the processor bottleneck thread

hi;

as the question states, how big is the processor role in playing games? I know it makes a big difference if we are talking Intel P4 and Intel Core 2 Duo.
but, for my comparison at least, how would the t5550 (1.8Ghz, 2MB, 667Mhz) compare to the new line of t8100 (2.1Ghz, 3MB, 800Mhz)?

lets say for this list of games, as an example,
Assassins Creed
Bioshock
Crysis
Unreal Tournament 3
Mass Effect
Oblivion
Need For Speed, Pro street

Please do note that:
the notebook of T5550 has nvidia 9500m GS, 512MB
while the T8100 has nvidia 8600m GT , 512MB
and all of the other specs are the same.
(both graphics cards perform similarly)

Thank you!

 

It varies by game/application. The better proc would probably be most noticeable in Oblivion, while others would be more heavily bound by the GPU. In any case, while playing that list of games, both of those machines will be largely GPU bound anyway.

 

The processor's role in playing games exists, but is most of the time very small compared to the gpu's role. Bascially for today's games, a 2.0Ghz dual core processor will be more than enough; your t5550 should also be just fine.

 

I have a T5550 Processor and a 9500GS video card and it runs the games I want to play just fine! It runs halo 2 on high and gears of war on medium with good FPS. GPU the two you listed the 9500GS and the 8600GT are almost the same in power. Games most of the time depend on the GPU but there are games that depend on the cpu like crysis. t depends on the game.

 

do you think it is worth it to buy $70 extra for T8100 instead of T5550?

thanks for your help.

 

I would say yes. The better the processor the better things will run.

 

The more powerful processor will help the system better handle Assassin's Creed, Crysis, UT3 and Oblivion. For the other games getting the more powerful GPU will improve performance more.

 

except that the two gpu's are the *same* so there isn't a more powerful gpu here.

still, $70 for the processor upgrade is worth it if you want to spend $70 more dollars on your computer.

if you really want to optimize your performance per dollar, buy the MINIMUM amount of ram available, SELL it on craigslist or ebay, and buy 2x2GB (a total of 4GB) of memory on newegg

you want ddr2 667 mhz laptop memory... its getting seriously cheap.

 

Fundamentally the GPUs are based on the same graphics core, but I would argue the 9500GS is stronger than its older brethren since the increased hit efficiency from the smaller die process will allow more overclocking headroom if the OP so desires. More overclocking = better performance = stronger card using this interpretation.

 

in a hp dv5z notebook,
if i assemble AMD Athlon(TM) X2 Dual-Core Processor QL-60 (1.9GHz) with the 256MB ATI Radeon(TM) HD 3450,

1. Will the processor be a bottleneck???
2. Would these processor be able to make use of hybrid crossfire?

Thank you

 

i dont think it'll bottleneck the 3450 IMO

 

hehe with CUDA out there. after a year or 2, you'll never need a CPU for games rofl

 

I've noticed that in Crysis my AMD Turion X2 TL-56 (1.8ghz) bottlenecks my ATi HD 2600 at times, but it only becomes noticable at shipping yard on the Assault level. Lower settings didn't improve framerate and when I tried overclocking my CPU to 2ghz it ran smoother.

If I tried a RTS game like Supreme Commander or World in Conflict it would probably bottleneck in those games too, but it has been fine for Command and Conquer 3 and Company of Heroes.

That notebook should be ok though; the CPU is a bit faster and I wouldn't recommend playing more demanding games like Crysis with a HD 3450.

 

The processor will likely the bottleneck for games like Supreme Commander, World in Conflict, Crysis, Oblivion and Unreal Tournament 3. For every other game it's more likely the GPU will be the system chokepoint.

 

It's not like you won't be able to enjoy games with the processor, but with a faster one as noted, some games will run smoother.

 

There were two threads about processors being bottlenecks, so I merged them both and renamed the thread.

 

cool!
thanks everybody for the help
i think i will go with T8100

 

my notebook has trouble playing Oblivion smoothly so i'm guessing it has something to do w/ my old processor.

 

You've misunderstood the point of CUDA. Cuda enables you to use the GPU for certain parallelizable General-purpose computing tasks (like video encoding). This uses gpu power. It won't replace the CPU just yet, as the gpu will be busy rendering the graphics.

And the fact that CUDA is nVidia-only.

And that it requires more time being spent programming, using a different language.

And that if you only use a gpu, the (quite) powerful CPU will be sitting there doing basicly nothing, meaning processing power will go to waste.

So basicly, you don't even WANT the GPU to do everything.

 

its not Nvidia only anymore, some guy @ ngohq.com could make a modded ati driver to make cuda work on an ATI HD 3850. WHICH DOESNT HAVE A CUDA PROCESSOR UNIT! he could boost his CPU score to 22k in 3dmark Vantage. doesnt that make you feel that this is all a commercial game? i guess that Nvidia could make CUda work on Geforce 4 if they wanted to.


and here it is:

http://www.ngohq.com/news/14219-physx-gpu-acceleration-radeon-hd-3850-a.html

 

Oh yeah. I read about that. Still doesn't refute my point...

 

it doesnt, i didnt mean that CPU will be completely removed, what i meant was its role in gaming will shrink even more.

 

And I meant that that is a stupid use of resources. If you have all that extra power lying around, why not use it?

 

Processors arent as powerful as GPus when it comes to physx, even Quadcores.

 

When the GPU is busy doing stuff, telling it to stop doing some of it and start doing other stuff will not really help performance. This will only really work in the fastest GPUs on games that don't stress them enough, at lower resolutions.

Anywho, this is not what CUDA is for, and we're going way too OT, so I say we just drop it, ok?

 

lol alright..