Date:
Tuesday , March 21, 2006
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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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.

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Video Card Setup

For this evaluation unlike our video card evaluations the video card will remain the constant and we will scale CPUs in each game. Due to this testing taking place before the launch of the GeForce 7900, it is not included. For testing these are the video cards used:

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BFGTech GeForce 7800 GTX OC 512MB – The BFGTech GeForce 7800 GTX OC 512MB operates at a core clock of 580 MHz and a memory clock of 1.75 GHz. This video card is based on the NVIDIA G70 (7800 GTX) GPU using 512MB of GDDR3.

BFGTech GeForce 7800 GTX OC 256MB – You can read our evaluation of the BFGTech GeForce 7800 GTX OC 256MB video card here. The BFGTech GeForce 7800 GTX OC 256MB video card operates at a core clock of 460 MHz and a memory clock of 1.3 GHz. The video card is based on the NVIDIA G70 (7800 GTX) GPU using 256MB of GDDR3.

BFGTech GeForce 7800 GT OC 256MB – You can read our evaluation of the BFGTech GeForce 7800 GT OC 256MB video card here. The BFGTech GeForce 7800 GT OC 256MB video card operates at a core clock of 425 MHz and a memory clock of 1.05 GHz. The video card is based on the NVIDIA G70 (7800 GT) GPU using 256MB of GDDR3.

BFGTech GeForce 6600 GT OC 128MB – You can read our evaluation of the BFGTech GeForce 6600 GT OC 128MB video card here. The BFGTech GeForce 6600 GT OC 128MB video card operates at a core clock of 525 MHz and a memory clock of 1.05 GHz. The video card is based on the NVIDIA NV43 (6600 GT) GPU using 128MB of GDDR3.

All video cards are PCI-Express. We are using the absolute latest driver on NZone at the time of testing which is ForceWare 82.12 which supports dual core CPUs.

Platform Setup

We are using two different motherboards and six CPUs total. Three AMD CPUs on the nForce4 platform and three Intel CPUs on the i975 XBX platform.

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We will scale Pentium 4 Prescott at 2.8GHz single core to Pentium 4 Dual Core at 3.2GHz to the high-end Pentium Extreme Edition 3.4GHz dual core with 1066 MHz FSB. We will also scale AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ at 2GHz and 4800+ at 2.4GHz dual core up to the high-end FX-60 at 2.6GHz dual core. All RAM timings are as tight as we could make them; systems are formatted with a clean install of OS and games.

Game and Video Card Evaluation Setup

We are using four games today, Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 2, F.E.A.R and World of Warcraft. We used the latest patches during our testing. For Battlefield 2 this was patch 1.2. For Call of Duty 2 this was patch 1.01 which adds Intel Hyper threading and Dual Core support. For F.E.A.R. this was patch 1.02. For World of Warcraft this was patch 1.9.

For this evaluation we will set it up similar to our DOOM 3 [H]ardware Guide. However instead of scaling video cards we will scale CPUs and the video card will be the constant.

Please be aware we test our video cards a bit differently from what is the norm. We concentrate on examining the real-world gameplay that each video card provides.

In our graphs we use some abbreviations to indicate the method of AA or AF being used.

TR MSAA = Transparency Multisampling Antialiasing – Indicates the use of NVIDIA’s Transparency Multisampling quality setting on GeForce 7 series video cards.

TR SSAA = Transparency Supersampling Antialiasing – Indicates the use of NVIDIA’s Transparency Supersampling quality setting on GeForce 7 series video cards.

Please use the drop down box to instantly go to whichever game and platform you would like to see. You can view the highest playable settings and graphs on each of the following pages. We will summarize the gameplay experience and analyze our findings in the conclusion of this evaluation.