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AMD still a contender even after Core i7
Tom's rescently did a platform review of the Core i7 x58 platform, Core2 x48 platform, and AMD 780FX platform all at thier top specs. What I found was surprising. 1st AMD HD4870x2's perform better then 1 GTX280 80% of the time, and in cases it doesn't are usually driver related issues that will be corrected over time. Similiarly the GTX280 had driver issues in a few games. 2nd is this.
If we look at the averages. AMD performs about 16.6% worse then the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition, and 16.7% worse then the QX9770. At a higher resolution, this gap becomes smaller with AMD at 12.9% and 12.5% worse respectively. Its also closer with fewer video cards as it gets 8.5% worse at the highest resolution and 1-HD4870 with the core i7, and 6.1% worse then the core2.
This performance difference comes at a price tag $985 cheaper then the Core i7's projected release value, and $1345 cheaper then the QX9770. When you factor in the processor and memory since they are the 2 only major price differences between the systems.
I think it shows when money is a factor, there is room for a Phenom 9950.
Comments
You actually thinks that your CPU affects more then a few percent of your performance in games?!
It's all about the graphics card and the amount of system memory.
Besides Core i7 sounds pretty dumb to me but buy whatever you want.
go ahead, put a Core 2 Duo machine vs a machine with say a P4 and all the same hardware (vid card/ram/etc) and you tell me there isnt a difference.
I have more stars than you so just stfu.
real mature there buddy
I thought it was pretty funny myself.
Maybe you have any insights to share with the OP?
Think this will be pretty insightful...little visual aid
Did you notice how these curves comes together when using a decent graphics card?
The Celeron processor is not far behind the Core 2 Quad processor.
6248 vs. 6956.
Conclusion : a decent graphics card is all that matters.
umm the left side of the graph is the best side buddy........the higher the score on the y axis, the better the performance. Hence on the low end card, the processor doesnt matter, but on a good or great card, processor matters ALOT
I wasnt aware that a Geforce 9600GT wasnt a decent graphics card.
he has the graph backwards. To the right end of the graph is the low endish card, to the left is the high endish card
Yes but what he is saying is that if you look at the graph the lowest end card places all the processors in the same performance range, as you scale higher with better graphics cards you get better performance. Thus he is saying that the performance you get is greatly impacted by graphics card over CPU speed. Which in all benchmarks over the last couple years seems to be the fact. We have reached the medium bottleneck of the CPU's to the point where going better on graphics gives a greater performance over going with a better CPU.
For example a E7200 is only 2% maybe 3% slower then a E8400 using a ati 3850 graphics card. As you increase the graphics cards you see greater gains in performance.
But don't let that fool you because not every game is graphicly intensive. Some games will run faster with a better CPU because they use more intensive CPU power for physix and others. Crysis is a prime example of this.
So I think a mid range CPU is a better buy then a low end CPU and a best GPU. Get a mid range CPU and a great mid range GPU and your better off.
Who let you in the VIP section?
yea cpu is MASTER in a game like civ4 when it comes to having the computer move all the enemy troops you can see a massive problem using say 1 gig of ram and a 1.8ghz cessor vs. 3.2ghz and 8 gigs. not ALL games rely on the video card.
what would REALLY intrest me though.....would be seeing an amd 3.0 ghz cessor and 4 gigs of ram (same 64 bit os for arguements sake) vs. an intel chip @3.0 ghz moving say 900 troops using moderately powerful identical vid cards. my bet would be amd coming out slightly faster. with a game like civ 4 graphics are hardly an issue.
It depends on how the game is programmed more then anything. An AMD proc will outperform a Core2 proc on floating point calculations. Something heavily used on servers and micromanaged characters. Its the reason why IBM went with AMD when building thier most rescent cell-based super computer. However, in this arena the Corei7 outperforms current AMD chips.
The only games that are going to need an i7 and will get a nice gain from it are RTS like supreme commander which is usually CPU limited. AMD's new cpu's on a 45nm manufacturing process, Shanghai, are coming out and they have upped cache and supposedly tweaked it a bit so that it is faster. I actually read a "supposedly" leaked benchmark of it but it was from a forum member in the past who has been reliable so who knows. It should be pretty decent, lower priced and very possibly better on power which will keep them competitive. Even though I overclocked my q9450 as far as I could doesn't mean I really saw a nice difference despite over a 30% bump in frequency. It just makes me feel good knowing it's faster than a q9770
Here's that obscure forum post I was talking about.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=207460
Ok one forgets tomshardware for any reviews on new tech, i used to look to them also , but they have shown over and over they don't understand much of the tech being released of late (outsourcing or something maybe, that or lazy).
