This is an endless topic of conversation, with everybody you meet having their own pet opinion. What brings better results, purchasing a faster graphics card, or investing your cash in a more powerful processor? In an effort to find out, Tom’s Hardware has taken a good look at the most important chips. In this article, the Geforce 6800 GT, 7950 GT, 8800 GT, 8800 GTS 512, 9600 GT 1024 and 9800 GTX are up for cross-testing in terms of performance comparisons, and pitted against current CPUs like the E2160, E6750, Q6600 and X6800EE.

http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,1928.html



A very welcomed comparison!! Thanks

Thanks, a good insight for me as i'm deciding to upgrade my system from my PCI slotted dimension 1100.

Maybe all the ppl saying, "get a quad, it t0tally pwnz !!" will shut up for awhile.

^amen to that

Ive seen too many times people have been told that running a s939 at 2.7 and higher wasnt fast enough for their card. At 2.7, a s939 equals about 2.1 C2d, and this just shows what youll get. The only thing thats important here is some games are extremly cpu dependent, and for those select games, the fastest cpu affordable is usually a good idea. But having someone completely update their rig thats used primarily for gaming using say, an older oceed S939 just doesnt bring the benefits. Maybe 25% tops, whereas if theyd just buy a better card, theyd get a huge increase. Like Ive always said, the nest single purchase a gamer can make to better his gaming is abetter gfx card

Well s939 is getting crusty, you should dump that thing if you game

I mean more of the ppl saying get a quad core over any dual core cpu, but then I just dumped my 2800 + with a 7600 gs for a 5400 and an 8800gts...and I can tell you that overall it is five times faster not counting HD access, and that 5 times was measured, not guessed at...1960 or so to 9611 3dmark 06 .

This is what Im saying tho, someone came in wanting to upgrade from a 7900GT to a 88xx card. Someone asked whats the cpu? He was running a S939 at 2.7, and instead of saying get the 88xx, they said itd be a waste, and hed have to upgrade his whole rig, or suffer. This shows thats just not true. There really no difference between the S939 and S940 with AMD, very lttle advantage, and if you take that into consideration, with this article, then it shows that you wont suffer as much as gain. It may turn out a little unbalanced/underperforming, but itd still be a huge improvement in gaming

From this one review? Explain to me how a Q6600 @ 3.2GHz can't beat a Q6600 @ 2.4GHz with a 9800GXT, despite medium low res with low fsaa and cpu scaling evident on other cpu's. ? On quick glance, Somethings doesn't add up. Likewise, a 7950GT beats a 9800GTX in crysis? Why test low and very high in the same charts.

I'll look it over in depth later. But at a glance it Sure doesn't pan out with XBit's and other sites findings: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/c [...] html#sect0

BTW, just checked up on this. Firingsquad doesn't show any CPU scaling in COD4 even at low res:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] page10.asp

Yep, Tomshardware's reviews and benchs have been getting shaky lately.

Careful now before you go trash talking my rig.....
My crusty old socket 939 4600 X2 paired with a BFG 8800GTS 512 OC scores just around 9780 in 3dmark 06.
Course the CPU and GPU are both overclocked just a little....

By the way, just why the hell are there no AMD processors in this test?
Did I miss something, or this is just an "Intel Only" club.
That would really put some light on whether the processor is indeed instrumental with a powerful GPU.

jaydeejohn, I see what you are saying. The X2's are still quite good at higher clocks. But at low clocks like 2.0-2.2GHz, they can quite often drag performance down. But FS $500 shows just how good overall those CPU's can do. http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page4.asp

Ohh lol all NVidia cards and Intel CPU's...

Well of course, what else in the world do you possibly need for "extensive tests" on CPU vs GPU performance?

@pauldh,

I don't dispute all that, but the fact is right now, for GAMING, most devs are still cutting their teeth and LEARNING, dual cores...much less maxing outt and optimized for dual, and the situation is only compounded for quads. If you can get a quad with the same clock for about the same price sure, go for it, or if you do encoding and stuff for a living or just a lot of stuff like that, again, go for it. GAMING however does not really benefit just yet from quad cores for what they end up sosting vs a higher clocked dualcore. When the devs really get better at multicore, prices will have dropped by then anyways and current quads will be old tech compared to what will be out then.