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Low res gaming needs a faster CPU? nuh-uh.

Mussels

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I've been seeing some really weird comments from people, basically saying that if you game at low res, you need a more powerful CPU so that you dont get bottlenecked - but at a high res, CPU matters less.

This is some weird, whacked out logic and i'd like to clear up how people are getting this strange idea.

When you game at low or at high resolutions, the CPU is equally important. At higher resolutions your video card is likely to get bottlenecked quicker, thus lowering the overall FPS.

People are using that information and making the assumption that because the GPU is limited, the CPU isnt important - and therefore doesnt matter; and they then assume the reverse is opposite, that at a low res where the GPU isnt limited, the CPU must be the limit.

This is faulty logic.
The CPU power required by a game will stay the same between resolution changes, in fact, it goes HIGHER at higher resolutions due to feeding the video card the data it needs.

If you turn down every setting in a game, your CPU may well turn out to be the limit - but at this point you've likely gone from 20 FPS to 200, making it totally pointless to reccomend a faster CPU at that resolution, over a faster video card.

Dont get fooled by faulty logic - the higher the resolution used and more powerful your video card, the more powerful a CPU you're gunna need.


Personal comment: I've done about 20 revisions on this trying to make it as clear as i can. If someone comes up with something better, or points out a typo/screwup in my post, i will clear it up/post their version.


edit: as i said above, here is some quotes

It's not the CPU that matters more, it's the GPU that matters less.

I'm not reading through all of the comments, but I did read some.

Saying the CPU is more important at the lower res is wrong. Period.

However, I can see the logic behind that saying, it is only wrong because it is worded wrong.

What should be said is: You need a stronger CPU at a lower resolution to not bottleneck the GPU.

Using my example from earlier in the thread, if I wanted to see that 200FPS the GPU was capable of at 1024x768, I would need a stronger CPU to do it. That is where the logic comes from. The people trying to express it are just wording it wrong.



Perfectly summarizes what i'm trying to say... in a lot less words.
 
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Dont get fooled by faulty logic - the higher res and more powerful your video card, the more powerful a CPU you're gunna need.

I agree totally. If you have a weak CPU it will show either in low or high resolutions. I jumped from a X2 3800+ to a i3 530 and it's like night and day, my graphics stayed the same but i gained overall fluidness in games, because they were CPU intensive.
 

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I fixed that line you quoted due to bad English, but at least the meaning was clear.
 

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I'd have thought it was obvious logic that a higher resolution requires a faster cpu ?
 

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I'd have thought it was obvious logic that a higher resolution requires a faster cpu ?

obvious to some, but i keep seeing advice in threads where people who are at high res are told not to worry about their CPU cause hte video card holds them back, and then see those people offering the opposite advice for low res gamers.


kinda like how it was obvious that physx was pointless (only 7 titles with hardware support) yet every man, his dog, and review, bagged ATI cards for not having hardware support for it...
 
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Well good you cleared that point mussels, I was starting to think that it was only me getting confused while browsing some threads.
 
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Thanks Mussels, I was beginning to question my own understanding of this after seeing so many posts about the issue. Was getting a little confused.
 

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Mussells, just a quick question, what would you deem as a faster cpu? Strictly core speed aka "gigahertz"?

What I am saying is this, and this is just my own personal view, a dual core at or above 3.2Ghz may bottleneck a video card more than say a quad @ 3Ghz. Now when I say bottleneck I mean by 3-5%. Now if you take into consideration of how many frames you're dropping it isn't that much in reality. For example, 100fps with the quad minus 5% less than that for a dual which is 95fps**. Which you are still well above eye perception.

If you are speaking more of the actual resolution? Well, cpu speed & cores help with a higher res but they are not going to hamper gameplay at all either with the same video card accounted for.


I wonder what happens when drivers become more "multithreaded", giving access for the cpu to help alot more, than what they are currently?

Please just take my post as a grain of salt. I for one am all for the "cheaper more gigahertz dual" in gaming. If that's where you were going with this thread you may ignore my post. :)

**Taking in account they are processors of same architecture

Regarding PhysX, that's a totally different topic altogether UNTIL it get's more utilized in games for use on CPU only. Which I don't see that occurring with how nVidia owns licensed rights to it.
 

