Gamers: Do You Need More Than An Athlon II X3?

[njalterio]

Oh, and I would love to see the research that says human beings can see more than 200 fps. I notice you said "perceive 200 fps"....but as it pertains to PC gaming we are concerned with vision.

 

[eodeo]

wow. interesting read. I would never have guessed that singe 5850 would beat crossfired 5870 on different (more than dual) cpu. i'm wowed

 

[wolfram23]

Good article, but why are we not seeing tests at 4xAA?? Nobody really wants to play without AA it looks terrible in comparison. I'd love to see some benchmarks with 4xAA to compare where the bottleneck is - GPU? CPU? Both? I already know GPU memory makes a huge difference but there's plenty to be explored there.

 

[tolham]

pretty good article, but people who buy an athlon tri-core probably don't have the money to crossfire 5850's so that was kind of pointless.

 

[bildo123]

I need 0 fps in my games, they are a luxury. Having >60 framerates just makes the the playing experience cleaner and more enjoyable. Enjoyable in the sense that when you have 120 fps, you never notice your framerate at all.
Criticizing people for wanting high fps is like criticizing people for buying music you don't like, the value is clearly subjective and will vary from person to person. Likewise people don't all perceive fps the same way.

I think a nicer way of saying what you quotes would be...In general, on the average, most people really don't need more than 60FPS. Like you've mentioned though, people are different and perceive FPS differently as well. Realistically, I only start to notice when FPS go around 25 or lower (coincidentally, very close to which movies are recorded at, 24).

 

[madass]

How about showing CPU usage graphs? GTA San Andreas rarely uses more than ~45% of my Athlon II X4 620. Logically, it a dual core optimized game. However, firing up task manager shows it consuming ~30-50% of each core. Same with Rainbow Six Vegas and Vegas 2. Some CPU usage graphs would shed light on just how much CPU muscle is actually being used......

 

[eodeo]

Some CPU usage graphs would shed light on just how much CPU muscle is actually being used......

I fear it would only show low usage per core on the AMD side. I dont know how can intel utilize more, but I think it would feel like cheating when looking above the surface.

 

[mac29]

Well. There certainly are a lot of opinions around, like welshmouse and killerclick. Personally, this article was exactly what I needed today as I'm building and only have the 1st piece: a 435 (due to readings on this site). The comments were more enlightening for me than the article, such as axe1592. I agree it would be better to include using AA, etc. yet I don't play games newer than 2007. Can't afford upgrading like we used to. Would rather pour my $ into impressing women & buying a house. Well, the jerks can throw 4 top shelf cards in their pride n' joy. They probably watch the game on TV anyway.

 

[mattmock]

[citation][nom]bildo123[/nom]I think a nicer way of saying what you quotes would be...In general, on the average, most people really don't need more than 60FPS. Like you've mentioned though, people are different and perceive FPS differently as well. Realistically, I only start to notice when FPS go around 25 or lower (coincidentally, very close to which movies are recorded at, 24).[/citation]
If my post seemed angry, I didn't really mean it that way. I just wanted to disagree.

 

[amdfangirl]

What about you test with something like Ventrilo or Skype on?

I'm sure that uses extra CPU power...

 

[Guest]

It's all well and good, although i doubt it'd perform well in CPU demanding games like GTA 4 or (unless it overclocks well) Supreme Commander.

 

[ZereoX]

[citation][nom]sonofliberty08[/nom]if u need powerful cpu more than the Athlon II X3 , go for Phenom II X4 then , still save u alot of good money in the pocket than go for an i7 .[/citation]

I felt like buying an i7 but after seeing this I don't feel like wasting that much money for it. Is the P II X4 the middle-ground between both CPU's and will it be future proof?

