- Joined
- Jan 24, 2011
- Location
- Zebulon, North Carolina
Let's take a look at the last 7 or 8 years, back in 2004 - 2005 we started see'ing some of the first factory 3.0-3.2ghz CPU's albeit they we're extremely expensive, they existed to the public. now what about GPU's? The Nvidia GeForce FX 5800 released in 2003 and came with a 500mhz stock core clock.
CPU's today are still coming barely over 3.0ghz flavors, 3.3-3.4ghz finally, but think about it we're still getting stock clocked CPUs barely above the clocks of a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360, sure we have 4/8/12 cores but ultimately it will bottleneck with more than one GPU and in some cases, one GPU. The clock cycles are coming to a point where even the average or casual user needs to overclock their machine to keep from bottle necking during game sessions. A server CPU should tell you everything when it comes to cores and clocks, you can have 100 cores running at 2.8ghz and it will not be as good as a quad core running at 4.5ghz.
GPU's have steadily rose from 500mhz now to 1000mhz and higher, between 1999 and 2002 CPU clocks went up 400mhz, GPU clocks went up 100mhz, between 2003 and 2012, CPU clocks have gained 100-200 mhz and GPUs have gained another 600mhz. We're already having to overclock to get the most out of high end GPUs, what do you think the future holds? Do you think there is a CPU around the corner that will start at 5.0ghz to offset the balance?
2004 high-end Rig with balance
AMD Athlon 64 x2 @ 3.1ghz (Stock)
Nvidia GeForce FX 5800 Ultra @ 500mhz (Stock)
or
Radeon 9800 XT Pro (Stock)
2012 high-end Rig with balance
Intel Core i7 2600k @ 4.5ghz (Overclocked)
AMD Radeon HD 7970 (Stock)
or
Nvidia GTX 580 (Stock)
In most cases i found diminishing returns after overclocking past 4.5ghz in actual game benchmarks with one card, and with 2x GTX 580s i kept gaining fps and higher scores up to 5.1ghz, where i could not go any further without crashing.
CPU's today are still coming barely over 3.0ghz flavors, 3.3-3.4ghz finally, but think about it we're still getting stock clocked CPUs barely above the clocks of a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360, sure we have 4/8/12 cores but ultimately it will bottleneck with more than one GPU and in some cases, one GPU. The clock cycles are coming to a point where even the average or casual user needs to overclock their machine to keep from bottle necking during game sessions. A server CPU should tell you everything when it comes to cores and clocks, you can have 100 cores running at 2.8ghz and it will not be as good as a quad core running at 4.5ghz.
GPU's have steadily rose from 500mhz now to 1000mhz and higher, between 1999 and 2002 CPU clocks went up 400mhz, GPU clocks went up 100mhz, between 2003 and 2012, CPU clocks have gained 100-200 mhz and GPUs have gained another 600mhz. We're already having to overclock to get the most out of high end GPUs, what do you think the future holds? Do you think there is a CPU around the corner that will start at 5.0ghz to offset the balance?
2004 high-end Rig with balance
AMD Athlon 64 x2 @ 3.1ghz (Stock)
Nvidia GeForce FX 5800 Ultra @ 500mhz (Stock)
or
Radeon 9800 XT Pro (Stock)
2012 high-end Rig with balance
Intel Core i7 2600k @ 4.5ghz (Overclocked)
AMD Radeon HD 7970 (Stock)
or
Nvidia GTX 580 (Stock)
In most cases i found diminishing returns after overclocking past 4.5ghz in actual game benchmarks with one card, and with 2x GTX 580s i kept gaining fps and higher scores up to 5.1ghz, where i could not go any further without crashing.
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