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faster as in faster. more cores, more cache, more MHz - if its faster than the original CPU at the task, its faster.

so by that definition, a dual core could be faster than a quad core in gaming.

If you had a 2GHz quad + and a 3GHz dual core, the dual cores far more likely to give you better FPS due to the single threaded nature of most games. Its not really relevant to the topic tho, just go by the assumption that we mean faster for the game at hand.


The physX comment was just about the last thread i made like this, which has a link in my sig.
 

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Thank you. My post was pure speculation on my part
 

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I agree with Mussels.

The simplistic explanation I use is:

Lets say a CPU can do 100FPS in a game, it can do that regardless of resolution.
Lets say a GPU can do 60FPS@1680x1050, and 200FPS at 1024x768.
If you put the GPU and CPU together, the game will run at 60FPS@1680x1050, and 100FPS@1024x768.
Yes, a faster CPU would give you more FPS at the lower resolution, but not the higher. However, the FPS are already high enough at the lower resolution that it won't matter.

Basically, there should never be a time when the game is limitted by the CPU, assuming you have a reasonable CPU. If you reach that point, there are probably better things you can upgrade to move the bottleneck where it should be onto the GPU. Either up the resolution/settings, or buy a bigger screen. Obviously, if you have a Celeron 430 and an HD5890, this doesn't totally work out, but if you have a CPU that is reasonable then it does.
 

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newtekies done a decent job covering the part i had issues covering.

the only part i'd try and clarify even further, is that the CPU isnt the be-all and end-all like some say it is. If your GPU aint up to snuff at that resolution/settings, no matter what CPU you have, your FPS wont go any higher.

You need a CPU sufficient for the game at hand, and a video card sufficient for the resolution. That will give you a decent gaming experience on any system.

If you go into the extremes (high end SLI/crossfire/whatever) thats the point when you're gunna need an extreme CPU to get any benefit, and remove the bottlenecks. That wont happen with a single video card on a modern CPU from the same era.

You need a balanced system - one with a decent CPU AND video card - not just one or the other. (no 5870's + P4's, no I7's with geforce 6200 turbocache)
 

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Lets say a CPU can do 100FPS in a game, it can do that regardless of resolution.
Lets say a GPU can do 60FPS@1680x1050, and 200FPS at 1024x768.
If you put the GPU and CPU together, the game will run at 60FPS@1680x1050, and 100FPS@1024x768.

Going by common variable that should be 165fps, and even then you are still well above eye perception, regardleess I know where you were going with it. Don't get me wrong but at that res you can still get away with a "cpu that does 50fps regardless of resolution" and still be fine @ 1680x1050 and 1024x768 due to eye perception levels.

Clarify for me newtekie & mussels, are you meaning minimum fps and average? I think i am reading into this thread wayyy too much. LOL

EDIT:

The SLI comment is VERY VERY true.
 

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since the people stating the original (mis)information dont specify min, max or average, neither did i.
 

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Of course, it's just at a lower resolution the videocard isn't stressed as much,so yes the CPU is more important at a lower resolution, but it's equally important at a higher one also. I would say it's more than the GPU isn't as important at a lower res.
 

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Of course, it's just at a lower resolution the videocard isn't stressed as much,so yes the CPU is more important at a lower resolution, but it's equally important at a higher one also. I would say it's more than the GPU isn't as important at a lower res.

That's what I am saying but didn't know how to come acrossed. Thank you!! :)
 
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+1 on that. I just dont get it how people can think any different?
 

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+1 on that. I just dont get it how people can think any different?

See kurgans post. Even he states "CPU is more important at a lower resolution"

the truth is... its not any more important at all

its just that the VIDEO CARD is less important. the CPU's importance doesnt change at all.

Of course, it's just at a lower resolution the videocard isn't stressed as much,so yes the CPU is more important at a lower resolution, but it's equally important at a higher one also. I would say it's more than the GPU isn't as important at a lower res.


its one of those issues where wording it right and wording it ambigously can totally give someone the wrong idea. i've been wrangling this one mentally for a while, and i'm seeing people who are on the same side as me, making posts saying things that can be interpreted the wrong way (see the kurgan example above)
 

1Kurgan1

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See kurgans post. Even he states "CPU is more important at a lower resolution"

the truth is... its not any more important at all

its just that the VIDEO CARD is less important. the CPU's importance doesnt change at all.




its one of those issues where wording it right and wording it ambigously can totally give someone the wrong idea. i've been wrangling this one mentally for a while, and i'm seeing people who are on the same side as me, making posts saying things that can be interpreted the wrong way (see the kurgan example above)

The CPU is more important than the GPU at a lower resolution is what it means. It is worded correctly, it just matters how much you want to look into it. And that really is a fact. If you read into it as the cPU is more important at a lower resolution than it is at a higher one, then it reads out wrong. But if you read into it that having a good cpu at a lower resolution and a crappy videocard isn't as big of a deal as where you need the full package for a higher resolution.
 

