Date:
Tuesday , March 21, 2006
Category:
CPU / Processors
Manufacturers:
Various
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett

CPUs & Real-World Gameplay Scaling

What do different video cards and CPUs mean to gamers in World of Warcraft, F.E.A.R., Battlefield 2, and Call of Duty 2? We played all the games with 6 different CPUs and 4 different video cards to find out the difference in real-world gameplay.

Sponsorship

This article is sponsored by BFG Technologies, the number one seller of NVIDIA based video cards in North America. Their sponsorship has allowed us the resources needed, both in terms of man power and hardware that it has taken to pull this research together. We suggest you keep their BFG Tech and 3DFuzion line of video cards in mind next time you are shopping. BFG Tech has had no input into any of HardOCP’s testing or conclusions and are seeing its results for the first time here along with our readers.

Introduction

While choosing what video card you are going to use for gaming is extremely important there are other factors that will determine the level of gameplay you will experience. Your system as a whole is a conglomeration of hardware where each part plays a role in determining how your games will perform. Chief among this system is your central processing unit.

Physics

The central processing unit (CPU) controls many aspects of your games. It runs the physics part of your games so that characters don’t fall through floors and so that they can make contact with other objects and characters. Physics controls well, physics, everything that can collide, touch each other or move requires physics calculations. In today’s games this is done in software and runs on the CPU, but we will be seeing some of this offloaded in the future. One of the most popular physics engines, is Havok, and a quick look at this page will show you some of the games it is being used in.

AI

Another major component of gaming is the Artificial Intelligence (AI) which runs non-player characters (NPCs). There are different forms of AI, some are static scripts and some are dynamic. The dynamic or heuristic methods are the most complex and thus the most processor intensive. In this type of AI characters can make decisions and choose options based on your movements. A good example of this is in the game F.E.A.R. The NPCs react to your movements making decisions on where to strike. Another game coming out soon The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion uses a Radiant AI in which all the NPCs actually live out their own lives and make decisions completely dynamically.

Sound and Others

Depending on your sound card solution, the CPU may also handle all the sound you hear in the game environment. The CPU also has to manage memory, game data access from CD or Hard Drive as well as your OS and everything running underneath the game to keep your system running.

As you can see from this brief summation, your CPU performs many tasks while you are gaming. A faster CPU can mean smoother gameplay with faster framerates.

The Question

Just how much difference does your CPU speed make in real-world gameplay? Are today’s games CPU-limited or GPU-limited? What impact does different CPU and GPU combinations have on your overall level of gaming quality?

We are going to scale a series of AMD and Intel CPUs along with BFG Tech video cards in real-world gaming experiences, trying to find out what each combination gives you.