CPU Question

[Jstyr]

How important is the Processor in gaming? Will a faster processor up my FPS dramatically or is that almost solely the videocard??

I notice on some first person shooter's my friend's P4 2.4 Ghz system seems to make it "easier" to kill folks. Maybe it's rendering the frames faster...or maybe processing my commands and sending them out faster? Maybe his cable modem is faster than my DSL?

Just wondering what you all think about where the processor fits into high end gaming machines? How important are Internet connection speeds?? And is upload or download speed more important?

I'm asking all this crap because with work having slowed down now I'm into money conservation mode. I'm thinking about either upgrading hardware (CPU and video card) or getting a business DSL connection for faster uploads (at least) and possibly downloads.

[BlackSword]

Simply put all three are important. Fast RIG, Solid ISP, and Fast VideoCard.

Additionally Games are getting vary RAM hungry,, your RIG should have at least 256meg of Ram if not more.

Now obviously the game your playing dictates the Processor and Video card required,,,, in most first person shooter games a Solid ISP is a must. When I say Solid ISP I mean consistent low ping times,, most DSL or Cable connections have lots of bandwidth for any games I know of right now so that isn't as important.

Hard to be specific when you haven't said what the game is, or your RIG, or your Video card.

[Brent]

the faster the cpu the better, always

there are games that are more cpu dependent then vid card depedent, namely Unreal 2 and UT2K3, they eat up your CPU because of their AI and Physics system, which is all done on the CPU, for these games a massive CPU will help greatly

other games are more vid card dependent, maybe needing massive amounts of fill-rate or using pixel shaders like crazy making the graphics very vid card dependent

but even still the cpu does things like sound, ai, physics, etc....

both are very important, though some games lean on one more then the other, but its game dependent, or rather game engine dependent

[Jstyr]

thanks for the beta guys....I'm really thinking about upgrading to the 2400+...that'll be another 500mhz processor speed out of the box. I'm sitting on 1gig of RAM and a Ge3. I'm thinking plop in the 2400+ and a Ge4 ti4600 or possibly the ATI 9500 (hmm) and I should be smokin again.

I'm playing alot of Army Operations and I have a feeling it's processor intensive like Unreal or Quake. My buddy has almost the exact same setup as me with 1 gig RAM, and a 64 meg vid card...but his p4 2.4 is a whole ghz (almost) faster than mine.

Newegg has the 2400+'s for like $130 bucks right now and with a little tweaking I should be able to inch it up another 100 or 200mhz.