Mussels

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no, the CPU doesnt matter at all.


let me put it this way:

if you want 60 FPS at 1280x1024, is it going to take MORE, or LESS CPU power than 1080p at 60FPS?

Less. Never will it require more.


it has more impact on FPS percentage wise, assuming you have a GPU more powerful than you need - but thats does NOT make the CPU more important at low res, or the GPU more important at high res... it just means you're getting more FPS when you remove a bottleneck.


edit: i finally figured out how to word the bit stuck in my brain.


If your settings get you 60 FPS at 1080P, by dropping your resolution to 1280x1024 do you need more CPU power to get the same 60 FPS?

NO. you do not. Therefore, you do NOT need a more powerful CPU at lower resolutions. it is not more important.
 
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Example? A friend of mine has a system, and so does his son. My friends system is a rather new Compaq with a good CPU (can't remember rating), and a not so good graphics card.

His son has an older HP with not such good CPU, think it was a dualcore rated at 1.8Ghz.. But the graphics card is better.

Now.. I started both systems with CS:S, equal amount of bots (9 of them and then the player), and a resolution set to 1024x768.

On my friends system it doesn't drop below 60 fps, but stays around 60-70fps. But on his son's sytem it can't go beyond 60 fps. Both CS:S are configured same, with same settings for the graphics ingame and audio etc.

So this why his son can't go beyond 60fps is because the CPU is holding him back?
I know my system, current system, has less memory and so, but better CPU than both of them also bigger cache. But I can't remember if my graphics card was better than his son. However, my fps never goes below 80 when in a large open area.

So, both their systems at same resolution can be at around 60fps, but his son's can't go beyond that (for now), and this is caused by his CPU?
 

JrRacinFan

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If your settings get you 60 FPS at 1080P, by dropping your resolution to 1280x1024 do you need more CPU power to get the same 60 FPS?

NO. you do not. Therefore, you do NOT need a more powerful CPU at lower resolutions. it is not more important.

Are you sure you don't mean this?

If your settings get you 60 FPS at 1280x1024, by raising your resolution to 1080p do you need more CPU power to get the same 60 FPS?
 

Mussels

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Are you sure you don't mean this?

no, i dont. people are saying you need MORE CPU power at lower res, since the CPU is MORE IMPORTANT at lower resolutions.

that is the weird logic i'm trying to lay the smackdown on.
 

JrRacinFan

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Well it's obvious the way you stated in you're original quote/previous post. More of the "work" is offloaded to gpu at a higher resolution anyway. Like I said previously, I am reading more into the thread than what there needs to be.
 
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Once again it takes Mussels to tell it how it is. When I built my first ever rig (just under two years ago) I used an AMD windsor 6000X2 paired up with the HD4850, asking numerous people if this would be a good and balanced rig for playing all games well. I love to play a vast range of games at maximum settings and with a solid framerate and I thought, based on what others stated, that my system back then would be capable.....It wasn't :(

For a noob, confusion and a bit of sadness hit when I finally realised that my new system was not capable of the higher echelon of framerates due to my relatively weak CPU - indeed, it was only CPU limitation that was spoiling my experience. I even tried crossfired 4850s at my lowly res of 1280x1024 with the same chip :) WTF!!! Talk about mismatch.......the 6000 X2 wasn't even sufficient to push one HD4850 to the max, let alone a pair.

I'm not saying my system now is a perfect match....it isn't, even my Q6600@3.77 is not totally maximising the potential of the HD4870x2 I currently have, but it certainly scales far far better than my first ever rig and that has simply come from reading up on stuff, learning the right way and paying for something based on what I could afford to get the job done.

Now wheres my 6 core rig already :)
 
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