[QUOTE="kraken2109"][QUOTE="InternetSwag"]

Oh, sorry I didn't know there was a different context.

Uhm. I mean referring to graphics cards.

InternetSwag

Oh I was trying to compare my friends overclocked 192 bit GTX550 TI to my future 6870.

Just look at total bandwidth because the width of the bus is only part of the equation, as you also have to calculate the speed of the memory (MHz, GHz etc)

550Ti 98.5GB/sec

6870 134.4 GB/s

Which do you think is better?

[QUOTE="Creative"]

CPUs are not bottlenecking moderns system, because a lot if not most of processing in games was dumped on GPU (psyx, etc).

To give you an example, I used to have 4-year old C2D Pentium Processor (E6750) clocked at 3.2Ghz. When I upgraded the video card last year from GTS 8800 512MB to GTX 460 the FPS improvement in games (as well as graphical detail) was very substantial.

This year I upgraded my E6750 CPU to i5-2500K (3.3Ghz) and I noticed ZERO improvement in Battlefield 3. So my 4-year old CPU was not the bottleneck. Once I added second GTX 460 to system I saw a very substantial improvemen in Battlefield 3.

From a recent article I read, as long as you have Dual Core CPU clocked around 3.4 - 3.6Ghz it won't bottleneck even GTX580 and above.

This is all from gaming point of view of course, we're not talking about video encoding and things of that nature.

superclocked

Every review of bf3 performance shows that GPU matters the most by far.

In modern times CPU matters much less than GPU.

Anyone who says otherwise is following an antiquated way of thinking.

I have a better dell optiplex 790 for a workstation at work, comes with a 2500 and it only cost 900 bucks and came with a discrete gpu.

anandtech has no clue what they are talking about.

[QUOTE="GummiRaccoon"]

People here seem to think you only one program at once and this is still the single core era.

I've seen bulldozers up close and they are very nice. You can throw many many more programs at it than a phenom II or sandybridge without it even blinking.

Slow_Show

Programs such as? Only the loosest definition of a consumer workload is going to bottleneck on an SNB i5, so it begs the question of why someone doing that kind of multitasking wouldn't go with an SNB i7 or SNB-E CPU (which'll get better performance than Bulldozer virtually across the board).

You do know that while some programs aren't multithreaded well, windows is? Windows will use all the cores you give it as you run more and more applications.

[QUOTE="NailedGR"]

hardware hyperthreading.

superclocked

I Just use that term to explain it, if you really want, I can explain the difference between smt and cmt to you.

Overall it is a superior solution. When windows 7's scheduler gets revamped to take advantage it will really shine, windows 8 already does and sees a 10% improvement across the board.

I can guarantee you intel will be implementing this in 2-3 years, just like 64bit, imc, native multiple cores, etc all things that AMD did first.

The only real problem with bulldozer is the GloFo 32nm process, it doesn't scale as high as it was meant to and it sucks down power.

Uh, wouldn't it be better if 7950 came with 1.5GB 384-bit memory? Not everyone plays on 3 1080p monitors...

gamerns

They should. Once you've eyefinitied, it is nearly impossible to go back.

[QUOTE="GummiRaccoon"]

People here seem to think you only one program at once and this is still the single core era.

I've seen bulldozers up close and they are very nice. You can throw many many more programs at it than a phenom II or sandybridge without it even blinking.

WWIAB

It isn't 8 cores in the traditional sense. the way that they made bulldozer with 2 int cores per module is only about 15% larger die than a quad would have been

Think of an 8 core bulldozer as a 4 core bulldozer with hardware hyperthreading.

It is totally worth it, but you don't have to spend 1200 on a new gaming rig.

You can put together a very respectable, upgradable gaming rig for about half that cost.

For instance I have a phenom II 955/8GB ram/6950 which cost me about 700 dollars total to put together. Also because I upgrade, that was spread over a few years, which makes it an easier pill to swallow.

That's good to hear. Glad to see the game industry at least is moving forward.

Benchmarks are useless anyway, play some games, if you notice performance issues then, that is when you worry.