 

[jeff77789]

I think that Tom's Hardware should try benchmarking with Microsoft Flight Simulator X. I think it is similar to Crysis only its highly CPU dominant and rarely uses the GPU @ all. Has anyone tried Benchmarking with the settings up to full? This may sound weird but at 1440x900 with full settings, My Phenom IIx4 955 @ 3.71 ghz can only get about 25-31 fps. Under normal gameplay conditions, 3 cores and some of the 4th core is loaded with overall 75% load on the core and for the GPU (I have an EVGA gtx 275 707mhz core 1300mhz memory) its between 20-35% load at all times. So that works great, if you want to sit there for the whole afternoon that is. So in the game, you can speed up time at rates of 2x 4x 8x 16x 32x and 64x. At 4x or greater, all four cores are loaded 100% while GPU is @ 35%. FPS is @ around under 10 fps or somewhere around 15 fps at most. At 64x, 3-5 fps with all four cores loaded with gpu usage @ 35% once again.....Has anybody played this game and noticed this?

 

[jeff77789]

[citation][nom]ZereoX[/nom]I felt like buying an i7 but after seeing this I don't feel like wasting that much money for it. Is the P II X4 the middle-ground between both CPU's and will it be future proof?[/citation]

Yea it will get you somewhere i can tell you that.....but i7's are typically more powerful in every benchmark
expect to overclock right around 3.7 ghz and it gets wayy harder after that

 

[demonhorde665]

[citation][nom]sohei[/nom]good point in this article....if you have money ....you have 1 solution for every application you run on your pc....(high end cpu) folks with money dont have to think...is simple ...but if you have less money to spend ...an AMD cpu is your (my) choice[/citation]

Not that i'm a fanboy but regardless of my budget i always pick amd , a 6 core amd chip is far cheaper than soem of intels 4 core chips and even though teh athy 2 x3 proved to get stomped my intels best , the diference from amd's top line quad and 6 core chips is minimum next to itnels chips which caost bocoos more than the amd ones , so even on a super system build i'd look at amd's offering, unless i'm building a computer that is a work station , which in that case i wouldnt be trhowing a mainscteam gaming card on its video system any way

 

[sonofliberty08]

[citation][nom]ZereoX[/nom]I felt like buying an i7 but after seeing this I don't feel like wasting that much money for it. Is the P II X4 the middle-ground between both CPU's and will it be future proof?[/citation]
yes , u should save that money for other investment , because u will payment too much than the performance u can earn on an i7 , the mobo cost too much and the platform is crippled unless intel let nvidia to make nforce chipset for i7 , i recommend u go for Phenom II X4 and save the money for other investment like ,gpu , psu or water cooling , u can upgrade ur cpu in the future because the new cpu can be fit on older platform after the mobo bios upgraded , here have some Phenom II X4 platform u may want for , check it out http://toms-work-shop.blogspot.com/2010/01/desktop.html

 

[Guest]

how about a comparison with the cheap X4 amd 640 processor, it would certainly be interesting to see if those minimum frame rates come up, especially in the 2 x gpu tests

 

[psiboy]

World in conflict must be the WORST coded game in the history of the human race!

 

[psiboy]

Good to see some 1920 x 1080 benchmarking at last! Hurrah!

 

[psiboy]

a "solid win" in World in conflict at an unplayable 20 fps!? Wtf?! lol

 

[Guest]

The 790X is not good solution in Xfire mode, one 5970 instead of a 5870's pair had pushed the numbers with lesser expense.

 

[Guest]

Well, your attempt to make Intel look good backfired, what this test shows is that the Intel setup looks good in first and second gear but when you reach high speed and corners with a little uphill ... Intel sputters coughs and hisses .... I think you should stick to testing Intel vs AMD in VGA and no filtering like you like to do...
For real world testing I want full visual experience with all fitering applied and the highest screen resolution possible..

 

[WR2]

Very useful review. Well worth the reading.

 

[mordant]

The thing I find strange in this testing is the choice of using disparate CPU brands. If the contention is that a stronger CPU than the X3 440 is wasted in a gaming rig, test with the same motherboard, ram, etc and a x4 or maybe x6 processor. That would give you a simple and straight forward processor change but leave the motherboard and ram performance constant.

Or maybe I'm thinking about it incorrectly and the extra cores in a higher end AMD CPU don't help gaming performance to any appreciable degree so that test would be useless but the Intel chip does help gaming performance?

 

[randomkid]

3 times the price is simply not justified by the performance gain of the i7 920 over the X3 440...
Even more unjustified if you count the higher cost of the X58 motherboard.