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which is better for gaming?

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voodoothenoob

Member
Joined
Mar 1, 2004
higher memory bandwith or higher cpu clock speed?

200 fsb at 5500 mem bandwith
or 230 fsb at 5000 mem bandwith

or it dont make a difference?

could u add an explanation y if u have a sec...trying to learn here:)
 
all things equal,highr memory bandwidth is desirable. however not at sacrificing cpu speed. for example, running your fsb at 200 2-2-2-5 may give u a bandwidth edge over running it at 230 3-4-4-8 but if its costing u 300-400 cpu mz then your overall performance will be less..
 
I'd say cpu speed, memory size, and HD I/O matter most now, but of course vid card matters too after it's all loaded.

CPU is important for decompressing and launching the game, but as soon as that happens it loads into memory, and swap if there is not enough memory. Bandwidth won't matter much, because 200MHz and 230MHz won't ever be your bottleneck, it'll be your hard drive that lags the load times.

If you run a psycho-speedy SCSI or SATA drive as boot and game install drive, with a slower drive for data, your game will load insanely fast because the drive will throw the data out to the memory FAST, and that is what changes your load time. The memory just holds it while the CPU decompresses and interprets, so FSB, while important, won't be visible really. I can see no difference between 2100MHz and 2450MHz in game loading, because my drive is what lags the system.

After load times, if you want performance in-game, of course video cards are important. Memory and CPU won't matter much here, unless they are grossly outdated compared to the video card.
 
Bandwith is better. With the higher bus you are OCing both the CPU and memory. Only using 200 with tighter timings only addresses the memory.

The more things you OC in a cascade the better ur system will be in games.

Its alot like personal skills. Pplz who are specilists are impractical. The more general knowledge we have the better. The same applies to OCing.

A crap system with an ub3r videocard will get its *** beat by a decent well rounded system. 3Dmark01SE is a fantastic example of this. Many pplz get high 3d03 scores but poor 01 scores, becuase their videocard is awesome. but the rest of the system sux.
 
yeh, I always say, if there's a big gap between what's being held back...between the cpu and memory...give the CPU first priority. if that means having to go to 3/2 instead 5/4 because your me can't keep up, I'd do it
 
Bandwidth, Bandwidth, Bandwidth. For example: An AMD @ 10x250 > An AMD @ 12x210 by far. CPU speed is great to some extent. But increased bandiwdth for ANY system (intel or amd) will result in faster loads, extractions (winRAR, etc.) and much more favorable benchmarks. As stated earlier, 3d apps thrive on fsb; just compare the 2.4B to the 2.4C :D
 
deception`` said:
Bandwidth, Bandwidth, Bandwidth. For example: An AMD @ 10x250 > An AMD @ 12x210 by far. CPU speed is great to some extent. But increased bandiwdth for ANY system (intel or amd) will result in faster loads, extractions (winRAR, etc.) and much more favorable benchmarks. As stated earlier, 3d apps thrive on fsb; just compare the 2.4B to the 2.4C :D

Yes, but your example is an AMD at 2500/250 vs an AMD at 2520/210... That's not a fair comparison for an Intel, because we cannot manipulate the divider.

So using an AMD example: Take a LOCKED Barton at 12x and which would you prefer? 12 x 230 at loose timings, or 12 x 200 at tight timings? Get the idea?

Sacrificing CPU speed for a ~2% increase in bandwidth is NOT going to net you a performance increase.
 
=ACID RAIN= said:
Memory and CPU won't matter much here, unless they are grossly outdated compared to the video card.

unless your running the unreal tech engine ;) which depends on the CPU a lot, since my 2.4c is a bottleneck for UT2K4, Unreal engine has always been dependant of CPU, and therefore i say, find a golden middleway! (rimes.... cool) If you cant get a golden middleway, go for CPU speed, but dont sacrifice to much!

Try both ways, and see which one works best for you!
 
Hey i just scanned through this thread real fast and thought of something.I just recently upgraded my pc and bought a new s-ata harddrive.I am using that hd as backup for movies and ****.If i was to install my game onto that hd instead of my c drive (normal ide) will it run faster, player better anything better? If so, ill be uninstalling and reinstalling.
 
=ACID RAIN= said:

After load times, if you want performance in-game, of course video cards are important. Memory and CPU won't matter much here, unless they are grossly outdated compared to the video card.

Unless you're playing a game like Morrowind, where even having a middlegrade CPU (like mine, xp2100) can cause lots of fps lag.
 
DozeBeatS said:
Hey i just scanned through this thread real fast and thought of something.I just recently upgraded my pc and bought a new s-ata harddrive.I am using that hd as backup for movies and ****.If i was to install my game onto that hd instead of my c drive (normal ide) will it run faster, player better anything better? If so, ill be uninstalling and reinstalling.


You have to list what drives you have. Sata drives aren't faster just because of the interface. I say this because many SATA models are just the IDE drives with a SATA interface connector(err, is that the word?)

Since Raptors are 10k, they will be faster than a single IDE drive. Seagate's drive is also the only true SATA drive out.
 
Games do not need much memory bandwidth, because they do not request large files one at a time. They request a very large amount of tiny files one after another very quickly, so timings are more important than bandwidth. If you are using Photoshop or something similar, it will be requesting a few large files, and it needs the most bandwidth that it can get and timings are almost irrelevant.

Timings > FSB/Ram

Don't take this to mean that bandwidth is irrelevant in games, it is still important, just do not expect 500mhz @ 3-4-4-8 to be any faster than 425mhz @ 2-2-2-6 (or 2-2-2-11 for N-force2)


Edit - Realized I put nothing in this post about CPU speed... Oh well.
 
jlin453 said:



You have to list what drives you have. Sata drives aren't faster just because of the interface. I say this because many SATA models are just the IDE drives with a SATA interface connector(err, is that the word?)

Since Raptors are 10k, they will be faster than a single IDE drive. Seagate's drive is also the only true SATA drive out.

Ok i have a sata maxtor 160 gig 8mb buffer 7200rpm.Will running games off of that drive be faster then ruinng them from my c drive; an ide western digital 80gig 8mb 7200rpm?
 
Ok i have a sata maxtor 160 gig 8mb buffer 7200rpm.Will running games off of that drive be faster then ruinng them from my c drive; an ide western digital 80gig 8mb 7200rpm?

Short but sweet, no. There is no difference between the two other then one is a SATA & one is a IDE. The Western Digital Raptors have a 10,000 RPM instead of a 7,500 RPM. If you had one SATA drive at 10k RPM & one IDE drive at 7,500 RPM. That would be considerably faster. But this only weighs a huge impact for windows load time, game load time, application load time, etc.......There would be no gains in your FPS or any "in game play" even if one drive was faster then the other. Only access times to your hard drive.

-ºb§
 
**Edit** so nobody jumps on me.

There is no difference between the two other then one is a SATA & one is a IDE

Size to...lmao

instead of a 7,500 RPM. If you had one SATA drive at 10k RPM & one IDE drive at 7,500 RPM

Meant 7200.....
 
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