Processor, RAM, and Video Card - What's most important in gaming?

Processor, RAM, and Video Card - What's most important in gaming?

What's the most important thing in gaming?

Obviously the fact they all depend on each other, but I need your help.

I was wondering if the processor is more important than the video card and RAM or if it's the other way around.

If you could put them into percentages based on your knowledge, what would it be?

ex)
60% Processor
30% Video Card
10% RAM

I had a 6600 256MB PCI-E card once (when it was the top of the line) and I had a crap processor and the new video card didn't help much.

Thanks

 

In a laptop mostly the Video card now a days. As long as you have 2 gigs of memory more doesn't usually help at all. Cpu would be second to that. My rating as you requested in order of importance for GAMING on current laptops is Video card 100%. All else is second to that.

 

I'd say...
60% Video Card
20% Processor
12% RAM (I'd say 2GB is the minimum you would want on a new notebook)
8% Speed of Hard drive

Actually... percentage doesn't mean anything. A faster processor doesn't help that much so just go for the best bang for the buck.
If you want a gaming rig, the video card is soo much more important than other factors.
The reason I say percantage doesn't mean anything is this:
If you have 256mb of ram then you're gonna have a hard time playing the newest games, if you have 3gb however it's gonna improve quite a bit, so I guess the RAM is pretty important and should have a high percentage...

It's actually more like a treshold kind of thing, upgrading a video card keeps on being more beneficial. However, upgrading the processor and ram and whatever is beneficial up to a point where it's of no use to spend €200 on an upgrade cos it doesn't give you that much more FPS, so... best bang for the buck.

I'd say a P8400 processor and 3Gb are a good base, a 7200rpm hard drive will make load times faster and then just get the best video card you can get...

 

depends on the game, but as others have said, GPU.

Assuming you have 2gb or ram already and a relatively modern CPU

VideoCard 70 percent
CPU 20 percent
Memory 10 percent

(harddrive counts when loading the game or switching levels)

 

Hmm

AMD 64 X2 2.4GHz TL-68
6100 Go 256MB
2.0GB RAM

is my rig lol.

 

I second the LOL.

However your proc and ram are fine. You just need a better video card however in todays market that is usually not upgradeable barring the Uber high end gaming laptops. So now you will think twice about the video card when you buy a new laptop for gaming.

 

75% gpu
10% cpu
15% ram

 

You can't really put em like this. But if you did I'd have to say

GPU 45% Easily the most important factor, but your CPU MUST be able to keep up with the GPU in order to use it's full potential.

CPU 45% Everything in the system passes through this first, if this isn't fast enough, it will slow down your GPU considerably

ram 9% If there isn't enough ram, the games might not lose FPS, but it will stutter, or freeze for seconds at a time, this can also happen if the ram is too slow.

HDD 1% once everything is loaded to ram, granted you have enough ram, the hard drive won't be in much use. Every new PC nowadays has enough ram to not rely on the hard drive. Even running a game off of a memory stick getting 2mb/s won't cause any issues in most games, just take longer to load.

 

You really can't think of it that way. Its like asking what is more important -- your brain, your heart or your lungs. They all depend on each other.

For gaming performance, its important to look at your machine as a whole system. Try to keep everything balanced, and upgrade your bottlenecks. It is a simple as that.

 

lol, there is no need for percentages.

The video card is most important, 2GB's of ram and any intel core 2 duo processor.

 

Going along what others have said, think of it more as a bottleneck system.

Your gaming capability will be limited by your weakest component's ability to do its job. So if your RAM is insufficient, gaming will lag due to swapping.

If your GPU is bottlenecked, then no matter how much information your CPU sends, your GPU will not be able to render it all.

And if your CPU is the bottleneck, no matter how fast your GPU is, it cannot render the frames that the CPU isn't sending.

But in laptop gaming, most rigs are GPU limited, as any Core2Duo should be able to produce more than enough frames for the GPU to render (except for a low end C2D with a high end GPU). And also RTS's are more CPU dependent than other genres.

 

I would just like to add, that RAM isn't usually a bottleneck, as almost all laptops people buy for gaming have at least 2GB or RAM usually 3 or 4
Laptop GPUs are probably the most important and most likely to hold gaming performance back, as is already mentioned in previous posts

 

I'd second this.

 

depends on the game and the rig.
even crossfire hd4870x2 will become the bottleneck if you try to play crysis maxed out at 2560*1600. play any other game on that kind of rig and the cpu will most likely become the bottleneck.

 

GPU is the most important component. Different systems may have different bottlenecks, based on their specs, but whatever game, whatever computer you may have, GPU is the single most important component when it comes to gaming. CPU is a far second, while cheap-o RAM is third.

Hard drive speeds only affect loading times, I think, not exactly gaming performance. You won't see higher FPS from SSDs... [Correct me if I'm wrong ]