How important is CPU , really ?

Lobotomist

I am playing on fairly old computer , over 3.5 years

AOC is around the corner , and i decided that instead buying new PC i will try upgrading the old one.

Right now i am considering either 9600GT or weaker 8600GT

But problem is that my CPU is just 1.8Ghz Athlon

So question is

How important is CPU anyway ?

Would 9600 , perform just as crappy as 8600 because of my CPU ?

 

And if CPU is a problem, what does it actually influence ? Why is it slowing down the game, and how ?

 

 

Thanks

 

Katashi-kun

Not as much as it used to be!  Its all about the Video and RAM now, although ur PC being much older than current gen u prolly won't be able to play on higher settings!

Wharg0ul

Originally posted by Lobotomist


I am playing on fairly old computer , over 3.5 years
AOC is around the corner , and i decided that instead buying new PC i will try upgrading the old one.
Right now i am considering either 9600GT or weaker 8600GT
But problem is that my CPU is just 1.8Ghz Athlon
So question is
How important is CPU anyway ?
Would 9600 , perform just as crappy as 8600 because of my CPU ?
 
And if CPU is a problem, what does it actually influence ? Why is it slowing down the game, and how ?
 
 
Thanks
 

Short answer: Very important.

Your entire system will suffer from an obsolete CPU. Granted, you don't "need" a cutting edge quad core, but still, an old 32-bit athlon simply won't cut it with today's games.

I could post some long technical ramble about it, but it's 3am, and I'm sure someone else will do it

rock_harry

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Originally posted by Katashi-kun
Not as much as it used to be! Its all about the Video and RAM now, although ur PC being much older than current gen u prolly won't be able to play on higher settings!

---

katashi a crap cpu will never get the speed you need out of a good video card you need a good balanced pc.
no point you engine racing like mad if you not got it in gear

slask777

If you make a top10 list, I would say CPU is at a good #4, with motherboard in third, ram as second and graphics card at number 1. Ram works with diminutive returns though. That is, when you go past a certain amount the effectiveness of more ram drop drastically. 2-3 gb is often enough though. But if one of those parts are very old, it wont matter how fast the other parts are, cause the older parts wont be able to keep up, creating a bottleneck and slowing the whole system down.

 

nakuma

for a lot of games up until recently even now still certain things are CPU intensive and require a decent CPU. such as data processing, AI, emulation of physics (unless you have a PPU which even then the game has to take advantage of it) texture load processing, particle systems, some times lighting, and as well as shadowing requires a decent CPU if the game is programmed to offload to the CPU. now a lot of the visual fx can offload the workload onto the GPU and the amount of ram dictates how much data you can hold and process at a time. beyond that you'd have to do some research on it to find out further.

but your processor is pretty obsolete and probably wont play AOC on nothing other than low settings with varying results depending on what sliders and features you have enabled.granted you don't need a Dual core but you would want a higher one than that to get any decent framerates from your game.

as the guy posted above, doesnt matter what you have, if one part is old and it cant keep up, it will bottleneck and slow your whole system down.

LondonMagus

As other replies have said, the degree to which a good graphics card can compensate for a slow CPU depends a lot on how well the game software is written.

My PC is also over 3 years old, but I upgraded it last year to have the Nvidia 8800GTS 640MB graphics card, 3GB Ram & a Creative X-FI Sound card. My CPU is the Pentium 3.5 GHz CPU which is just single core, but often shows up as multiple on hardware stats due to hyperthreading.

I originally upgraded it in anticipation of Vanguard, but that is best forgotten & the big improvements in everything else seemed to justify the investment.

The experience I have had with games like EQ2 is that my CPU still seems to be dragging down the game because the software is fairly 'old school' & doesn't know how to offload tasks to the graphics card correctly. SOE are meant to be working on improving this but are definitely taking their time.

I am hoping that AoC will be a bit more 'Graphics Card Aware' & that my PC will be able to play it on a reasonable quality level, but unless I win one of the beta slots I only have to wait another month to find out.

Sam123jo0123

very..Deals with rendering times, loading times, particle effects in games , performance can bottle-neck if you don't have a good CPU to match ur GFX and ram.



I had;



1.86DC

2gb

8800gts



I ran crysis at 25-30 fps on 1280x1024



I now have an AMD 6000+, and can run it at 25-30 fps on 1920x1200, with med-high settings.

Rayx0r

it totally depends on the game.  Everquest 2 is very CPU intensive.  Certain high end cards like my 8800 have little to no improvement over a 7900 series in EQ2 because of this. 

ive always been a firm believer in taking care of the CPU first.  Your FSB frequency is dependant on how far you can push your CPU frequency.   In turn, your rams frequency is effected by the rate at which your CPU is being clocked.   Your CPU is the "heart" of the system.   Without a decent CPU, the best stick of ram is just bottlenecked, as well as a video board.

to answer your question, both video boards will perform crappy with a 1.8 ghz CPU (and an athlon to boot). 

if you can put an AMD 64 at least 2.4ghz on your mobo that would be a very cheap upgrade at $40.  Then go buy the 9600 and your still under $200

so in a nutshell I wouldnt bother upgrading the video board unless I upgraded the CPU.