I have been doing a lot of thinking lately on whether or not I should upgrade to C2D. There is no doubt that the C2D is faster than the AMD processors clock for clock, and I am not trying to dispute that. What I want to address is how much does that matter with gaming.
I have seen plenty of benchmarks directly comparing processors with various games. The problem with these benchmarks is most use low resolutions to emphasize the CPU. Well does that really give a real world picture? My feeling is that it doesn't, because no one is going to game at such low resolutions if they have a current setup.
I decided to do some digging to help give me an accurate picture, and I came across two articles that I feel address this.
C2E X6800 Oblivion - http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_8800_preview/page19.asp
AMD X2 Oblivion - http://firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_8800_gtx_gts_amd_cpu_scaling/page11.asp
The AMD processors are actually very comparable to the C2E when using resolutions of 1280x1024 and higher. So for those people that primarily game and are considering an upgrade you may want to hold off, and put that money toward a new DX10 card instead.
Perhaps this has already been discussed and I am late to the game, so I apologize if I am being redundant. I thought I would mention this since I see some people recommending upgrades to C2D for people that mainly game.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that flight simulators are the exception. Flight simulators are much more cpu dependant than other games, so the C2D will be faster.
I have seen plenty of benchmarks directly comparing processors with various games. The problem with these benchmarks is most use low resolutions to emphasize the CPU. Well does that really give a real world picture? My feeling is that it doesn't, because no one is going to game at such low resolutions if they have a current setup.
I decided to do some digging to help give me an accurate picture, and I came across two articles that I feel address this.
C2E X6800 Oblivion - http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce_8800_preview/page19.asp
AMD X2 Oblivion - http://firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_8800_gtx_gts_amd_cpu_scaling/page11.asp
The AMD processors are actually very comparable to the C2E when using resolutions of 1280x1024 and higher. So for those people that primarily game and are considering an upgrade you may want to hold off, and put that money toward a new DX10 card instead.
Perhaps this has already been discussed and I am late to the game, so I apologize if I am being redundant. I thought I would mention this since I see some people recommending upgrades to C2D for people that mainly game.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that flight simulators are the exception. Flight simulators are much more cpu dependant than other games, so the C2D will be faster.