CPU Game Benchmarks. What are they for?

CPU power affects gaming performance, but not nearly as much as the GPU in most cases. The purpose of CPU gaming benchmarks is to show the performance difference in games between different CPU's using the same graphics card, Tom's should have it listed some where what GPU they use for those tests.

Yeah and Tom should have listed the CPU he uses on the GPU benchmarks as well also leaving the statistics useless.

You believe something that you know is wrong? Are you religious?

^Ouch, that's kinda harsh, you might have just started a flame war.

To do a proper CPU test for games, you need to turn every setting to the lowest it can go, to remove the GPU as a factor. After this, then you can compare two diffrent CPU's against eachother.

If you want a cheap system for CS:S/HL2, I can recommend a Pentium 4 and NVIDIA 8600GT for you; The games are so old, any setup can run them at low settings at high FPS.

Incorrect. You can not test any component without removing the others as a factor. Even in a gme like Supreme Commander, the GPU still has an effect if the settings are raised, and has the net effect of causing the results to come closer together then they actually are. To prove this: Lower all settings as low as they can go, and then bump all the CPU-Independent settings up one notch. The FPS drop (usually at least 20%) is all GPU overhead, and the reason why you can't compare CPU's for gaming without low-res testing, as the result set will always leave a smaller diffrence between CPU's if you don't reduce settings.

Its that same reason why after a certain speed you get no increase; thats the GPU not being able to render enough frames.

FPS is two parts: How quickly the CPU can send the GPU information to draw a frame, and how many frames the GPU can draw, per second.

If the CPU is too slow, the GPU is unused, and draws whatever frames the CPU sends. Increasing CPU speed will cause a jump in FPS.
If the GPU is too slow, the CPU will send more frames then the GPU is capable of drawing. Increasing the CPU speed will cause no jump in FPS.

As such, there are two main components for getting FPS, and testing one while the other is still a factor will lead to incorrect results. Lowering all settings to minimum removes any effect the GPU has (and in some games, the GPU can still be a factor, such as Crysis, even at lowest settings). The FPS you get during testing will then be how many frames the CPU is capable of producing per second, before the GPU is taken into account. You can then increase settings and see how much the GPU is affecting performance.

*Remember to mark which settings involve the GPU, CPU, and both. Avoid changing settings that can affect both components, as that also can skew testing.

And you dont seem to get that without said synthetic result, there is exactly 0 difference between CPUs.

You mean a Logical vs Illogical battle?

Yeah, he might've.

To OP: The Radeon 4830 would be more than enough to run any older games.