Cpu & gpu intensive games

[da rulz]

guys i recently read an article classifying games as cpu or gpu intensive....does it mean that a particular game will run ONLY on a cpu or a gpu???.....which games are cpu intensive and which aren't..?!?

 

[dudewitbow]

there arent games that solely run on one or the other. in general, all games are gpu intensive, but some games can stress the cpu enough that it adversly affects gpus performance because the game cannot compute fast enough for a specific action to happen, thus skipped frames. cpu intensive stuff usually appear when alot of things are happening at once(mmos, battlefield 3 64 player fight) as well as computational parts of games(reflections etc)

 

[da rulz]

is skyrim cpu intensive

 

[stickmansam]

Also some games are only "cpu intensive" because they only use 1 -2 cores of a cpu
So while the cpu is not being fully used, it can still affect performance

 

[stantheman123]

Yea skyrim is

 

[dudewitbow]

its both, but its not extremely optimized for 4 and more cores(as most console ports aren't) especially once mods start to kick in

 

[timil]

mmos are generally cpu intensive whilst they let your gpu lollygag