how important is the processor for games?

hi, i have a dell vostro with:
dual core 1,6 ghz...
8600gt 256mb
1 gb ram (but i will upgrade it to 2,5gb ram)

As you can see my processor power is not so high, will it be noticable in games like battlefield 2, fear and maybe bioshock or is it not so important for games???
What are pros und contras of overclocking a processor???


Thx in advance

sam solid

 

any core duo or core 2 duo will be fine.

 

Indeed, the Video Card is a major component, then RAM, then Hard drive speed and Processor speed.

 

I would put the Processor speed before hard drive speed.

 

so what is the exact difference in the perfomance of the laptop if I have a 1,6 coreduo or a 2ghz coreduo...

 

Well in games you won't see a huge difference but you might see a difference using video editing, photoshop, and stuff like that.

 

ah okay..

so thats my specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo T5470, 1.6GHz, 800Mhz FSB, 2M L2 Cache
1GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 DIMM ( Will be upgraded to 2,5 GB)
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
160G 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive

so i will be able to play bioshock on the same settings with the same perfomance no matter if i would have a 1,6 ghz or a 2ghz processor...
and if no, would you recommend me to overclock???


P.S. sorry for my bad englisch...

 

Do not overclock that can cause more damage then good. I recommend you not to upgrade the processor the processor speed apparently does not matter when I talk to people on the forum and off. But when you compare a Alienware MAlx with the Dell M1710 Xps the Dell got better performance scores even though the MALX had SLI the M1710 did not the MALX has a single core AMD proc. On the Eurocom version(DUAL CORE) of the MALX had way more performance then the M1710. This may just be the difference between Dual and Single core? But I do not no specifically.

 

In most games the order of importance will be GPU --> CPU --> HDD

However thats just a general rule and a general statement, there are exceptions to the rule.

The gpu is the primary piece of hardware responsible for rendering all the on screen visuals, all the polygons, all the lighting, the shading ect. The cpu is there to process that information. The two go hand in hand and work together, but in general you max out the gpu and hit its limit while the cpu still has room to go.

The exception would be games like flight simulator x, or suppreme commander where there are a ton of phisics or AI scripts to process wich are entirly cpu bound and the gpu has nothing to do with it, these task can kill off a weak cpu or even a c2d really easy depending on your settings and with the cpu down for the count the gpu cant do its job, so in that case the cpu can be more important.

The HDD is usually just needed to load all the data up at the start, a slower HDD means you will load a level slower, but wont hurt the performance of the game at all. The excpetion is games that load things from the hdd on a constant basis like Oblivion, instead of a seamless transition from one area to the next, you will have to wait for loading, the other issue is that if you dont have alot of ram or play a game that uses alot of ram resources, data will get stored to the hdd instead, so when the game has to load the data from the hdd instead of the ram (called page filing) the game will studder or pause making you THINK the gpu is not doing its job, but its the hdd or your ram thats actully causing the issue.

 

Games in the future will take advantage of dual cores. Crysis will do this to otpimize cpu use. CPU for your typical games are not that important but games like supreme commander when the units get very high the cpu becomes the bottleneck. A more powerful cpu will make a big difference there. Vast majority of the games its 1) GPU 2) Ram 3) CPU 4) HD. I just personally believe hardrive speed is overrated.

 

see what everyone else has said? that is what you want to read.

the only time youd have to get some gnarly processor is for SLI 8800 GTX, but since we're not talking about that.... it doesnt matter

 

HDD will mostly only help loading speeds.

 

In laptops, get the best GPU you can, then as much RAM as you can, then worry about processor. Even the fastest laptop GPU isn't going to be hampered by any Core 2 Duo, except maybe the lowest-end 1.6GHz model.

On the desktop it can be a different animal entirely. The 8800s are so powerful that my X2 4200+ - a mid-range dual-core processor - severely hampers even my 640MB 8800GTS, to say nothing of what it would do to the GTX or Ultra, or an SLI setup. This is very evident in CPU-intensive games like World in Conflict, Command and Conquer 3, and Supreme Commander (though SC has it's own set of performance issues). I can play at ridiculously high graphics settings (eg, 16xQ CSAA) in huge games of CS:S without issue - unless I'm hosting, then framerates really can begin to chug.

So basically, that's processor vs. GPU in a nutshell. Get the best GPU you can, and only worry about the CPU if you have either a single-core CPU (very bad!) or an 8800 GPU (a non-issue in the laptop world, for now).

 

With the exceptions that I mentioned and single core is not all that bad! Alot of games dont have dual core support yet so a single core cpu with a higher clock speed would in thory be better than a dual core with a lower speed. My desktop uses a Opteron 148 @ 2.8ghz and it tied the 1.6ghz dual core in the cpu test that use 2 threads, but in a single thread app it left it in the dust.