processor, because of the large architectural changes. Fiddling with clock speeds within a processor type isn't worthwhile, but picking microarchitectures is important.

Now CPU choice usually isn't that important for desktop gaming since higher resolutions are more common which will make it of course nearly totally GPU dependent. However, I believe the most common resolution for laptops is 1280x800 or perhaps 1024x768 in a non-widescreen game. At those moderate resolutions, the CPU microarchitecture (and large differences in clock speeds, ie. more than one clock speed bump) does have an effect on performance, not as much as common benchmarks that show CPU dependent 640x480 or 800x600, but it will be there.

 

the cpu would make 200 points difference in 3d mark

there are two tests that are cpu only.

 

Varies a lot. In 3dMark, the GPU is definitely the bottleneck.

In games, it's much harder to draw such a conclusion. In some games, the GPU is still the main bottleneck, but in others the CPU is very important. And it depends a lot on the detail level you're playing at.
The CPU load is *more or less* constant regardless of resolution or detail level, while the GPU load changes dramatically between low and high graphical settings.

But the CPU still matters in real games. A too slow CPU will limit your game all over, while a slow GPU will only become a bottleneck for the graphics-intensive parts (high detail levels and very graphics-heavy maps)

But for this particular question, 3dMark is completely useless. It doesn't give you an accurate picture of CPU vs GPU load, because 3dMark doesn't have a game running in the background. It's a GPU benchmark rather than a games benchmark.

It shows you how well your system can render advanced graphics, it doesn't show you how well it can play games. Sometimes there's a lot of overlap between the two, but they're not the same at all.

 

Thank you all for the help

 

*applause* Very well said! We need to sticky this!!!