How much does processor speed affect gaming (ut 2004)

[legacy-Angry_Gibbon]

Does anyone have an idea how much processor speed affects FPS in 3D games, and UT 2004 in general?

Most benchmarks seem to be centered on the video card, but I've been curious about how much a CPU affects performance in gaming...does anyone have any real data on this, or links to articles/info?

Thx for any insight...

[legacy-.:i:.]

ut is very cpu dependant

flyby=gpu bench
botmatch=cpu bench

[legacy-kneecaps]

It really depends on the game.

Graphics card is the first step to high frame rates..however if your CPU is too slow, calculating things like the AI of the bots (which is intensive in the UT games) then it will reduce your frame rate dramatically.

I have until yesterday been playing UT2004 demo on a Athlon XP3200 (400FSB) with an old Geforce II GTS 32mb card...decent frame rates, mainly due to the fast processor. (I now have a Radeon 9600XT).

This is totally different for different games, for example the likes of Quake3 (Enemy Territory, etc) are much less CPU bound.

[legacy-sthai9uhhwatiut]

kneecaps: Actually Quake3 is even much more CPU bound than UT2004...

[legacy-jshady40]

I have an Ati Radeon 9600 Pro 128, but I'm forced to limit my bot number to about 5 because of my 1.8Ghz Pentium 4 processor. That will give you a clue.

[legacy-revmitcz]

I'll put it this way..

At work, I have a Dual 2.0Ghz G5 w/a Radeon 9000 w/64MB of VRAM and 1GB of RAM.
I get about 40 fps at 1024x768, default settings for everything else, and all of my Adobe apps running in the background.

At home, I've got a G4/500 upgraded to 1.4Ghz, with 1GB of RAM and a Radeon 8500 w/64MB of VRAM. With nothing else opened, and running at 16-bit 640x480 and everything set to lower than normal - I get about 15fps, at best.

That about says it all, doesn't it?

[legacy-NeonEntity]

Rather than vague examples...
The more polygons the VPU has to render, obviously the faster VPU with the most rendering pipelines/pixels per pass will boost performance. The higher resolution you play at the more Vmem you will need, because of higher resolution textures; also, higher resolutions put greater preasure on the VPU because it has to calculate more for each poly and has to work harder to antialias. The cpu improves performance where there is a lot of physics detail.

So for example: a small room with 10 bots is hard on the VPU and not so hard on the CPU, whereas, say, that assult map that comes bundled with Ut2004 demo will be harder on the CPU because there is a lot of more physics detail to account for (the entire map is moving).

[legacy-UnR3aL]

quake 3 isnt more cpu dependant than ut2k4, my p3 733mhz could play quake 3 smoothly with my mx440

[legacy-DaPlayer1]

my xp 2200 266 fsb with my current vid card, i got 4500 in 3dmark03 and when i OC'ed it to xp2600 333 FSB, i got 5556 in 3Dmark. About a 1,000 points gained...

my FPS in UT2003 increased too.. I can play with 15 players including me=16 total with max details and still got 45-55 FPS.

[legacy-PsychoChihuahua]

When practicing, I run a bot game locally and use 16 bots. Xp2800 + nvidia ti4200 @ 1024x768x32 == goodness. No in-game lag at all.

[legacy-sthai9uhhwatiut]

Originally posted by UnR3aL
quake 3 isnt more cpu dependant than ut2k4, my p3 733mhz could play quake 3 smoothly with my mx440
Of course you can play it with that kind of computer. But the game is CPU limited, not GPU. Especially as it's one of the older games...