Check this post for links to most reviews.
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/t306434.html
Ok the fact are better cpus will help you a a marked amount if you have sli 280x2, 9800gtx (2 almost nothing or x3 for sure) , 4870x2 x2. Other crazyness.
Now so what and how will the i7 help.... it does believe it or not it gives a few fps in games runign from 50-150 fps and alot in anything over 150+ Not some games seem totaly uneffected, but many do play faster. But the difference does not warrent upgrades.
The only cases where currently the i7 dominates the current Qs and Es are encoding, rendering, file management/storage (database) etc. most often with 30-40% improvments. Marked for sure , not overlly important for gaming (video card takes it place largely).
Jefferson81 and the agrument that cpus don't matter if you have a good video card is crazy loook at the difference its liek what 90% improvment in fps from the worst cpu listen and the best (which is 2 generations old mind you yet not bad in preformence). a 90% increase in fps is lame i agree cpus are useless.
NOT
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
The improvement of the fps is because of the better graphics card and not because of the cpu.
Heh, you should play EQ2 sometime
Graphics card is nothing if you don't have the CPU power to support it. In some cases (like EQ2) graphics card doesn't mean anything at all.
It is a proven fact that you need to have balanced CPU/GPU/RAM configuration, increasing 1 or 2 while decreasing the other will worsen your performance on most cases. Try running TF2 with an Athlon 64 3000+ and GTX280 and try the same game with an E4500 and 8600GT.
Med/Med/Med is better than Low/Extreme/Extreme.
Heh, you should play EQ2 sometime
Graphics card is nothing if you don't have the CPU power to support it. In some cases (like EQ2) graphics card doesn't mean anything at all.
It is a proven fact that you need to have balanced CPU/GPU/RAM configuration, increasing 1 or 2 while decreasing the other will worsen your performance on most cases. Try running TF2 with an Athlon 64 3000+ and GTX280 and try the same game with an E4500 and 8600GT.
Med/Med/Med is better than Low/Extreme/Extreme.
Yes EQ2 doesn't use much of the power of the graphics card.
Graphics card means everything just not in the wonder that is EQ2.
Hi, I'm new, and an ATI sympathizer (both my parents work there, now technically AMD), but they are doing a lot worse than NVIDIA right now.
Vortex
Just saw your new post...new GPUs are taking on much more of the load that th CPU had to take, and less of a burden is placed in the CPU. Although you still need a good CPU with a good graphics card, the GPU enables the CPU to work less and you will have higher fps when the GPU handles these functions previously handled by the CPU.
Vortex
Like i said with the BEST VIDEO CARD , the same card using two different CPUs the new cpu have 90% better frame rate than the old CPU.
Thus, the graphics card didn't make a difference as they used THE SAME ONE. Learn to read a line graph two other people in this thread have corrected you.
Sorry if this seems hostle but almost everythign tech-wise you have posted in this thread has been inncorrect.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
The 965 was up on newegg earlier briefly for just over $1000.
Could always pick up a half decent black friday AMD system for $600 too
The only problem is that ATI cards even with an AMD / Intel just scale well as the report says, in order to see real difference you have to add in 2/3 GPU's thats just not really viable when you can add in a Core 2 and 1 GPU and still get a higher percentage against an AMD chipset.
This just in Phenom II's will supposedly operate 25% faster then thier Phenom brethren. It includes tripling thier Cache. In the gaming arena, the biggest hinderance for the Phenom was the 512kb L2 Cache. Now its going to be 1.5mb. When you evaluate it, it should put the performance of the new phenoms in the same arena as the Core i7, since the strength the Core i7 has over the Core2 is with float point calculations. Something Phenom's already have over Core 2.
I disagree on the chipsets. Right now AMD probably has the best chipsets in the 7xx. As far as onboard video goes, the 780g and 780gx are the top along with nVidias onboard solutions. AMD boards also have had HyperTransport for a long time which simply makes them better at data processing. This is without taking into consideration the processor.