Inside the second: Gaming performance with today's CPUs

Does the processor you choose still matter?

[Wuu]

I have worlds cheapest Athlon (year 2011) Quad Core CPU and it's running Crysis 2 at 4200x1050/extreme eyfinity resolution, like a boss.

[decrypt]

Tbh Cpus dont really matter any more.

Tomshardware.com did a bottlneck test, as in how much CPU power is required to bottleneck a highend GPU @ 1920* 1080.

The GPU used was a GTX 480 which is a bit old by todays standards. However it was proven that a first generation I7 running at 2.4ghz was enough to max out the GPU at 1920*1080. Sure as you would drop the resolution then the bottleneck would shift back to the CPU (hence a faster CPU would give better framerate), However at 1080p the system was totally GPU limited.

My guess is todays high end GPUs like GTX 680, 7970 etc would be kept on their toes with a CPU between 3-3.5ghz @1080p. Which means an old Core2quad(4years old now) oced between 3.5-4ghz would easily be enough for todays high end GPUs.

Hence in conclusion, if 3-4 year old CPUs are enough for todays high end GPUs, i would say CPU upgrades have become irrelevant. Hell if you are playing on a single screen then any 2-3 year old GPU would probably be enough too.

[ChrisW]

I totally concur. I have a rig with an i5-750 CPU with a GTX680 GPU and overclocking my CPU does absolutely nothing for benchmarks.

[EDIT]
However, running at 4200x1050 means that he is more than likely using 3 monitors.

[Tarmgar]

I would have to disagree with you decrypt and ChrisW. I had an Athlon x3 440 at stock 3.0ghz paired with my Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 and getting 20's and 30's fps in World of Tanks on medium settings. Then, I recently bought a Phenom x4 965 at stock 3.4 ghz and I now get mid 50's and max 60 fps constantly on highest settings. Although I do love to listen to Tomshardware on video cards, I went against them on the CPU heirarchy and it paid out for me, bigtime.

[ChrisW]

HD 5870 was released in 2009. Today's GPUs are quite different.

[steve30x]

Your CPU is'nt running the game. At that resolution its 100% GPU.

[frjoethesecond]

Framerate is almost identical between my old q6600 and my new 3930k. Both with a GTX 580 @1080p.